My Dearest Self, What Title Could I Give You?

My Dear Anima

Written 03/2024

“I’m a man among the stars,
but I couldn’t start my car.
I ran along the road,
but I didn’t get very far.
The men came to save me,
the women watched in awe.
I feared every choice they made
when they chose to talk.

What did it mean,
and what could it lead to?
Who am I but a fraction
of your movements?
Whispering to me,
her deceit comes in half.
Tell me a secret,
I hate it when you do that.

I want to know everything,
my eyes glued to her mind.
Her hatred and lies,
love and peace, come in kind.
With this combination,
I knew I could refine,
take her lack of structure,
and mix it with mine.

Stop, good God,
what have you done?
What are these thoughts,
what have you become?

Disgusting, pitiful, ashamed to be near such a foul, dirty creature under what such beauty appears.

I wrote about her today.
I begged her to stay.
What is it that I'm asking?
How many I betrayed.

You, me, her,
dead in the water.”

    He finished reading and looked at her, measuring her reaction. He felt a magnetic pull that compelled him to stand up and walk over. She nodded, silently asking him to take a seat next to her. Before asking for her opinion, fear struck him. His anxiety took control and his mind raced as he began to speak, "Get a sentence done and rhyme it with another. Bored, slow, not very creative. Insulting, complaining, begging for help. It's not art, it's self-pity, why can I not say what I please?" She looked at him carefully, with displeasure in her eyes. When he looked into them, he felt his imminent demise. He held his tongue patiently, waiting for her reply. She placed his hand on her heart, and he quickly asked, "Why?" She held it for a moment, "Why do you continue to lie? Again and again, you continuously realize the joy of life when you drop this disguise."

    He pulled his hand away and jumped up, feeling a strike of rage. His conflict with her kindness began to tear him apart. His mind dashed in a thousand different directions. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and felt himself transcend. He looked down on her and she could no longer recognize the glimmer of life in the eyes from just before. He started, "You know nothing and that's what you just proved. You're a shell of a life begging for my attention. What you see in me is what you think I can give you, but I can give you nothing because I, too, am nothing. You have no soul, no God, no Devil guiding your choice. Your failures and disgrace are your own and you must own them. And pride, what is it but an illusion? Allowing your selfishness to be maintained by ignorance, what does that make you? Weak. Pitiful. There is no strength. We live because we have no other choice and to do that we must live in a world where we're happy, yet nobody is. Any sign of strength or pride is an embarrassment to any integrity the human race could possibly have. And so, you sit there, feeling just enough pride and pity to pretend to care for me, and as soon as I no longer need it, as I no longer need you, that pride and pity will turn to anger and self-righteousness. For what purpose? Your feelings are arbitrary, therefore you are arbitrary. And here I am, insulting someone who just offered me pity and kindness, telling her that she is meaningless, random. What sort of order is that? Who am I to make such a declaration? If your feelings are arbitrary, they still are, as in they exist. Logically, this right now is hurting you, I am forcing you to feel pain you did not consent to. I don't want this power. Who gave me this power? I don't deserve it, I have done nothing to earn it yet I have it. What do I do with it? Please, tell me. Please."

    She paid careful attention to his words, her heart feeling the weight of each remark about her meaninglessness. However, she held her resolve tightly. She was determined to understand. She listened to the end and sat quietly for about a minute. He had no patience. "What do you have to say, dammit!" She looked up at him. "Does it matter? You seem to have figured everything out. You seem to know where my thoughts and feelings will take me, so why ask my opinion? You don't need it, clearly. Aren't they random, anyway? I know what it is." She stood up, meeting him at eye level. "You're scared. You desperately want to know that you're right. You need me to confirm it. Otherwise, what do you have? Your pride has clearly 'arbitrarily' decided to align itself with being some sort of omniscient figure. But you aren't. You're just a man. No, you're less than that. You're a boy, a child playing with things you don't understand. You're alone, getting a distant, vague understanding of the complexity of our world and believing you have all the answers. You belong with the children yet you are a man. So, you beg me to tell you the one thing you don't have an answer for. What do you do with your 'power' of influence? I'll tell you what to do. Use it to end yourself. You're past the point of return, there is no place for you. You will exist, wither, and die, and cause a lot of pain along the way unless you do something about it. So you know what to do."

    He looked at her with shock and horror for a moment before his head dropped in resignation and he fell to his knees. He knew she was right. There was no other option. To avoid causing pain, this was the only choice he could make. He wasn’t able to cry. He remained silent for a few minutes, then a few minutes longer. He stayed silent for so long that he began to feel as though he was waiting. A peculiar feeling, as if he was waiting for something in particular. A realization hit him. He began to speak. "I... I don’t want to die. I can’t die. I could never take a life, not even my own." She peered down at him, slightly surprised. He looked up to meet her eyes, and continued, "I know why I could never kill. Potential. Every human has wants and needs that they feel they must fulfill. Where do these stop? What vast, complex depths could they reach? Nobody knows." He looked down again, this time with a solemn sliver of hope. A slight smile formed. "Nobody knows the potential of a single human being, let alone the entire species. As long as a person has their will, they can reach for an experience indescribable. That indescribable experience, the pursuit of it is what makes life beautiful. You may be right that I am a child, but on some level, aren’t we all? Yes. Yes, we are all children, gazing into the infinite complexity of everyday life, trying to make sense of what we can and letting go of what we can not. There is no sense in agonizing over what can not be understood. That is what I’ve realized." He stood back up, with renewed vigor. She was mildly impressed but had no plan to back down. An idea came to her while he was speaking, perhaps the killing blow that would end the facade of courage that he attempted to maintain.
"But how do you know?" she asked.
"Know what?" he replied.
"How do you know what depths you can reach? How do you know that one person’s 'indescribable experience' is not another’s floor? That a person can stand upon the hopes and dreams of another, so far surpassing them that they can hardly spare a chuckle at the importance that a lesser person ascribes their own aspirations. How do you justify that lesser person’s existence? How do you know you are not that lesser person? You are. You are that person." He looked at her carefully, feeling the weight of her words but trying to combat them, to find some clever retort. She continued, “You never would know. How would you be able to, answer me that? If there were people who were capable of glorious actions you could never understand, and these people are idolized by common people, then there must be lesser people who idolize the regular actions of common people. And people below them. Tell me, if you were one of those people, even if someone explained it to you, would you be able to accept it? Is this a reality you can ever learn to be okay with?”
He contemplated for a moment, then responded, “How could you know? What is your intention? I see obviously that your intention is to harm me, so I can simply reason that I can’t trust what you say.”
“And what if it wasn’t me who told you this? What if a trusted friend sat you down, looked you in the eye, and communicated this to you? Would you ‘reason’ based on his words that his intention is to harm you? Is it not possible that his intention would be to help you see the truth, out of kindness? Or would you persist in denial, living without integrity and pursuing shallow, misunderstood objectives? Would you fight with this friend, again causing unjust pain due to your own ignorance?” she retorted.
“Well, wouldn’t such a thing be common knowledge, spoken about among friends?”
“It may well be spoken among friends. How would you know?”
“I’ve had many close friends and relationships alike.”
“True but let me ask you, what friend would say such a thing to another? If they were able, wouldn’t they carry this secret and instead treat you with kindness and pity? Even if you asked, begged them to tell you, a capable person would recognize that knowing this about yourself would be agonizing, especially for someone unable to cope with basic truths. If a friend won’t tell you, who will? A stranger, a coworker? No, they see you for who you are and, with no obligation to be kind, they treat you as you are.”
“A doctor. A professional would be honest.”
“Only if you are. Your denial keeps them from doing their job properly. You are bothersome to them because you refuse to be honest with them. They tolerate you, give you what you pay for, and send you on your way.”
“And if I learn to be honest?”
“Who will teach you? Even if you manage to, would you ever be able to trust what you say? Suppose you could, it wouldn’t change that you are fundamentally broken on a level impossible to correct.”
“Why do you think you know me so well?”
“Am I wrong about any of this? Do you even know? Could you? Could you ever know?”

    That familiar question, "could you ever know?" It took control of his will and his thoughts followed suit. He had no answer. He began to feel an enigmatic pain in a cloud of confusion. Self-pity and distrust coursed throughout his body. "How… how could I know?" he whispered faintly, forgetting his own body. She knew she had him. She smiled softly, before quickly turning to a look of pity. In a state of complete uncertainty, he began to tremble. The world began to change shape, becoming something he could no longer recognize. His chest and eyes burned. He felt like he was choking, and recognized feelings of hunger and dehydration. In a daze, he hastily pulled out a notebook and pen from his drawer and sat down to begin writing.

    Writing poetry sometimes helped him get through moments like this. He sat at his desk and wrote for a few minutes. He settled, focusing on properly expressing his agony. Becoming increasingly lost in his writing, he thought about his struggle to reach what he believes his potential might be. He thought about his relationships, his failures, and the lies he's told and been told. His desire to connect with people and fix the brokenness within himself. The feeling of needing to be fixed and wanting to be able to fix others. Conflict and self-pity brewed within him as he finished the last parts of the poem.

    After writing the last few words, he looked behind him to realize that she was there, in his room. Sitting on his bed, she held an aura of kindness with eyes full of pity. A cryptic smirk was steady on her lips. He quickly turned his eyes to the page and silently read back what he had written. He read it many times, not bothering to count how many and unsure he’d be able to keep track, anyway. A part of him felt profundity in each line and a part of him wanted to tear it up and throw it away. Wanting reassurance, he hesitantly asked her, "Do you want to hear it?" She nodded. He began to read aloud.