Dichotomy of Love and Obsession
The first time I saw her I really couldn’t describe her. The way you feel when you hear a new song that’s so good that you can’t remember the words. It’s just too much to absorb all at once. I remember I was taken aback by the way she looked, by the way she acted. She was so entrancing and all I could do was sit there on the bed, tongue-tied and dumbfounded. Anything I did say to her was a pathetic joke or superfluous bit of fact, I really couldn’t think of any way to speak to her that reflected how I felt. I didn’t know how I felt. But she humored me, she laughed at my stupid jokes and pretended to be interested in my meaningless banter because that’s just the type of person she is. My mind had been wired for so long to reject emotional responses I really didn’t know what to do. Confused is the easiest way to describe my mood.
I saw her at school a few times but we never really talked. There was plenty of opportunity to talk but I decided that choking on my words and waving feebly in the hallways was a much better way to connect. I tried to put her out of my mind; my subconscious waste disposal system had given up trying to classify my feelings. She was there on weekends sometimes when my friends and I would get together to smoke pot or see a movie, but she was an acquaintance as far as I could tell. But there was a pulsing in my stomach that I had learned to equate with being sick. My knees were where I wanted to be, standing up wasn’t working for me. I needed to cut off the rest of the world so that I could deal with this ailment one on one. I tried to block everyone else out but she was still there. She was still in my mind, like a prison search light exposing my escape. When I opened my eyes all I could see was her, and the feeling stopped. No one else noticed this, but I would never forget it.
She was only five foot two, but standing there she had a command over me of a man three times her size. When I looked at her my eyes were attracted to hers like magnets. They weren’t colored in any hue I had ever seen. The color of her eyes was virtue, spontaneous electricity, the light behind them arcing from place to place like a storm. The way I feel around her is like I’m constantly begging for answers, searching her face for the will to give them. She looks at me as though I couldn’t do anything wrong, as though she knows me. But she doesn’t, if she did I don’t know what she’d think. I look physically sick, though I try to wear a smile. My loss for words is a side effect of the emotion building inside me. Up until this point I thought my life had a purpose, but I couldn’t tell you what it was. If asked, I would likely have told you about some job I wanted when I was finished school or a naive goal to be dreamed instead of lived. But now, next to her, I can’t justify anything. I feel like my emotions are stealing my life from me, and simultaneously drugging me so that I won’t notice. Being around her is the ultimate euphoria. I have never felt as utterly complete as I do with her. I can’t make it through a single day without thinking about her. I really just want her to feel the same way I’m feeling right now, but also hope she doesn’t; because I feel awful. I wish I could hold her hand, or kiss her but I can’t. She loves someone else. I’d be breaking her heart if I even tried. I’d be breaking apart every good memory she has of time we spent together. But I can’t just stay this way. If there’s another way out of this that I haven’t thought of then I’d be surprised to hear it. But since I can’t think of one I’ll just say goodbye.
This will be the first account of my suicidal motives, but not necessarily the first experience. I’m not especially sure how I’ve put myself into this position but it’s starting to leave a sour taste in my mouth. I’m quite sure that I’m in love with ——, it’s irrevocable and as hard as I try I cannot seem to force myself to feel any different.
[Note: I’m using the word ‘love’ from the perspective of someone who doesn’t fully understand the thing. When I say ‘love’ I’m describing an emotion I’ve been feeling. This emotion differs depending on the situation but most often the symptoms are occasional crushing breathlessness when I think about her, a loss for words or original thought when I’m with her, a feeling of self consciousness whenever she looks at me, a feeling of exuberance or euphoria whenever I look at her, I feel constantly depressed when I’m not around her, I hate her boyfriend and am convinced that she deserves better, I would do anything for her, and I want to be a part of her life more than I want to be a part of my own. This is what I’m classifying as love; if it’s incorrect then maybe there is a better word for how I feel. Right now love seems to be the diagnosis.]
Her presence in my life is having an extremely adverse affect on my mental health culminating at the understanding that in order to rid myself of these feelings I know now that I would have to die. I say ‘feelings’ because it’s the only word I know to describe my state. Maybe a better word would be ‘sickness’ or ‘cancer’ or ‘disease’ because any of these seem more suitable to describe my reaction than ‘feelings’. Feelings are metaphysical, it’s a cruel muse that feelings should be able to evoke a disposition so foul by the mind and body. I feel entirely powerless to defend against them. However, there is little I can actually do to remedy the matter. I’ve tried to remove her from my life but a part of me never wants to be away from her. It’s the same part of me that glows every time she’s with me and turns like a hot poker in my gut every time she’s with ——. This I what I imagine heroin addicts feel like; I am both hating and loving myself. I feel like I want to cry or scream or leave this country and never look back over my shoulder. Though I know that every environment that I try to adapt to becomes the new pit in which my self-loathing is the ball and chain weighing me down and I’m clinging the edge by my fingers. Every part of her magnificence opens up a new wound in me that will never heal. I’ve finally reached the apex of what I know now is a complete lack of social ability. How can I compete with people who have confidence in who they are when half the time I wish I was dead? I know she sees it in me, the weakness. That’s why I’ll never be with her or any girl like her. I can’t even justify wanting her, it would be completely unfair to her if she were my girlfriend. What she deserves is better than ——, and certainly better than me. But that’s not enough. I lick the pen to sign my death warrant with statements like that; I know I have no control. That part of me will keep pushing me towards her and her aura of exuberance and intense beauty will repel me. I wonder if she even has the minutest grasp on how I feel about her… This probably won’t be the last letter I write but it’s an important passage in what I am certain will culminate in my coup de gras to the senses.
HOW THE **** CAN SHE STAY WITH HIM WHILE HE’S CHEATING ON HER?!?!? This is killing my spirit. He can be the most unwholesome **** in the world and she would still look at him like a long lost soul mate returning from years away from home. Call me cursed, I wish he would die. I wish he would step out into traffic or fall onto train tracks or get hit by a plummeting DC-10 jet airplane, generously spreading his cadaver over a half mile of open farm land. I wish I could feed his pulp to an oil drum of maggots and then burn them alive. That is the intensity with which I hate this person. It must be fate that her presence is so alluring (debilitating) to me and his is so distasteful. I don’t think I’ve ever hated a person the way I hate ——. The simple fact that he was able to attract a girl as beautiful, brilliant, charismatic, and purely benevolent as —— is a fact that is tearing me apart.
I’ll try to elaborate on how I feel when I’m around the two of them, it helps me to try and understand what’s wrong with me.
I haven’t slept in two days now but that could be due to anything. I stretch my sanity trying to rid her from my thoughts; a more laborious pastime does scarcely exist. All it takes is a text message to cut off my oxygen and push my head back under the water. I say “cut off my oxygen” because there is no more realistic description of the feelings this triggers. It feels like asphyxiation, drowning, suffocating like all the air is being stolen from your lungs by the vacuum created by her indifference. When I know she’s with him I can’t keep still or even feign the slightest interest. I would rather think of any macabre scene from the horrors of death than contemplate her with someone else, especially him. But I can’t keep the images out of my mind. It’s a haunting of the grizzleiest caliber and no amount of exorcism or last right of passing can alleviate the tax on my soul. I would give up anything just for the chance to be around her including my own goals and ambitions. Her presence has become an addictive soma that is impossible to purge. If this is what love feels like or more specifically, how I respond to love then I want nothing to do with it. If love has the power to push you under the waves of a depression that you are frantically trying to overcome, then how is it that love is different from hate? This half love that I am afflicted with is more scouring than boiling oil being dripped down my throat. It seems as though you would have to hate someone to wish this upon them. I feel weak and undone. As though this is my one chance to take my life from the skeletal clutch of despair and it’s just out of reach. I feel like dying whenever I think about her. Her smile can erase my deepest doubts. I’m a better person when I’m around her. And yet it seems that I am meant to suffer. I am without doubt, being punished for some past wrong; only karma can be this decisively cruel.
This is where the plot thickens… ——, my solitary prospect for a normal relationship, has readjusted to single life by attaching herself to the first passing fella like a ****ing leech in the Amazon. Two weeks maybe and she’s found herself someone new, someone else. I can’t really even say it vexes me that much but it does to some degree. I feel sunken and substanceless whilst I write this. She was a hypothetical part of me that I had become accustomed to imagining, a part of me that was apparently essential to my mental health. Like —— this cuts me in a way I do not fully understand, though I am beginning to. This is my karma. The girls I like are never interested in me; I can’t imagine anyone hating themselves to the degree of distain that I hold to my own self image. Even thinking about my life in a literal sense disturbs me. Writing this ‘memoir’ disturbs me. Though, above all, my delusional grasp on the substance of my own existence disturbs me. I fabricate these fictions to such a degree that when one of their foundations is removed, they all come toppling down. Is it even possible for someone else to love me? How could anyone else honestly love me? I am never really in a good mood, misfortune will do that to you. It just feels like happiness and interest are such chores; I’m not able to push my way through them. I am, however just a reflection of my own displeasure. I emanate an unsettling malcontent that is ever so transparent to me, but I wonder if everyone else can see it…? It must be the reason for my bad luck with girls, no one likes to be around someone who hates themselves, the world and everyone in it. Girls want to be entertained, listened to, admired, related to, revered, comforted, complemented etc… all of which sound awfully insincere when coming from me.
—— was my tether to normalcy, now all I have is ——. This is so ****ing frustrating! It just seems as though all paths lead to her. I CANNOT DATE ——, I DON’T UNDERSTAND LOVING AND CARING SO HOW IN THE HELL COULD I EVER BE WITH A GIRL. I JUST FEEL SO DEFEATED ALL THE TIME AND IT MAKES ME WISH THERE WAS A SIMPLE WAY TO STOP IT. But as I surely know, there is a simple way to stop it. If I were to tape a garden hose to the exhaust on my car and then lead the hose in through the window to pump carbon monoxide into the car whilst is sit inside, that’s a simple way out. If I were to wrap my lips around the barrel of a shotgun and pull the trigger, that would be a simple way out. Hmm… what else… If I were to pour bleach and ammonia into a garbage bag and then put it over my head, that would be a simple way out. If I were to bloodlett myself gallon by gallon into the drain of my bathtub, that would be a simple way out. MAYBE ILL JUST SIT HERE AND WRITE ABOUT IT, THAT’LL MAKE EVERY ****ING THING BETTER! ILL JUST WRITE OUT MY PROBLEMS AND DRONE OVER THEM UNTIL I HAVE THEM MEMORIZED SO I CAN RECITE THEM JUST AS POETICALLY AS THIS TO THE UNSUSPECTING MASS OF A SHOPPERS DRUG MART JUST BEFORE I PULL OUT A POUND OF GUNPOWDER TAPED TO A GAS CAN AND SEND MYSELF AND EVERYONE AROUND ME BACK TO THE ELEMENTS WITH A GLORIUS ****ING BANG. But then what good would that be? If there is a god, why would anyone even humor me with the notion of respecting him? How does someone or something earn respect by devising little trials for the human race to take part in? If this is the case, I hope I ****ing fail mine. I hope god understands that I will look at him with disgust when I die. I would spit in his face if I met him. Congratulations your majesty, you’ve created a race of domineering, viral consumers who are governed by superfluous feelings and foolish emotions. Bravo, you sadistic son of a *****! Send me to hell where there are people who feel the way I do. I welcome it, I would be honored to live in such a place. A place where you live for nothing but feeling, raw physical feeling from which there is no escape. That’s the real awakening, that’s the actual epiphany. The only thing a person should fear is a life without the senses. Hell as a concept must be fabricated. Its illogical to reward someone with endless sensation as a ‘punishment’ for crimes that mankind deems immoral. This may be off topic, but it’s just the way I feel. I don’t think I have a broken heart now because I’m sure if such a condition exists, I would already have succumbed to it. —— broke my heart the first time I saw her and continues to now. Every time she kisses ——, lays on him, across him, touches him, I die a little inside. The human condition is really becoming something of a burden to me. I ****ing hate life!
This is a new step towards my eventual suicide… I spent the evening with —— and some interesting things happened. She accused me of loving her (likely in jest) and implied that I would do anything for her. This is of course, just the earlier portion of a five hour span of time where I did nothing but keep her company while she waited for her friends to call and let her know if she could come over. Someone who doesn’t love you doesn’t do this. While we passed the time I told her that I preferred her company to ——’s, and we devised a scenario where I would insinuate that I was having sex with her to instigate a reaction from ——. She explained that she would be disappointed if he were to express nonchalance but also that if he reacted strongly, it would seem that he didn’t trust her. Also on the topic line was her undying love for —————’s voice. After waiting all this time I told her that I was taking her to St. ———’s with me. I made this decision because I would feel like a *** if I left her at her house or somewhere else in the pouring rain. She agreed and I harbored the sweet thought that maybe, just maybe, we would arrive and —— would be ****ing some girl thus ruining his and ——’s relationship. No such luck. We arrived and —— and —— were instantly upstairs doing what-the-****-ever… Then, later again that night, they were upstairs ****ing like rabbits [I’m not even saying these words aloud, but from thinking them my mouth tastes like tar and my lungs feel crushed]. I couldn’t stand the simple knowledge that this was happening; jealousy does not describe even a modicum of what I was feeling. All the night that was in the back of my mind, stabbing me from time to time like a piece of broken glass trapped in a shoe. Im usually a pretty miserable and awkward person at parties but this was different. I felt like a part of my body had been stolen, like it was missing but I couldn’t remember what it was. Every word I spoke clung to my throat, forcibly made to leave my mouth in place of the words I meant to use. I said “what’s goin’ on man?” instead of, “I want to swallow gasoline”. I said, “I’m going to —— this year…” instead of, “I wish I could have stayed in the army long enough to be captured and publically beheaded”. “No problem” instead of “**** you”, “Well played” instead of “If it weren’t illegal, I would lose no sleep over cutting you up and feeding you to my dogs”, “Peace” instead of “I hope I never see you again”, on and on. You get the idea. I get the idea…? It was [Is] killing me inside, and the only way I knew how to vent that feeling without insulting people was silence. I just shut my mouth for the latter portion of the night and rarely reopened it. What’s even better is when I saw —— for one of the infrequent encounters of our night, she tells me —— can have a smoke but I can’t. Also, when I show her my pack to prove that I have none I get it thrown back at my face, quite literally. Then later I get called a homo in a text from her. I can honestly say that if I knew she loved me I wouldn’t care what she says to me, I would take it in jest; but knowing that I will never be with her and then being subjected to innocent ridicule stings like an acid-drenched harpoon in the mother****ing heart. If there was ever a more appropriate time to describe an act as, “pouring salt in the wounds”, I cannot imagine it. Then, the long awkward drive home where I spoke all of two times, wore on my sanity to the point of corrosion. I was literally choking back my hatred for ——. I felt his death was a calamity more than overdue, to put it ****ing lightly. The only reason I didn’t drive the car off the ——— bridge was because I wouldn’t want to be remembered having died in an accident with ——; and the fact that the only person I care about in this world was in the passenger seat next to me. In any case it was more than a little obvious that something was wrong with me. They could see it in me; they could both feel the tension that neither of them could comprehend the cause of. I was at the doors, I wanted to die. When I got home I wanted to die. When I woke up this morning I wanted to die. Now, whilst I’m writing this memoir, I want to die. Living shouldn’t feel this way, and what’s the point of postponing death for misery’s sake?
