There is this thing called love which is so complicated and intense that it has the power to make us forget who we are. We think we understand it but we don’t. We fail to see that it comes in different shapes and forms. We don’t recognize a mother’s love till she has been reduced to the point of death in the bargain of caring for us. We won’t see a father’s love till that coffin has been lowered so deep we can’t even see it. We won’t understand a sibling’s love till they are writhing in misery before us for some fault of our own. Who are these people to shove their love and affection on us anyway, right? It’s our inability to see it. Hence, we look for it elsewhere. We see a woman or a man who appeals to us and we chase it with such veracity that when it breaks it numbs us to the point where we are desensitized. In those deluded misconceptions, we vandalize our being and the relationships we hold with others, most importantly, ourselves.
I was one of the fools who held such a notion. I had believed love to be extraordinary. I believed in compromise and doing anything it takes to make a relationship work. I believed I loved myself and didn’t seek approval from others. If I had a penny for each time I was wrong, I’d be swimming in an ocean of pennies. I had been in love before. I had been through heartbreaks, relationships, and unrequited love and like many other fools I believed I understood what it was. I was ready for anything… till she walked in. Now, I wish I could go back and destroy each star we met under. I wish I could annihilate that full moon on the horizon before which we kissed. I wish I could set fire to those gardens and slaughter all those children at the amusement parks. I wish I could demolish every building and every hotel room we had been to together because those weren’t the same anymore. They reeked of memories, they reeked of emotions, they reeked of our lust for each other and they reeked of my incompetence to see what lay within those big dreamy eyes of hers. All this while I thought love was about cooperation, finding a middle ground and working towards building each other because it was impossible to live without each other. I thought love meant that we belonged to each other in every sense possible, be it emotional, physical or mental. We were each other’s safety nets, support systems and the person we’d come home to in order to find refuge. If my fate was determined by drawing sticks, then I had always drawn the shorter end.
It’s always butterflies and rainbows at the start, the trees seem greener, the air is fresh, and everyone you pass by is happier than a drug addict who has found a pound of meth. Your sleep patterns change, your habits change, your behavior changes, and quite honestly, you pretty much change your life to fit into the routine of your partner. A few months down the line, you can’t even recognize yourself in the mirror. That’s what happened to me. It wasn’t all bad though. It’s never a bad thing till we stop believing it’s in our best interest. She inevitably did make things better. For one, I dumped my lousy friends. She helped me see through them. Secondly, I was a lot more confident, she helped me sort things out at work and always encouraged me to strive to become better than the person I was yesterday. She built my morale, my self-esteem and helped me reach my prime. I don’t mean to brag but somewhere I did the same for her. I loved her, supported her, held her in my arms and cared for her. I motivated her to excel, to achieve and become everything she deserved to be. I had never met anyone who was as capable as I was before or even someone who could hold a decent conversation with me apart from the regular mundane bullshit that people indulged in. We spoke about philosophy, ideology, justice, morality and so on. If anyone heard us speak, they’d think we were crazy for the similar sense of brutality we shared.
I’ve come across so many people who I thought would settle down and it’s crazy how a few months down the line I found them at the end of a gun with a bullet shot through their heart like a fallen angel rejected by God for being different. They didn’t literally kill themselves albeit they died the moment their feelings were ripped out of their chest and used like a tissue paper to wipe the filth off someone else’s ass. That’s what it felt like when she decided to step over all our efforts, our hardships, the dedication, the emotions we poured into this and stomp my heart before walking out that door. Why do people walk out of something good? Was it good to begin with? What were their expectations? What did they want? What did they deserve? Were you good enough for them? What did you do wrong? You are pressed beneath an avalanche of questions which have no answers and you look for them in other people. We had been together for years and for years I devoted my time and attention. I didn’t know for how long she had been doing this and I don’t think I was keen on finding out how many guys she had been with while we were still with each other. I don’t even know where I was heading with all of this before my suspicions turned to reality before me in the candid picture I have of that moment in my mind where this other random guy was on top of her thrusting his genitals in what was supposed to be my fiancée.
I walked out. No one deserves a second chance. Let’s face it, a football team doesn’t get a second chance after they’ve lost a game, beggars on the streets don’t get a second chance after some drunk asshole runs over one of their limbs, a man whose throat has been slit by his own brother doesn’t get a second chance to live and I didn’t see any reason why she should get a second chance. They’re still there, probably in shock or relief, I wasn’t certain. She knew what this meant. I came to the realization that love is not eternal. Love is not infallible. It has its flaws. It can be bought, it can be sold, it can be won over, it can be created and it can be destroyed just as easily. It wasn’t absolute as much as it was obsolete for me now. As I looked over the edge of this building, my vertigo compelled me to fall backwards. Her betrayal made me think of all the times I had rejected the love others had shown me only because I was looking for something more. How foolish had I been? My father died providing for me. My mother slaved trying to make my life comfortable and what did I do for them in return? I never even considered the sacrifices my siblings made to keep me happy because I was the youngest, moreover, because I had turned into a selfish wretch who sought happiness in others. If only I had learned to love myself, if only I loved them as much as I loved her, I wouldn’t be this hurt. I should have paid heed to their warnings, but I didn’t.
I leaned over the edge one more time, and dissected this thing called love. I gained my composure. Love made no sense anymore. I needed something more concrete, something absolute, something solid but there was no such thing. Everything in this world could be argued upon, everything could be questioned and everything could be bent and broken at will, irrespective of whether they were feelings, emotions, ideologies, justice, morality or even virtues. Everything was subjective, nothing was real… nothing was real… that’s where I got my answer. I climbed over the edge. Even though there is no truth, lies, morals, loyalties, faith, hope and most importantly, even though there is no love, there is one thing that is certain. There is one thing which is absolute and it is the thing you could bet your life on. That one thing is the reason I took a step forward. I knew I was letting everyone down, but I didn’t care at all. They can take this deluded world, their hypocrisy, their ideals, their relationships and all of their love and shove it deep inside the place they held sacred because none of that mattered to me now. I was on the way to absolution. I was on my way to redemption. Seconds before I hit the bottom I saw, nothing is actually real.