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I
didn't mean to treat you so bad
You shouldn't take it so personal
I didn't mean to make you so sad
You just happened to be there, that's all
But, sooner or later, one of us must know
You just did what you're supposed to do
Sooner or later, one of us must know
That I really did try to get close to you
One Of Us Must Know
-Bob Dylan
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She
entered the room with quiet hesitation, her head slightly bowed,
eyes cast down. She was wearing new glasses, and her face appeared
a little fuller than usual. He had been planning this moment
for some time now and was looking forward to a heated confrontation.
But reality has a way of robbing events of the levels of exultation
and definitiveness reached in one's imagination. In this case
it was simply her underwhelming interest in his passionate feelings
for her that so quickly dispelled the imagined glory of the
confrontation. She possessed towards him a very thorough form
of disinterest, one motivated not at all by resentment or dislike;
those are always transparent and yield eventually to what lies
beneath. Rather, he simply did not occur to her. She did not
feel strongly about him one way or the other and when not in
his immediate physical presence all thoughts of him disappeared
completely from her mind. The only remedy he had discovered
thus far for this tragic circumstance was to continue all the
more forcefully to impress himself upon her. Having been subjected
to her indifference over the past months and finding his obsessive
love only growing in seeming proportion to it, he desired from
her now more than ever a reaction of violent emotion and while
preferring that it be love, he would settle for its flip side.
He would either MAKE her love him or hate him but she would
no longer be able feel indifference towards him.
He had argued with her to the limits of sanity the reasons justifying
her inability to requite his feelings, putting both her and
him on the spot and making a show of it in the process, making
the process painfully clear. He built his case like a lawyer,
brick by brick and he challenged her to find a flaw in his creation.
He deserved her love if only because of the strength of his
desire for it. At the same time he exposed the holes in her
defense, the wall she had around her, guarding against his affections,
trying to find a place through which he could slip.
She simply did not understand that they were meant for each
other, perfect for each other. Only he could see her true beauty.
He thought she looked like an angel, innocent, pure, and divine.
He was Catholic. She protested that matters of love do not work
this way: it was not founded on rationality or what necessarily
should be. She was Protestant. But if not, why not, he countered,
why not be the first, after all we both realize that I am right.
He had developed the curious ability to observe himself behaving
in this manner and while recognizing on some level the seeming
craziness of his actions he was unfortunately unable to continue
on to the next step of stopping himself from acting as such.
He told himself that having chosen this path he must follow
it now to its logical conclusion. Perhaps this was just his
rationale. If he viewed his behavior as destiny, as out of his
control, as a role he must play to the end then he could dodge
completely any responsibility for the insane passions he continued
to indulge. He wanted her with such an all consuming desire,
a desire that somehow transcended both the physical and emotional,
achieving instead a synthesis divine, a perfect child containing
both yet beyond the two. It hurt to look in her eyes and see
nothing reflected back. It turned his stomach in knots. There
was a heaviness in his chest.
And while he understood his actions towards her on many levels
to be unfair that fact that she did not stop him, in his mind
at least, partially justified his continuing to treat her that
way. For rarely did she protest as he spent hours in her presence
exploring every crevice of their interactions from all angles
and rendering truths and import in the most irrelevant of exchanges.
If it was a role and a show that he was playing maybe she was
on some level enjoying the performance, perhaps even taking
part herself. All these things he told himself, but nothing
ever really changed.
| William
Crain, October 2002 |
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