Disoriented.

With fraudulence I had bred contempt,

And thus with the most virtuous of all vice –

With hope, a remorseful liaison, a repent,

If I may – a metaphysical demise.

I had become someone else. This person, whom I could hardly recognize let alone understand, I feared. I feared him for me, and more so for himself. 

I could see the path he was set on – it would yield nothing. Mine, at least, brought devastation. Nothing was worse than such devastation. Truly, the nothing he would become would be worse. The devil would proudly feast on me someday, and cast the angels to damnation. Even the devil shall not know to do with a soul so lost.

And although he remained convenient in his aura of nothingness, a certain hunger plagued his mind. He would seek out adventures and interactions, new and old alike. An alien impulse held him at his heart trying to purge him out of his desperation. And as often as he did expose himself to the ways and celebrations of the world, the trivialities troubled him most of all.

While others in desperation would ask ‘what did I do to deserve this’, he asked ‘what did they do to deserve this’. He chose to look for a solution, and yet the problem would persist in his face, unmoved and stubborn, convicted to trouble him just enough – just enough to stimulate his lifelessness, not enough to encourage death. Wrapped up in a surreal frenzy, he would curse his own mind, then his life, then himself and those around him, and at last me. I often asked ‘what did I do to deserve this’. He had no answer.

This path from desperation, anger, impulse, through confrontation and pain would mostly yield helplessness, and at times nothing at all. He would stare silent, not by choice but by a paralysis of thought, at the marginalities of life – marginalities not by purpose, but by reason, absolutely dumbfounded for they were no less than luxuries to him – luxuries not by grace, but by their unattainability.

Often a sudden strangeness would lure in my indulgence with these possibilities that others had. With a crushing emphasis it would bring about a confrontation with my own impossibilities. It worked like a malignant flame, a flame without light – the kind that knows only to burn but never yield any warmth.

I did not even sound like myself. My voice, I mean, appeared to originate at a distance. “Who are you?” I asked, hoping for a lost or no response at all. But I knew, he was me, and yet I wasn’t him.

Almost like a panicked firework shot into the sky, out of an old bottle, suddenly, I would become a man of the past and the future. The present disappeared. As some are only consciously in the present and sub-consciously roam in the realm of memories and dreams - in past and in the future. For me, this arrangement of mental divulsion was quite erroneous, and wicked by all means.

I would be consciously lost, and this awareness was what killed me, and made me this person, unrecognizable. This strange stranger both angry and timid, enraged and wounded, most powerful and helpless, indestructible and tired, most loved and yet alienated, condemned and redeemed too,  was everything and nothing at once. This confusion was his sole possession. Or was it? He really was confused.

I could not stand this creature, this being false by nature, and the greatest truth I had ever known – his existence. More so, I could not stand the wretchedness of the world, the decadence of people who forced him to be what he was, in essence, nothing. I also admired them, for the same mockery of world and the people in it. To be honest, I was quite amused how the process of becoming and unbecoming, of being and non-being be so sadly indistinguishable.

I could not stand, and so I ran. As I started, I knew I would run until my feet would bleed, and then run some more until the road ended, or perhaps I dissolved to become something beyond nothing. I belonged nowhere. I had never belonged anywhere. In deep introspection and in experiments with thought, came a realization that I truly was lost. Because nowhere was home, home was everywhere.

And though my will lacked tenacity, it resolved nonetheless and dissolved just the same. It the resolved again. So you know, I was not in darkness, I was the darkness. 

Then would come the occasional calm, the reassurance of a possible adaptation. For I belonged nowhere, everywhere was my home. And with all that I had left in me, I would wish that someone would touch this weary soul, like a spark that set fire to the first star, and inspire me or murder me.

But I had to be careful. I never knew what would trigger him again, and push me back into dormancy.