How does one lose oneself?
It is neither abrupt and distinct, whose adamantium fist falls with certain finality, nor sinuous and foreboding, whose creeping embrace engulf with such voracity. It is subtle and discreet, slow and cumulative. Like the constrictor whose venom lies not in its fangs but its ability to subjugate, in the most graceful and understated manner, its prey to a demise that is as heartless as it is painful. A lingering cut that never bleeds, but suffocates your very core.
I fell for someone whose apparent phobias and insecurities constitute the better part of character. Playing the trusted friend, I blindly and gingerly aided him in all his debauched ramblings, and failed attempts on romance. Slowly without me realizing, I have fallen into a spiral with him. Doing double-dates with girls I could barely look at, or drinking parties with little to do but stare at each other. Sarcastic as it may seem, the longing for connection found its translation in means that can only be defined as equal parts hypocritical and in denial. I was smitten, but with little chance of achieving any of the bases with him, the sentiments were resolved as a humble footnote to a supposedly strong friendship.
A friend beckons.
It starts with the most humble of gestures, in aid of an affection that will never find its voice nor will ever be requited. It is a lowly mantra echoing in the depths of my psyche, a hypnotic trance that finds translation in gullibility. Slowly, you let go in the obtuse belief that tacit affections will preternaturally find its way into the heart of the heartless, a song whose tune will seek only his ears. Inaudible and inspired, but silent nonetheless.
Problems arise.
The burden of your family beckons your resources. The call to responsibility have always been one you are keen to thwart, yet fate has a humor as pungent as its sarcasm, and you find yourself welcoming with open arms, in lucid defiance, a fate far less than you preferred. In a time when you have envisioned wanton abandon in the frolics of the flesh, or the booming beat of the calling dancefloor, or the blinding lights of the nether times, of friends and lovers and acquaintances in cohorts, you find yourself slaving over matters well beyond your chronology, considerations as perplexing as the anatomy of a lost lover, but devoid of the warmth and exhilaration, in the bosom of the keyboard whose sweet embrace only serves to meditate your fading fire. Maturity fed bucket-full’s to a gaping mouth held by circumstance. Learned from the streets, now strapped in domesticity.
In every failed relationship, and in every failed attempt at one, you lose a part of yourself to the person. Love is a bitter pill whose fruits are as extreme as its pits, while committing licenses the other party glimpses of a vulnerability you would normally safeguard. It gives right for him or her to cause you pain, the same manner affections can uplift in bliss. And in every passing chapter to your spirit's book, pages are torn sacrificially and in offing to those whose brief stay merited your attention. Despite supposed lessons gained in each unique instance, you fall on the next chance only to, briefly, subtly, taste in passing love's piquant nectar.
Rejection is a salve whose bitterness is the hardest to swallow. It poses issues that feed insecurities one tries vehemently to pacify. Shifting between periods of sober contemplation and inebriated debauchery I find myself filling voids left by unsung songs, joining gaps caused by sacrificial pieces of my heart, to the faceless crowd whose superficial understanding of my existence only dwells on what can be achieved with minimal effort. From what can be gained in my emotional weaknesses and intangible investments; without the risks of vulnerability or the opportunities for genuine connection. I was nothing more than a willing subject, whose days are spent seeking validation in the bed of people whose backs turn in the return of sunrise, or in places whose only comfort afforded is the recoiling abandon of inebriated oblivion.
Lost. To the spiraling mundanity of pain and retribution.
With each rejection, my wounded psyche is fed with a hunger more uncompromising in its appetite. Fearing a growing indifference, I led myself from one arm to another, seeking valuation of a faint and fading self-worth. Despite my wavering emotional integrity, I capitalized on my improving physical assets in the erring assumption that this is the only way a genuine attraction can be achieved or discovered in the pathos of our subculture. There I was objectifying my own worth for the price of a few hours of detached ecstasy.
Bound. To a life of denial and distraction.
Months pass, then years. With the growing jadedness in my heart threatening the hope for romance I have longed to find in the most awkward of places, epiphanies have been set aside for the few morsels of attention, whether from pity or a passing fancy or the thirsty momentary lust, I can elicit from whomsoever I can lure or who can lure me. And without my knowing, I lost what should’ve been of greater value to me. With each failed attempt, more and more I am bound to a losing battle of my own doing. Before long, even the few cards I was able to deal against the voracious flesh market of our generation was slipping beyond my grip. Looks fade, my once physical arrogance now covered in layers of a thickening adipose wall. The amiable demeanor whose presence tended to enlighten a party is replaced with insecurity beyond comprehension. My humanity enforced against a once proud existence, fated to smite my transgressions against personal integrity, honesty, sincerity and love.
One day you wake up a mere shadow of your once shining melody. All the potential and capacity for ardor and recuperation are still there yet the notes that defined your heartsong are but a jumbled mess of off-key timbres seeking its own harmony amidst the anarchy of compositions and memories. You are bound to the notes whose remnants remind of a past brilliance, and you hold on to a hope that one day you’ll regain that seminal sensation, and the notes will again fall into place to resurge in an opus that has long awaited its audience in the company of a love that is as requited as it is genuine.
Hoping what was once lost is regained in the rediscovery of life. Hoping what was bound in the shell of a lost confidence is freed to an understanding beyond one’s failed history. One can only speculate to what conclusion this journey will lead to. Fear is my companion, and hope my ally. I shall thread this path with the blind myopia of my hermitic existence, but with the awe and bewilderment of a child learning to walk for the first time. Time will be my jury and sole audience in the search for liberty from a self-imposed prison. Solitude will heal what fate has dealt, yet the callus and scars remain as reminders of my numerous failures. Redemption would lie not in finding the other half of the melody, but in relearning my own song beyond my responsibilities, beyond my faults, and beyond my disappointments. In salvaging the strength that fear has stolen and the courage that pain has hidden. Only then will the lost be found. Only then will the bound be freed.
