Another restless and sleepless night dawned upon me as my gaze at the starless horizon this darkest hour. The lamb in my mind already jumped over their fences and so I stopped counting; as I'd have to count infinitely just to cure this insomnia which I seemed to have contracted.
I couldn't help but sigh as the taste of this bittersweet cocktail of misery paired with isolation and intense longing which has done wonders to my melancholic evening.
By God's detestable humor, the familiar sound of the notification of my phone lit up the somewhat dim room that I found myself being stuck in. Despite my sudden interest in philosophical and ethical questions; all my research and writing has been becoming similar to an Austrian madman; Personifying abstract concepts that one should never rationalize into coherent forms. Is this what drove Lovecraft mad? The only similarity I could even posit is the fact that both he and I are afraid of the unknown and both have dogged determination in scrounging up topics which one should never carelessly wander into.
A slow and lazy movement of my arm was all it took for me to grasp my phone to bring it close enough into my purview to see a message that I both seeked for so damn long and detested for so much.
'You awake?'
The image of a woman with that short blonde hair flowing with the midnight breeze as the smell of her lavender perfume fills my nostrils with a scent that's maddening. Vampiric in nature, as with her anemic insomnia drains her skin with the pigment that's required to help her stave off the harsh rays of sunlight. Her fingers wrapping around a lit cigarette as her eyes stared in my direction, a mixture of hopeful sadness and empathetic sympathy hiding this deep seated depression that gives me an impression that there is beauty in brokenness.
As I closed my eyes, for her mirage in the back of my psyche is more clear; her raspy and alluring voice is enough to make me reconsider the status of my life as I stared at the void and heed its calls. It was if Luna herself spoke to me; gently asking me to not callously throw my precious life away.
Oh you damned woman, meddling with forces beyond your nature. Why did you try to capture a star that was on the brink of collapsing in of itself, endlessly consuming gas until it turned supernova. Stay back you vexing woman, lest you be blown apart by my self-destructiveness. The pinnacle project of the concept of self-sabotage wonders why a woman of such prowess and beauty is wilting herself to stoop down to a grass such as me.
It is insanity; Extremely unbelievable. No rational and reasonable mind would dictate such an illogical move for an irrational feeling; yet here you are pestering me with your kindness without a care for your own safety.
Is it strange I find myself smiling? For an emotion so fake that the least I could do is to believe it to be true in order to feed on my sad delusions of grandeur and glory at the side of another.
Fuck.
Lyanna was it? A name shrouded in a protective layer so that we may never be both responsible for our irresponsible actions as irresponsible adults.
Maybe she's intoxicated. Maybe she's bored and looking for someone to kill time with. Maybe she needs someone to talk to.
Maybe…
Maybe…
Maybe.
I cannot fathom the way you smile around my presence Lyanna, I cannot think of a reason why you feel so safe and sound in my arms when you're at your lowest. When you walk beside me I feel like the strongest man on earth, ready to take on the entirety of everything and anything that the world throws at me. I wish this feeling would never cease, nor would it ever end; placing a band-aid on a large gaping wound does nothing to solve this pain.
I can never seem to understand why you keep trying to force yourself into my life and yet I can never say no because I am as stupid as they go. Stupid enough to welcome you with open arms; A man can only dream for this is my sickness. An illness that I will never rid of, something that is permanently stuck with me throughout the end of my days.
Delusional Insanity eats me from within and I cannot stop it or else I'll crumble indefinitely. A palpable sense of deranged ramblings will simply overtake me the more I linger in this bed with you being the sole thought. But then again, it's true. The more I think about women like you crashing into my dreams, the deeper I fall in your arms even if it isn't real.
Damn.
It seems that no matter how hard I run away from this great game of fallacious fantasies, It will always seem to catch up to me.
Like the echoes of the past that keep haunting me in my nightmares. Her words reverberating in the empty caverns that consists of my heart, as the atria and ventricles pump continuously; her words echo:
"I'm sorry."
There exists an underlying misconception that many men never fear death for they have lived without regrets and nothing but contentment for the sorry existence they inhibit in this orb of blue in green; while surrounded by the vast expanse of the cosmos that many will never explore and billions will never feel.
There is no greater agony than to experience a festering yet fading memory; a memory one tried their best to forget but was bested by a glimmer of this bygone past that felt like a window to a world which no longer exists and a mirror to the horrors of one's mistakes. A memory forgotten which resurfaced to haunt one's tormented psyche which no amount of alcohol can ever erase this mistake.
Each night when the evening breeze sweeps deep within the halls of his home, when the crickets and cicadas chirp, and when the roads are desolate and few walk the streets; it would occur again and again like an Ouroborus eating its own tail and giving birth to this never ending cycle of pain and misery. The disturbing scene forever etched in the walls of his mind for this familiar sense of insecurity has secured his resolve to do absolutely nothing but simply weather this hailstorm of emotions that crash on the gates of his chest.
Each passing second, the scent of the midnight dew mixed with the sounds of distant engines and blaring sirens was enough for him to return back to the place where it all began. To a beginning which started the end; the final journey before his eventual return to limbo. The place where civilization and nature met as a single vacant park bench underneath a flickering lamp post served as a testament to his synchronous idiocrasy.
It was one of these nights where I would just lay awake at night while the echoes of the past return as whispers of a woman no longer around would mess with his mind and poison the remaining sanity he possessed.
I couldn't help but tossed and turned in his bed as the room that was previously untouched became messy and ruined in a matter of days, four to be precise; the image of Lyanna mixing in with the past, her voice telling the wrong things, her image bastardized by his fluctuating state of discombobulation and depression.
I remember it so dearly but at the same time I don't. When the clock struck midnight the skies all lit up with fireworks; the stunning displays of yellows and reds with greens and then some blues. The full moon going to wane makes great company as the stars of the sky were being blocked by the clouds and smoke. Then again maybe it's my blindness that seemed to hinder the possibility of me being able to sight such beautiful creations of atoms in the greater game of the unknown cosmos.
At that opportune moment, there were many things I wanted to do, first and foremost was to scream as my throat could bear. To vent out this building anger towards an uncaring deity that many believe in and to make them change the course of my fate.
I wanted to cry and wallow in despair as one by one the emotions I have hid away from the world slowly began to seep into the crevices of my body; like an uncontainable cancer it spread all over the temple I call my own and degraded the very foundations of what I called my soul.
I wanted to rage. Shattering what little remains of my sanity as the world around me envelops in flames, injustices done to the common man and here I am being selfish, arrogant, and ignorant of all the things that should be defining who I should be; now I crumble into nothing but a pile of broken promises and tarnished dreams.
Yet like the coward that I am, I stayed silent.
I am a mess. A detestable yet determined deviant that strives to make himself seen but also shies away from the spotlight of reality. The endless tool to become somebody has left me broken, charred, and maimed in different aspects of my life. All in all I should be dead, yet despite it all I persist in a state of both alive and dead. It's as if you're nothing but a sentience being left to float the endless expanse of limbo as you rationalize this afterlife that supposedly never exists.
If the afterlife does exist, I wish it wasn't the bright and pearly white gates of heaven that many aspire it to be. I'd prefer it to be a little more like normal where the world is exactly the same as it once was before my death and relive memories both real and fake as my life finally ends so others may finally experience the hell that's reality.
Sometimes I have a question in my head; What about those that dare to gleam into a realm where a life should never exist. Would they gaze into the abyss and blink just to finally lose all their sanity in this ridiculous show of satirical and unsatisfactory agony; or would they persist with this feeling of false happiness.
It's not happiness per se, but contentment. I believe that happiness is nothing but a momentarily respite from the cruel torture of life that makes you forget the reasons of why you want to kill yourself. Those that are happy deem themselves to be ignorant of the real issues pertaining to their world that they operate in.
To be happy means to be stupid and ignorant of the problems of many and in being happy means you are being selfish. As you'd rather ensure the happiness of oneself before others and in the event you do make another person happy it's because you're simply planting a hook on them as a favor or a bargaining tool.
Happiness is fake, it's a lie. It's a lie you tell yourself in order to feel less shitty than you actually feel because the problems life throws at you is more like a hurricane than the evening's drizzle. I was happy once; but I grew smarter, more humane, more active in the society I live in thanks to the people around me.
I'm not saying I don't want to be happy, because who the fuck wants to not be happy. That's a fucking hyperbole that many fall into but then again I understand the pain of being happy and suddenly for it to be swept under the rug instantaneously the moment you realize you actually enjoy being happy.
Happiness is a drug that many actively seek but few really see the ugly truth and yet I too want to be happy.
I want to be okay.
I want to believe I'm happy and okay or else I'll resort to being inanimate while being forever trapped in this house I call my home.
Why can't I just be dumb, stupid, and ignorant again.
I was happy.
I was living my life. I was not stressing over money or fame or validation or rest or love or life or anything.
Anything and everything from somewhere all led up with me in nowhere. Unable to find where I should place myself in the grand game of the infinite cosmos and now look at me.
Depressed and burnt out like a fucking house that was left unattended with a child that plays matchboxes on Christmas Eve. Even with the world burning around me, I can never seem to feel its warmth.
My mind is bent, warped, and unfortunately still sharp yet dull at the same time. Momentarily my entire soul is exhausted from all the work I have poured into attempting to escape a hell I have suddenly found myself into. A world where everything is a crude game of lies and deceit, who can promise better, act better, lie better, win.
I'm a great liar, a decent actor, and I'm a keeper of terrible promises. However, all of these combined makes me one hell of a fucking lunatic. I have become an amalgamation of the problems of all the people around me and for some reason I cannot change that way even if I forced myself to.
I want to forget her, but I don't want to at the same time. Everything is a battle now, her name alone makes me feel happy and sad at the same time. I didn't just lose a friend, I lost a piece of my soul that I truly care about.
I know you'll never hear this but I wish you could've just said no. Because you'll never realize how much I truly love you. There's probably no woman other than my mother and grandmother that can compare to the patience I've saved, to the love I poured, and the energy I've spent.
But in the end, my fantasies will never come true and you'll never end up with someone as fucked up as me even if you tried.
That I know of too.
Fuck.
What do I tell you Lyanna when you ask that one simple and common question that many ask in their day-to-day lives. When asking for an answer to a query, when asking for a justification to a juxtaposition as one's brain is jumbled. When asking for a simple response on why a particular individual acts the way they are.
Why?
I often ask myself this question, particularly when the midnight moon peers over the windowsill and greets me with that shimmering afterglow as the rays of the sun barely hit its rocky surface just right so that it feels like it's smiling down at you.
Why?
Because of all the things that happened in my life, all the decisions I've taken and will take in the near future when I am tasked with trying to overcome the most inconsequential things in life. Maybe even sometimes this rises when I'm trying to persevere and attain the highest of highs while being in the lowest of lows as being in the bottom is infuriating when you've done nothing your whole life being looked down upon by those that are high up in society's pyramid. I have done nothing but do everything while doing nothing as people say that anything's possible even if it's impossible. This convulsing itch deep within me to become somebody even if I'm just a nobody to the eyes of many as my body is too tired to object to the directives of my head is simply extraordinary. A testament to man's unyielding belief and indomitable spirit, or maybe it's my stubbornness and narcissistic tendencies mixed with a fear of being forgotten due to my desire to be loved by everybody even at the expense of those that do care deeply about me.
Why?
Because even if I have everything, it still feels as if I'm nothing. It's nothing, pointless, worthless, a value so fleeting it's akin to time itself. I may have the most bare bones house or the most expensive watch, yet even in the end it still counts as absolutely nothing. This very idea, this foundation of belief that I have stood for ever since I was a child. It makes me want to reach up into the stars and keep gasping for more, to reach ever distant planets, or stars, or even galaxies. A never ending desire to have everything for it all means nothing. Though I would kid, but for me it's no laughing matter; as this sick and twisted mindset in life has put many people off with my actions and behavior. This mentality is not pessimistic per se, just—
Why?
Because, just because.
Even if I can have everything, there are some things I'll never truly attain or grasp. Things that money cannot buy, time cannot give, God cannot provide. Things that we mortal men and women cannot—supposed—to even be in possession of. Something intangible yet tangible to the point where it drives us mad. For when all philosophers and psychologists of the entire history of man have dared to attempt even grasp this incoherent and inconsistent idea that we call love.
So much so that I had never seen that I would trek this path as well. I had fallen in love with her.
Why?
There's a lot of things. Too many to count, too grandiose to write, too painful to remember, too harrowing to even recall. She was everything. You see, when I have nothing, she was the person that would give me something. No matter how insignificant or worthless, because in her eyes everything has value, therefore everything matters. That's why when I had everything, I'd give it all to her and more. She was the very answer to all my questions in life. She was the secret of my universe. She was the person that made me feel complete.
The person who made me see the true wavelengths of colors and the strings of fate that have driven both me and her together. She was the person who made me realize all my ambitions, my flaws, my faults, my darkness. She gave me light when I was lost in the abyss, fed me when I was starving, gave me shelter when I was cold. She showed me the meaning of a kind hearted soul, and what it means to be human.
She was the very reason I didn't end my life that night. She was there for me in the depths of my despair and my peaks of euphoria. She was there to pick me up when I stumbled down the mountain. She was there to tend to my wounds when I was hurt. She was there to accept me for who I am, for what I have become, for what I stood for.
I loved her because I never knew what love truly was. That the definition of love that's embedded in my head was nothing more but a mistake, an error, a lapse of judgment in my rational way of thinking. Logically, I shouldn't have fallen, but emotionally I was all in. Like a winner at poker, a 21 in blackjack, triple sevens on the screen as the bar was slowly rising back up for another game.
I loved her. So much so I'd almost ended my life trying to reach her.
Why?
Because she never loved me back.
Why?
She loves somebody else.
Why?
Because…
I don't know. What is there to know? Would knowing help me now or would it make me even worse? Would knowing the truth about me and her help with the fact that she's happy in the arms of another while here I remain—seated and writing this final adieu to a piece of me that I shall bury personally.
I loved her. That's the objective truth from this subjective perspective. Despite the insurmountable odds, for six years I have waited patiently for her to say the words "I love you too," as even such words are enough.
I've waited patiently, like Hades on the gates of the underworld waiting for my Persephone to come home to my arms and tell me that it'll be alright and that I shouldn't worry about her.
I was a fool. Like all the others. This game in which few are winners, the rest are sinners waiting for a chance to play again in this cycle of never-ending melancholy.
Why?
Because even though I was there. For her. For everything. I was of no use.
As much as it pains me greatly to say, speak, even reminisce; the only memories of her left within me are the failures of my own inactivity and blindness. I have killed all the memories which provided positive emotions.
Why?
Because I left her.
I left her because it pained me too greatly. To love somebody that I cannot even hold. To love somebody in the arms of another while I watch on and expect to perceive happiness at the couple.
It chips away at my heart each time she tells the stories, it eats away at my soul when she describes all their doings.
It drives a man insane; because if not jealousy, or envy. The indescribable grief you'd feel is rarely brief. It will continue on even when she's no longer there. Even if she no longer appears in your dreams.
You'd forever live with this specter of a past that no longer exists. As much as you'd want to burn every single bridge, the very idea of you falling in love with someone will never be rid.
I wish nobody may feel the same way I feel. Not even on my biggest enemies. It's a pain so vast and consuming that you'd believe you're being driven to the edge of your sanity. Tip-toeing between the line of mentally stable and suicidal.
Why?
Because I have never felt love like this to the point I ended up chasing it wherever it goes. Each hit is bliss, each touch is revitalizing, each step I take in her direction is important as even a whiff of her perfume or her shampoo is enough to satiate this growing addiction.
Obsession and Delusions all feed my current misery, I'd wish I never met her but she has intertwined herself with my current philosophy. Each woman I meet, I search for a glimpse of her within them.
Why?
Because I still love her. To the point where I have to cut myself off just to survive. This is never about love anymore, more of codependency. I have told her 13 times that I love her and I am tired of waiting for a response that I know will never arrive.
Dear God, It's not often I pray. As despite all the terrible and fucked up things you have thrown at me for my two decades of living in this parade you have created in the beginning of time; you have yet to give me a time to really have a deep and philosophical conversation with my own tattered psyche.
What is there for me to pray for? I have a strong and unyielding belief in your undying love for a mortal yet immoral soul such as myself. A soul who had chosen to live by his own codes, rules, laws, and ethics. Though flawed in many regards, I have used the words of your most favorite son to the best of my abilities. I have become a brother to the brotherless—and despite all the intolerable sins I may have committed, I have yet to commit such an unforgivable atrocity to which many would declare me as a heretic.
But though I no longer knock at the doors of your home, nor do I dare step foot at your land—which as many tried to wash their hands will be forever stained with blood—I have still come here. Asking a simple damned question to all the problems you keep throwing at me.
Why?
Why did you come to me in my time of greatest need? Now even without your visage in the back of my mind; another has agreed upon to take your place. A shame that my sins will have to be doubled as the thought of my being incapable of happiness scares me.
Why?
Because she approached me at the time where I needed someone the most. When my life was so close to slipping away from my grasp, her cruel indifference to my pain and her acknowledgement of my loneliness both grounded me back to reality and brought me back from the brink of darkness.
An enigma wishes to play with me in this ridiculous game which borders on madness, a ploy I willingly walked in because I thought I had nothing left to lose.
Why did you do this Lyanna?
Have I really become that pitiful?
Why?