The Scene from a Book

Put down the book, distressed and in pain; yes, the longing that hurts. You’ve read the scene before but something about it just stops you and affects you with intense longing again and again and again till you’re a wreck, drowning in a whirlpool of words, that reminds you of what you desperately want but what you can never quite seem to find in this mess of a world.

Oh, it hurts. You could cry. Yes, it hurts. And when you pick the book up again to put it away, you feel the warmth of where your hands were and it’s like a part of you was captured, like a little bird in big hands; the soul is trapped in its self-inflicted wretchedness, and you want to be held but the person you most want to hold you was represented in that book and... you’re not sure if they exist outside. Was it wrong to want a dream? Was it wrong to be in love ... with an ideal? Lasting so long that even as you came to see the world for what it truly is, you clung. And they say you’re young, and they say there’s more to come, but will things ever be how you wanted when you were so blind and naïve? And it tears at you - your pessimism. Your cynicism, your realism.

Realism. Fancy that. It’s depressed you in the past. And you’re caught: a strand of hair caught on two branches: one idealism and desperate hope, the other pain and hard-to-swallow truths. You tear yourself apart each time you think - these forces can’t be resolved like Normal Reaction Force and a component of the weight of an object on a plane... And would it be easier to be clinical, cold? To say you didn’t believe in love at all? To say that people weren’t worth it, and break your heart all the more forcefully... No. Of course not. But where you are now, where you see yourself being forever, is lightning and thunder and rain in the mist. And it hurts. It physically hurts.