New 'You's' in New York

It is unbecoming to infer that the killers are weak and the victims will win, it complicates the nightmare with the dream.
Put away your courage it is a provocation in their sight.

I am unable to recall clearly how many times I have now found myself perched at the precipice of a proverbial ‘new beginning’. Truth be told, I am quite weary of ‘new beginnings’, they act as the perpetual ping-pong punctuation on the run-on sentence that is my life. Individual conformity is my prescribed pattern of existence: how is one to dare anticipate a positive outcome born of such convoluted contradiction? When I was eight and being sent off to live with my father it was a new beginning; when there was pain and only the bleak, looming stretch of more pain to come it was ‘This too shall pass’; when, ten years later, I managed to escape that saturated swamp of venom, it was a new beginning; when I started learning voluntarily that was a new beginning; when I got accepted to Oxford that was a ‘new beginning’ and now as I leave to look for myself in the capital of universal self seekers the term is being thrown around all over again. There is nothing new about these beginnings, they are all far too old to begin anew and I recall that saying about a fool being someone who continues doing the same thing again and again expecting a different result each time.
Yet, it remains what we fools are destined to do I suppose and so ‘that which we are, we are’.

I recognise that my more than morbid meanderings are laced with melodrama, self pity and a rather unhealthy dose of narcissism. Still, this year and this particular ‘beginning’ has brought with it far too much ‘reality’, nearly enough to completely obliterate Beentherella. It is hard now to summon up my usual enthusiasm for …anything. I have spent the past weeks packing, roaming the streets of Oxford, silently sketching, watching movies and trying to immerse myself in my ‘aloneness’ with the same vehement determination I always reserved for it. However, this is mayhaps what I resent the most about free falling, heart-long in overtly-unrequited love. The fact that it has cemented that painful realisation that ‘No, I don’t love being alone’ no matter how good I am at it.
And I am very good at it.

Another recent development has been my inability to continue expressing myself on this particular forum. The entire point of having a ‘me space’ on the web was to not know who knew the ‘me’ in question. I have always relished this rare opportunity to actually be as brutally honest, insane and explicit as I can sans repercussions. Collecting my personal collage of cyber strangers, face-less friends and brash critics I have managed here and really nowhere else, to completely be all of my many ‘me’s’ at some time or another. Recently I have become aware of some of my readers and the axis has shifted completely. It is an odd sort of reversal being confronted with my virtual reality, by real people talking to the corporal, artificial I. There are just too many ‘me’s’ in such conversations and we are all airbrushed. I have grown up, I suppose, in the sense that I have learned to numb my mind and yet I have not lived. I have swallowed far too much and tasted nothing. The sad part is that I have recognised that this isn’t or wasn’t ever about where I was or am…it has always been about who I am. I choose not to participate in the perverse façade of being part of a ‘people’, any people. I have realised that I am quite a coward.

Recently, I was hit by one of my more severe waves of manic, suicidal depression. This time I navigated the mechanics of an End for fourteen hours on a not-so-random Tuesday spent staring at a half-full bottle of nail polish remover, contemplating how immediate its effects would be. I calmly composed one of my more eloquent- and I feel, sufficiently melodramatic- ‘last words’ and pondered how the world would go on without me and how it wouldn’t. There is a meticulous process to all suicide attempts. The vast majority are located amidst extreme bursts of adrenaline spiralling out of control into demonic descent and I have had my share of those in the past. In fact that is how ‘Beentherella’ came into being. She took birth from the ashes of my fourteen-year-old self vowing to never go down this path ever again. She was determined to remain forever vigilant on my behalf. She deemed it a terrible cowardice. Today, she knows better.

Cowardice is a failure to accept the reality and rationality of such a decision. Cowardice is want and hope for change when one knows not to expect it. Cowardice is the triumph of religion over reason; of matter over mind; of memory over meaning and above all of Elpis. Cowardice is the sound of her dancing in the rain and smiling at the stars. In general I accept reality with a fluid sort of ease, because I intuit that nothing is real. The fact that I believe foremost in ‘doubt’; in the certainty of nothing indicates to my warped self that I also believe in anything…because it doesn’t matter either way. I read once that the ancient cabalists used to pretend that man was a microcosm of sorts, a symbolic mirror of the universe. I do not know if I am narcissistic enough to believe that and yet I recognise that it is only narcissistic if one assumes the ‘universe’ to be grand. That is further complicated if one assumes that anything ‘grand’ is inherently ‘good’. In the end it all only remains unexplained. My cowardice stems not so much from fear of the unknown but rather that worn-out, perennial Pascal’s Wager: ‘Mayhaps tomorrow’.

And so I succumbed. I found myself calling my aunt with a rather pathetic S.O.S to convince me to choose my cowardice; to give me reasons to stay; to tell me it will ‘all be all right’. All so I could scoff at her in my mind while simultaneously indulging my emotional insolvency in the assertion that there are those who would care if I am dead. Whereas if anything, I shouldn’t! Sadly, that too did pass. And now the Future looms once again, hope springs bitterly triumphant as Time brings with it a tidal wave of the trivial: Harry Potter films to see, restaurants to try, graduation to look forward to, a PhD to shoot for, careers, New York big-end-ings, novels to write, thoughts to think, countries to see, hazy, misty first impressions of a tiny person I can love enough to not need to love myself and You. You: whoever You are or were or could have been or will be that I have never casually bumped into lurking behind a bookshelf; crossing the street, across a car park or sitting next to on a plane.

And to think, I lament 26 years of being the mess that is me today!

Bhrāntapratāvakāvakya

‘The Deluded Deceiver’: He who speaks the truth while thinking to lie.

I find myself cautiously navigating that most curious parallel: that one where you find yourself unsure about how to continue simply… ‘being’. I am presently plagued with an unending series of belligerent aphorisms and I can’t take comfort in any of them. Is life the composite of all that we have lost or all that we have found? Or worse yet… all that we are seeking?

I would very much like to locate that luscious lake called ‘Self Pity’ and drown in it so completely that there is no hope of ever resurfacing. Instead I find myself getting ready to attend one of Oxford’s infamous ‘bops’ because I am told one ‘ought’ to celebrate completing their degree. And I recognise that I ought to feel like celebrating, so I shall pretend that I feel like celebrating. I have heard that this is how most people begin to ‘believe’ things. Hell, it was how I used to believe things! Still, on that lake called ‘Self Pity’ there is a sordid little 'Bridge of Details' and it alludes to all that rubbish about ‘moving on, dusting off, getting over it’.

And so… 'Here's to bridging the Bridge'.

Needless to say ‘bridging’ some gaps is harder than others. In case I had neglected to mention it before, I am inherently incapable of enjoying myself at parties. I am incapable of getting ‘too’ drunk; of ‘loosening up’; of ‘just having some fun’; or doing ‘something stupid’ and of ‘checking people out’. However, recently I find myself on a crusade. A crusade that involves hiding from myselves and especially ‘not thinking’…about anything. 'Thinking' leads to 'thinking about N' and I find that avoiding this precinct is the only thing effectively keeping me sane. So keeping busy doing things I loathe in order to feel ‘proactive’ and ‘sociable’ seems to be one plausible solution. Looking for another would require the fore-mentioned ‘thinking’. I have never really elaborated the merits of ‘numbness’ on this forum. I shan’t now, except to state that there are many.

I have only odd, lilting recollections left. It seems we were nothing alike, except in our mutual sophistry. We both derived a perverse pleasure in seeing how far the other could ‘not feel’ things. I suppose when the key in any romantic equation is ‘not feeling’, ‘not expressing’, ‘not admitting’ it does render the exercise somehow…evocative. I always did enjoy subtext far too much for my own good. And that is all we were in the end: a simulacra of subtext. Still, it was powerful subtext - if one belongs to the ‘lesson-learning’ creed.

“You know, I just realised something... even I haven’t done this before.”

“‘What’, precisely?” for once I felt a real answer coming on.

“Seen someone more than once, without getting her into bed,” he said this with a soft smirk, his arm slung casually around my shoulders. A less astute person might have even called it a smile.

I was floored and not in a good way. I suppose I should have been flattered and I suppose I was a little, but mostly I was irate.

“Please stop doing this!”

“I thought you, if anything, would be pleased to know that,” he seemed genuinely surprised.

“That is the point. I don’t need you trying to make me feel ‘special’ while simultaneously putting me in my place all the time. Please make up your mind! You have conditions. I –for my own madness- have accepted them unequivocally. I thought you prided yourself on your 'honesty', so stop humouring me! It’s confusing and frankly it’s cruel.” I was beyond caring that I was acting quite the quintessential harpy. I am not sure if I looked it.

“How is it cruel?” now he was curious.

“Well, I would think that in this equation…”

“Please define what you mean by ‘this equation’, Maria,” oh yes, he was most certainly amused.

“An equation, where one feels everything for another who feels nothing,” I was rather glad to see the last of that formidable smirk.

“And so ‘me being kind, is me actually being cruel’?” he said this softly and I almost believed he understood.

“Well I tend to think of this as an ‘inverse relationship’ on all counts,” I pedal the ‘sad smile’ to an art form.

“Interesting way of putting it,” he stated blankly.

The conversation ended, for once on my terms. Of course the fact that ‘my terms’ were all about merely upholding ‘his terms’... unless he changed the terms, is largely irrelevant. If there was one thing I was clear about in this ‘falling in love’ business, it was that I would not beg. It is degrading enough to know that the object of your adoration knows how you feel, does not return those feelings and still gets to literally ‘have his way with you’... but it is quite another to drown entirely.

I admit that I did glean some satisfaction from the fact that my strident fixation about sticking to his rules wasn’t as pleasing to him as it once appeared to be. It was the one contradiction that I hadn’t anticipated: the fact that I would be fighting to keep his rules intact. That it would hurt so deeply whenever he was generous or kind or even charming because he would counter it all in the next instant. The way I figured: an emotional roller coaster was more than enough, I simply didn’t have the stamina to navigate a mental one. And to be ‘honest’, the premise of all this nonsense had been to... ‘be honest’. How dare he break his own cardinal rule and still expect a waver on my part! He mentioned his surprise at how skilled I was about affecting ‘nonchalance’.

“You act well. I mean, I realise how my behaviour must hurt you,” he was inquiring. I could tell.

“Yes it does. So?” I was genuinely calm at this point.

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, why would that concern you? Does it?” okay, so now I was inquiring.

“No. Of course it doesn’t. Still, it is quite the ‘proverbial elephant in the room’,” he said this in his usual vapid, glaze.

“Do I make it worse?” I was worried.

I really had been trying to focus all my efforts at making our conversations compelling. At learning and talking and listening. Mostly, at ‘collecting’ things: gestures, gazes, mementos of minutes spent completely at ease. Things that I could remember later on sans vitriol. I had figured I was getting good at it. Perhaps not.

“Surprisingly, no. You are rather odd that way, Maria,” he smirked.

“Yes, I am that.”

We were outside one of the lecture theatres at Balliol College, where he had asked me to join him. The talk centred on Schopenhauer’s aphorisms and essays and the lecturer focused specifically on the essays relating to women. I knew from that point onwards that the real reason he had asked me to join him was to enjoy seeing me squirm in my seat and seethe silently. Admittedly, it is rather funny in retrospect. Calling a feminist (albeit a flaky one) to sit through a two-hour talk on how women are ‘mental myopic’s’ and never should have been given the right to vote as they don’t have the cerebral capacity to process anything beyond 'house keeping', is testy. Sadly, my new found masochism only rejoiced in seeing him laugh, always (it seemed) at my expense.

“So what did you think?” he was smiling... widely, unreservedly. It was blinding.

“Quite intriguing,” I was nonplussed.

“Yes, I always find Schopenhauer quite…scintillating. I thought, you of all people would appreciate the subject matter!” he blithely led me around the quad toward his room.

“Quite,” I smiled.

I could take a joke. I could take a misogynist, imperialist, fascist joke!

And then we were in his room. I suppose I was enjoying his enjoyment far too much to even notice, until I did. I won’t say that I panicked, at least not in a bad way. I was terrified but also eager. And that is why it all fell down.

He kissed me.

I froze.

He realised before I did that all of this, all of everything I struggled with, rested in a past I was simply not willing to confront. I still wasn’t but he forced the realisation on me. And I hated him for it. All I needed to do at that moment was run and hide and…die. This one time he refused to let me do either. He brought me a coke (ah! A passing ode to constant comforts) and we lay down on the bed and talked. We spoke in whispers all night until I was spent with the force of my confession, my admission and my imminent dismissal. I had actually wanted this, for the first and only time in my life. I had wanted to be touched and held. To collapse under the weight of crippling realisations at this moment, with this man …was cruelty beyond comprehension. He didn’t say anything as I recanted a tale that I am, quite frankly, sick of spinning in retrospect. We slept and I do believe I am the only woman who has only ever ‘just slept’ in his bed, not that I was remotely grateful for it. The sound of rain waking me up in the morning was a baptism. I silently unwound myself from his arms, his presence and his pity.

Luckily there were no goodbyes, no platitudes and no long or drawn out alibis. I shall remember him, always as one of life’s antique lost causes. Much like myself, only inverted and much more opulent. We are two rather huge people: too immense in our contradictions, our cynicism and our perverted facades. All people are Fake, lounging around the precincts of so-called happiness, trying to look like the real thing. We, then, are the Real-fake stoics trying very much to appear fake because it is ‘honest’.

Still, I suppose at some point I will begin to celebrate again. I will rejoice in a Land far, far away at some twisted 'Happily Never After' tangent in the future, that at least I finally have a ‘love story’ of my own to tell. It is short and trite as most tales of this particular genre are. But it is mine.

“You see, I found The Guy.

The Guy never let me get The Guy.

And I never let me get The Guy.”

The End.