Monday, August 30, 2010

The Symbiotic Paradox

The problem wasn't that I didn't love you enough. Nor that I was too afraid to stay. In fact, in many ways I'm still inescapably bound to you. There is that part of me which longs for escape, to be free at last, for the pain and the memories to dissipate. But then, there is also that part of me which cannot let go; which will never want to. So you see, I'm stuck in this strange position, where to be near you is to be in pain, but to not be yields the same result.

Yes, I said a lot of things, inspired by confusion, but now I find that I don't know how much of it was true, and how much of it was me restricting myself to certain paths of thought. Eloquence, it seems, is not my gift, but I will try here to put as much of it into words as is possible.

I know you didn't believe me when I told you that I had feelings for you. You told me as much yourself, that final time we spoke; that cruel conversation carried out with words across a screen, through telephone lines and radio signals, to get from me to you and from you to me. You really thought that I only liked you because you were the only one there?
That's partly my fault. I think I told you that, but the truth is, I never thought about any of the complicated reasons about why I did fall in love with you until you started asking. All I knew was that I did love you. That was enough; it didn't need to be understood. Things get complicated with reasoning.
I never "settled" for you, I actually fell for you. I'm sorry you thought otherwise. Truth is, there were other people I was attracted to before I'd even thought about you, but there came a point where any thoughts of them were obliterated by you.

The problem is, we are so very different from one another. We love very differently. You need to be loved openly, with lots of affection and attention and in fact, you sought those from me, and I hated it; it was a reminder of exactly what I was unable to give you. At the time I couldn't understand why what I was doing wasn't enough. Understanding of myself has led me to an understanding of you also, and why things were the way they were. My silent love wasn't good enough. The fact that I looked forward to seeing you, that my stomach jolted when I did, that I wanted to talk to you and be with you when you weren't near wasn't good enough because you simply couldn't see it; you needed the physical evidence, and it was that which I was too afraid, too embarrassed, to give. I'm sorry that my insecurities prevented me from showing you how much you meant to me.

I wasn't afraid of staying, I was too afraid of leaving, of you leaving. I didn't want to lose you. But although I'd given you my heart, and I knew it, you didn't, because I didn't give the rest of myself to you. I didn't think you wanted me; if I did know that, things would have been different. I wouldn't have restrained myself so much, nor kept my distance as I did. I would have let myself become so entangled with you that we would have spent the rest of eternity trying to unknot ourselves.

Alas, it is too late. Or rather, it is not too late to change things, but too painful. How could either of us risk trying to go back to how we were when we have hurt each other so much already?
I want to let you go because I know I can't have you, but there's no use appealing to you, you've already let me go. But the Universe won't yet let me forget you yet. Maybe there is a lesson I am yet to learn from this, which I have not yet grasped.
So I sit here, the miserable writer whose pen cannot capture inspiration and pour it forth across the page because the result always involves you. Perhaps one day I'll be able to turn our story into one of the greatest Romances That Never Happened in the history of literature. One day, when thinking of you doesn't cause me to weep.

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