Take Myself from these Eyes

Take Myself from these Eyes1

It’s a heartless Monday morning, already I’ve spent hours trawling through notebooks, diaries, reassembling the minutiae of these two lives and each frustrating, interconnecting strand. The woman’s habit of either using vague initials or even dispensing with names altogether continues to frustrate me, yet I feel I am starting to know her. Those snap green eyes haunt me, no matter how hard I try to maintain my professional distance I hear those coupled utterances –Help me- no request, a command almost. She writes for herself, although at times she slips and reveals her intense desire for an audience, one who may understand. She knows that someday, someplace, that someone will read her words, it’s almost as if she always knew that this was would happen. 2

I am familiar with the pointedly compact script she uses, her neat precise style of diary writing; her fondness for intense poetry addressing all sorts of subjects apart from that one which must have occupied much of her thought over the past few years, betrayal and disappointment. Rarely does she show sympathy for herself and the situation which she found herself immersed in, though I trace elements of self loathing and even self disgust, why did she allow such treatment, such behaviour from those around her, including herself, it’s a question I feel that no one could even possibly attempt to answer. 3

She has a habit of reusing the same adjectives to describe the same subjects; a particular smile is always described as slow, sweet, sad, and a wing continually as whitegrey or greywhite. I didn’t doubt that she was short of vocabulary, the vast array of torn and tattered books in that house bore evidence of someone, probably her, enjoying the solitary pursuit of reading, and not just the bubblegum escapist fiction beloved of many of her contemporaries. This thirtysomething, it seemed had a taste for what she would deem as literature, or even literary fiction. No, this was just a pattern she’d developed and enjoyed using. Typical of her.4

The computer and its files are now ready, we know that it too may yield further secrets for us to delve into, to pry perhaps, but this is what I do, this is my field, my expertise. I usually enjoy the detail, the restoration, indeed I do, constructing my images, my portraits, my profiles, I need to know why, always the prevailing question eroding my curiosity, why did you do what you did, what led you to behave like this? Why? Why? Why?5

This latest file, oddly numbered, is it a date? File number? I will never really understand the truth behind the woman’s reasoning appears to be a form of farewell, some sort of testament even, it fails to explain her reasons yet it provides us with a measure of understanding. She states openly that this is her final message, it’s almost as if she’s saying goodbye. I can hear her now, as plainly as I hear my own voice or that of my colleague’s; he continues to fail to understand why I feel the way I do, what is my motivation in this particular enigma, perhaps one day, one day, he too will comprehend this minor tragedy if that is not too melodramatic a term. What would I know? I should remain neutral, impartial, professional at all times, yet no matter how often I write those words in my own documentation, I am increasingly concerned that I can only delude myself even further.6

File Number 5/3/707

I have forgotten how to love. To be in love, none of this matters at all to me anymore. Yes, I am sure I still retain the capacity to lust, to yearn, or to simply desire that which remains safely unattainably impossibly out of my slithery slippery grip. I know I can want. I know I can long but I can’t just love unquestioningly without feeling that in the ashes of my life there is simply no point in these futile emotions whatsoever. Why inflict such recurrent pain on the already frailly damaged psyche I foolishly pretend to be just me.8

What is the point of attachment, of this puerile emotion we term to be love? I can honestly say that it has brought me intense happiness in my lifetime, yet it has also killed me. My capacity for love has brought me here, to this sordid end. No matter how many people tell me to pick up the pieces, to take myself away, to carry on, it just doesn’t matter anymore. There simply isn’t any point. I feel I have reached a natural end, my river has run its course now, my tale is told, even if it is a mere idiot’s tale, it is done, it is over, there really is no way back for me. Even if I wanted there to be another way, it’s just too late. It really is. 9

This is my choice, believe me.10

When I gape into the sharded reflection what returns my haunting gaze, the face in the mirror is it really still mine? Have I removed myself so utterly from the hopeful child, so rosy cheeked with innocence and laughing into an untroubled future. It was all so easy, so facile and unhesitatingly unquestioned. We didn’t doubt what would ever become of us, we just knew, we just had no doubt that happiness would enfold and envelop us and fairy like we’d live happily ever after in our own sugar candy castle.11

However.12

Unfortunately13

But….14

This isn’t how it’s meant to be. This isn’t our way forward. 15

I’m not old, I’m not young, I’m nothing. I feel empty, arid, sucked dry of all emotion, I’m a husk of pain, I don’t think I will ever feel again. Besides, I don’t want to. I never imagined this ending, I didn’t, but when I think about it, when I really think carefully and deeply about it I realise that I have arrived at a state of truth. A state that I can only know truly understand and accept, for this is me. This is my truth. Not the fake plastic emotions, the sickly satin sentiments scrawled on stupid cards, nor the sticky tacky roses bleeding with superficiality; the vomit inducing cuddly bears, kittens, rabbits all proclaiming their messages of hypocritical affection. None of that for me, no thank you very much, I always found it incredibly embarrassing anyway. I continually spurned this commercialisation. Not for me the cheap saccharine love song of the talentless and manufactured idols crooning their way into affections of the masses. No, for me genuine emotion was pain, self inflicted or otherwise. Pain is the only answer, real heartache can only derive from despair. Didn’t they tell me in school that TS Eliot could only write The Waste Land because he was impotent and depressed? That Virginia Wool’s masterpieces were conceived in her madness? A happy life cannot give birth to great art. No, suffering is everything. How can anyone sing of pain, of loss, of anything unless they have lived it? Tell me that. No, only those who have truly been there can speak a measure of truth, like me. This is real. This is real. My reality.16

Reality born of bloody experience is a harder mistress than futile unspun dreams of innocent adolescence. No more idle fantasies of simple moments of being happy. We commandeer our senses, rally our emotions and cease to be alive. We get on, we function and more or less exist in our own vacuum.17

So that’s how I felt. Indeed, this is how I feel. 18

When you read this you’ll suddenly realise why I have decided to do what gave me no choice. This is my truth and I want you to read of me. I want you, whoever you may be, just to realise that I’m more than just a single statistic on your crime sheet, that I had dreams once, that I lived, I mean really lived, laughed but never loved as I can no longer feel that sanctimonious emotion I see everyone around me indulging and wallowing trotter deep in. Their smug contentment badges of pride and success nailed to their empty-headed self-satisfaction. How I once longed for that mystery, but honestly no more at all. The sweet poppy red oblivion of desire is all I crave now.19

Read this. Please. This is all I ask of you. You will, perhaps judge me a heartless self-pitying monster created from self-loathing and utter rejection. What right did I ever have to remove two from our fantasy existence? But I challenge you with my retort – did I have a choice? Did I really ask for any of this? You may feel I was clearly a fool who should have walked whenever life exploded, not gripped on in vain hope of any moment of resurrection. But this was my life. I’d sacrificed far too much to let it all whither and fragment into his death, his choice and I will do what I want. He did this to me, this is what he deserves and I can genuinely shout it from any rooftop you would care to nominate that I am not at all repentant, not at all sorry for doing what I may do someday.20

I may think softly of one or two I leave in our wake. But this is my central selfish act, my lone defiant gesture of retribution.21

This, I suppose is a measure of confession. I won’t deny that the thought hasn’t filtered through my consciousness, indeed, the hammer is a recent acquisition and purchased for one purpose alone, she isn’t destined for routine d.i.y or anything quite so mundane. So tiny yet so lethal, I have only ever intended her to be used in a single murderous act. I know one day that it will come to this, inevitable really, one of us will crack. If not me, then him. I know that he will surely kill me sooner rather than later, so this is the only way, isn’t it. It’s all about control, I have made a decision, a conscious decision, there has to be a suitable conclusion and this is it.22

Perhaps one day someone will understand, but I honestly doubt it, I honestly doubt if anyone really can. I don’t. Perhaps we’re not meant to, are we puppets of the almighty deity laughingly tugging our lifestrings and deciding our tiny infinitesimal fates.23

It’s a question that I am particularly unsuited to answering.24

But when you read this, judge if you so desire, but please try to understand that this is just how it has to be.25

Please look after my cat, he deserves better than our shrill emotions shredded into violent evenings, when all he could do was cower under the nearest item of remaining furniture. I feet so guilty for what we have done to him, he didn’t deserve any of it. My poor Man. He’s an affectionate and simple soul, all he wants is to be fed and loved. So all I ask is that The Man is loved.26

You have never known me. You will undoubtedly be forced in your professional capacity to reconstruct me, maybe repair our damage to others, but you may remain untouched and aloof in your piecing. Please don’t feel pity for me, I don’t merit pity, because this will be my decision. A decision I take in the full knowledge of what I am going to do. I take full responsibilities for my actions, there really isn’t an alternative, no third way, and I don’t think any of us ever really had a choice. Perhaps like Romeo and Juliet, although I loathe referring to those two immature creations, clichéd stereotypes, this future was written somewhere, predetermined and unavoidable. Though, who can say if I were given any sort of choice I may select differently. Perhaps in my own personal cosmos there is a very different conclusion to all of this. And who knows, given a parallel universe I may just find what I am searching for, whatever that may be. This isn’t it but this is the way it has to be. 27

Who can say that after all of this you may feel one day that you have come to know me. I doubt it. I don’t even know myself. Nor do I want to.28

Just take care of the cat. Please.29