The Otherness

And so it is. The otherness has struck again. It’s claws dug into the old wounds like a dry root that seeks warmth and wetness, wanting it’s life back. Well, let’s spoil the ending – I ain’t gonna give this crooked, nasty, and rotten life back. My lonely oblivion is so sweet, so desperate it’s endearing. The thing that keeps it alive is my humor. I laugh a lot. Alright they say, you’re really cool, surprisingly light. You are sexy sometimes, clumsy sometimes, lovely even – they say. Well, most of them. And all I can think to myself is just… “Really?! Are you people blind and deaf?!” And I stay comfortably lonely.

The loneliness keeps me grounded, makes me feel like I am safe. I shudder at the thought of togetherness. The picture of another person that has everything of me, and that holds me and that is there in my space and sees me, is terrifying. He would sit on the couch, casually reading a magazine, something with a lot of manly stuff – cables, lights, music, cars, fitness, weights, politics, and in no way funnies and home decoration. He would sit there on my red couch in my green living room and would read relaxed and calm. His hand would be on my knee while I sit opposite him and pretend to read the next book I never tell him about, while very vigilantly waiting for the first sign of the epic crap fest that is bound to come. It always does. I love that guy I crave his presence, but it is too much. I like how he smells in the morning. I like how he kisses my ear when I am concentrated and trying to do something important, I like how he comes home and just hugs me like that was what he wanted to do all day. And yet… he is there in my home, in my heart, in my memory and passion and I wait for him to leave. He has before. I have before.

So then what is left of all that humor and lightness and that desire to be free and happy and to have that red couch? Are there alternatives? The first that comes to mind is to forgive. To ignore all the small annoying things – he doesn’t reply to the sent message if it asks something important, but if it’ a funny there is a whole conversation, he gets lazy and waits for me to fetch stuff like a dog, from the magazine in question, to his important work stuff, may be even count the pages he has to complete, he stops dressing himself – I have to lay everything out for him, he starts responding with grunts and the communication as a whole becomes primitive. The second is to limit the annoying things – I will stop bothering him about anything, I will stop talking to him during the game and then eventually as a general rule, I will wake up with him, make the coffee, count the pages, will even stop kissing his neck while he works at home. I will just be light and free, just like the day we met. I will be lonely. I will leave. He will leave.

So what do I want, where do we go from here? That is the point when one turns and welcomes The Otherness into one’s life. It creeps up on me like a cold shadow and settles in. It becomes a habit. It wakes up my imagination and builds me up, tears me down and I go back for more, always for more. It’s the one that calls you “Beautiful”. He is the one that writes me every day, all day long, non stop. I can’t sleep without his word, I can’t have a coffee without his words, I can’t lay in my bed without his words. He is there just behind the screen, reading, writing, feeling, thinking, smiling on my “lightness”, calling me “Beautiful”, mesmerizing me and lifting me up. He is not on the red couch, he can’t disappoint me. He doesn’t hold me, he is all mine, because I made him up, the way I wanted him to be. And then he is gone. Somehow he managed to prove me wrong. This tale, this road was rocky, it hurt and it burned more that before. “It was just a screen”, I say to myself, and yet it was real. The words are still there, they haunt me and I seek explanation for what was said and done, and most of all for what wasn’t.

The otherness is the one that doesn’t want you. He sits on the red couch, but only in the dark, only for a while. He leaves every day, and I feel only my loss, not his. There are no words, no memories. Nothing stays behind on the threshold when he is gone. And I don’t know how it happens. I see him on the daylight very far away, very fictional, and I’m numb. The otherness got what it wanted it settled my spirit and fed for a long time on it. I let it. Its fine I’m ok. It says that way for a long time. Nothing stirs me up, nothing bothers me. Only now I hate words. They no longer say the truth, none of them. They don’t even know the truth of it all. Somewhere along then I left the screen behind, I started resenting it. It lies. It shines a light on my emotion, reflects my eyes while I pour down words it does not hold, they reach nothing. The words just fall down, build a reality that trips me up, constantly and without mercy. I avoid them at all costs, because the Otherness knocks on my door, slamming its fists down on me.

 I go out to escape these words that did not blow away the clouds. They failed so miserably that the world seems colorless and shallow, and irrelevant. It’s filled with cheap thrills and Margarita Chums. They don’t write, they don’t even speak. They caress my ego, sometimes they even hurt it a little, but you know – it comes with the territory. I forget them with ease, and let them sail away - not even memories. May be I gotta fight, but… why? Who cares? No. I leave.

And then the lesson is repeated until it’s learned. I find words, they are easy, they make the Otherness almost unknown. May be for this one last time I can believe, they may be truly light, truly airborne and forget the old ones, just leave them behind, even though I already said them. They speak of other worlds, of other lands of other habits. They are not this intense these ones, they emote less. They don’t spin me upside down, don’t kill my fire, don’t frost me. They are easy, just like me. They come and go, no strings attached. The picture of the red couch is not even drawn yet. And yet I hate them. The screen shines just as well, and it’s far and it’s fiction and it reeks of lies and silence. And then, one cold winter’s night…

No, I don’t follow their voice down to the river, I meet them under the city lights with all the lightness and all the easy breezy I can be. Almost a covergirl. The conversation is short and sweet and the evening takes me down a road I did not anticipate. It’s not very exciting on it’s own, but see… the words are now a hand, and that hands holds mine. Why? Because I typed the words? Because I’m light and it’s easy? Because the loneliness is too much? Because the Otherness is no longer enough? What does he want? What do I want form him? Why answer, why ask? And while I’m asking… he’s gone, back behind the screen. It shines. The words fail, they are not enough. Again.

May be the screen will shine somewhere else, and may be that otherness will settle there too, then I will be redeemed, avenged, caressed and cherished. The red couch will be left empty and I will be safe. If not, I will just keep on staring into the light waiting for it to become true and in the meantime just reaching for the cheap thrills, delicious and just as other and lonely. He will call, I will call it could be empty for a long time and then “someone is gonna get a hurt, reaaal bad”.

I’m free.