mahiwaga

It is interesting to find myself in such an adverse, in fact, perverse, situation. I don’t know what it is in me that gets so easily perturbed by a beautiful woman, why I can’t just be still, and watch and wait. While it’s true that inaction will guarantee failure, I think that failure is always predetermined. Which is not to say that success is equally predestined. It’s just that I’m tired of hoping. I mean, yeah, I should try, but really…

Let me get back to the beginning.

So, in reality, my only experience of being in a relationship started in high school and ended disasterously in the middle of college. In retrospect, none of it is surprising, and I can chalk it up as an indiscretion of youth. I mean, yeah, I made mistakes, more in my assumptions than in anything I actually did, mistakes that I am very unlikely to make ever again.

But damage is damage, and my wounds have yet to heal.

Mostly, it’s because I keep picking at the scab, and doing things that do nothing but aggravate the wound. Like falling for someone whom I didn’t have a chance with, and letting the despair eat away at me until I didn’t want to do anything at all.

It isn’t until relatively recently that I realized the severe damage my self-confidence has taken. I mean, I’ve haven’t exactly been the cockiest guy, but there was I time when I had grasp as to what I could and couldn’t do. Until a little while ago, it has felt like everything has been impossible. Now I know better. But I am still wary.

So now that I am where I am with myself, remote possibilities abound. It’s true, as my oldest friend has noted, that it is easier to try for things that are unlikely, because when you fail, you know that it isn’t your fault. But it is in the possibilities that my heart falters, and I fear to move because I don’t want to wreck what I’ve got, but I know, I know, that inaction will doom me to failure.

Why can’t I just wait? If there are opportunities, I should not squander them, but at the same time, I don’t want to hope for things that can never be. Just wait, and then move.

I am so broken.

What is perverse is that deep down inside, I am a Romantic, the definition of which, I admit, is not really what you think usually. But it’s not that far off. I mean, I know I’m capable of acts of beauty and love. Hmmm. At least, I think I am. Yeah, well, we’ll see. It’s hard to quantify, because if you care about someone, you often forget the cost, emotional and physical.

But despite all this, one of my friends is convinced that I am one of the more cynical bastards on this planet. Which, to a certain degree is true. I have seen how things can fall apart, how fragile relationships are. (And now I realize that relationships are quite different from love.) But the thing is, my emotional mindset when it comes to romantic relationships is still in arrested development, just barely out of the junior high level. My idea of how relationships work is mired in high school romance, modified somewhat by the horrific circumstances of my breakup, tinged with my distrust of human nature, but hopefully somewhat redeemed by the fact that while I don’t necessarily understand how relationships should work, I do have some very slight insight on the nature of love.

And yet, and yet, if I stop feeling sorry for myself, I can see great acts of beauty and sacrifice all around me, long after my relationship was destroyed. I have known love since. Maybe not romantic love, but I have given and received emotions that are capable of bringing tears to my eyes.

This is not the problem.

What I don’t understand is the process. I cannot ask a girl out on a date. Simple as that. It gives me great anxiety, and the way I look at it is that until it ceases to make me anxious, I am still broken. And the only thing that will fix me is, to steal a phrase from a surgeon I know, tincture of Time.

If I can just wait without expecting, and take small steps until I can walk again, then maybe I can eventually run, eventually none of this will ever matter again, and then I can be whole, healed.

But there is still pain, and I don’t want another exacerbation

For some reason, all of this makes me think of this quote:

“That is most of it, being a wizard — seeing and listening. The rest is technique.”

—Schmendrick the Magician

I don’t want to examine this. I don’t want to write this with the detail that is required to truly analyze this. If Bram were here, he would deride me for even thinking about any of this at all, but, once again, alas, that’s just the way I am. So beat me.

Yeah. I would rather approach this from a vague, free verse, stream of consciousness perspective, but at this time, the words refuse to come out easily, and I can’t seem to muster the skill by which I might render all of this opaque and maybe not even a little beautiful.

The problem here is that I can’t help but wear my heart on my sleeve.

Crap. We’ll try this anyway:

She warns me, warns me—
when I didn’t even think there was any warning necessary
all of my smoke and fog, spells of misdirection
incantations for shrouding the truth
stripped away
my vague and wispy intentions laid bare

But even a blind idiot could’ve seen this train rushing towards me
I will face it head-on and prove or disprove once and for all
whether my skull is really that thick

And still I fall

And I am not entirely certain
how I should feel
with the rug being swept from under my legs
every time I plan on planting my feet
the daggers of ice in my heart,
and the pangs of loneliness—
these I had grown accustomed to

But this thing that ravages my soul
seems to change its face every hour
grows another head every day
for every strategy that I play
this thing changes another of the rules

And still I fail to lose
despite all of the reversals of Chance
all my defeats are never final
though all of my victories are Pyrrhic

And there is something dangerous and alluring
in this cloud electricity folded upon itself
hidden in a pocket, deep in the chambers of my soul
Lying still, I thought
and still it stirs
Though I remember ever word is measured
and every glance a calculation
every smile a deadly weapon
and whether it is the games played with no intention
but I still seek some hidden, twisted paths

Oh, I will latch on to these scraps
words pinned on me like a Purple Heart
the ground is formed by nothing but semantics
gravity nothing but the heaviness of silence
I could float away, far away into the thin blue ether
but the words keep me in check

I am waiting
biding my time
and whether this thing will finally plunge its razor sharp claws
into my aching heart

Crap. I have no idea what any of this means. But to not even entertain the possibilities may very well be sheer folly.