An Attempt

2011-11-20T13:20:00.000-08:00

The message arrived late.

The familiar buzzing spread across my thigh. A response to the message sent hours (days?) before. A glance at the sender sealed my fate - there was no need to even read the message. It was no more than a pleasant façade with a manufactured tone of banality. The real message was the prolonged hesitancy in replying – an intentional delay meant to avoid how things had changed.

I tend to think that nothing really surprises me anymore. Through a mix of pessimism and conceit, I have come to believe that I can see it all coming. All it takes is intelligence and attention to detail; behavior isn't really that hard to predict. Though the climactic moment remained two weeks away, I could already see myself sprawled out on that stone ledge. The message assured the fight that was to come.

Yet, upon coming to rest on that cold stone, I still found myself sad and alone. Despite all the mental preparation, I could not avoid the emotional anguish of the Big Fight, of a relationship come to an end. It seems (as is expected) that emotion is not under the purview of my reasoning. No amount of rationalization, of intellectual posturing, could prevent the pain I would feel that night.

Ironically, lack of rational control was what had gotten me into this mess. By all counts I should have been in love with this girl. And loving her would have been the easiest route – it could have assuaged many of the petty frustrations that had plagued our interactions leading up to the Big Fight.

"I'm a bad bet," I told her. And I am. I'm too critical, too judgmental. I have a hard time being happy. I don't even know how to make myself happy – how can I expect someone else to?

She really let me have it. How I'd acted out all that misguided angst came to bear. And perhaps rightfully so – I'd been the one to drag the relationship out, knowing full well that it was destined for nowhere. But this I had never been dishonest about. She seemed willing to continue without any commitment on the horizon. And yet it seemed to tear her up inside.

I never did ask the question that continues to eat away at me: Is it better to act in accordance with someone's word, or act in respect of a person's feelings? I chose to take her at her word and respect her agency, all the while believing that doing so would hurt. Would it have been better to end it, against her word but to her benefit?

Such thoughts are saturated by my typical conceit. It is indicative of an overbearing, paternalistic point of view. Truthfully, she knew better than I what would be best, and acted with decisiveness I lacked entirely.

Indeed, just weeks prior to the fateful message, I had attempted to stage the Big Fight, only to get bogged down in indecision. Cold conversation over beer and soda in the back corner of a townie bar led to cuddling in the warm light of a small apartment. I was disarmed of my earlier resolve and pushed back into vague commitments and unclear expectations.

She was the one to end it. And despite all of my paternalistic impressions, I was the one left unsettled – choked up and haggard, perched on my cold pile of rocks outside the party. The next day there was a bounce in her step. Her shoulders had been relieved of a great weight, while mine sunk with an ever-growing feeling of despair.

As it turns out, she'd had a bit more to drink than I that night. She didn't even remember the fight.

Untitled

2011-09-07T19:53:00.001-07:00

It's 9am and I'm in Copley Square. The sun has just squeezed past the trees, and a cool breeze greets the early rising tourists and other assorted wanderers. The smell of freshly lit morning cigarettes permeates the air.

My tailored coat and slacks defy my disheveled mentality, but hints of my current state of mind leak out through the scars on my dress shoes and the stray threads fraying from my shirt. I collapse onto a park bench, heaving my shoulder bag aside, and begin to rub the sleep out of my eyes.

But I can't seem to rub out the exhaustion. The increasingly present fatigue of a life long lived but short of experience. The dull nagging pain of a never-ending sprint to nowhere.

I grip the bridge of my nose tightly and pull in a breath. Blink once, blink twice, look around.

People move past with a clear sense of purpose. Lost in thought, lost in conversation, lost in their own lives. As if things mattered so much. As if they'd ever thought about whether things mattered so much.

And here I sit, lost.

--

I'd never felt such a profound sense of emptiness. Not a self-aware emptiness; not a deep sadness or loneliness or angst. Just a complete disconnect - a lack of worry or care or passion about pretty much anything.

I'd felt it for a while, I realized. I just hadn't had a chance to reflect on it until then. What a funny thing, though. Introspection without subjecthood. Self-reflection without self.

I've since returned. The sleep helped. The days off helped. For the first time in months, I thought about music. About writing, reading. About friends, about adventures. About lovers lost, and lovers yet to be found.

And I actually cared. It all felt important again.

But I'm not without scars. Some of the passion, some of the vibrancy, some of it has disappeared. That youthful earnestness has been dulled, stained with a subtle complacency. And I'm worried. Worried that this will continue to occur. Worried that with each sprint, with each long grind, I'll lose something.

But, for some reason, I'm not as worried as I was before...

Life Like A Film

An Attempt

Untitled