A Bereaver’s Self-Prompted Encore

It went something like this.

Like a fleeting daydream you’ve unwittingly drifted out of, the continuous effort dedicated to scraping what little one can reclaim yields no fruit.

The harder you try, the further your original thoughts obscure themselves.

Only this time, what’s obscured would be the very existence of a person.

One moment, they were here. The next—gone.

That entire being had vanished—fizzled into oblivion. Tracelessly, as if no such person had ever existed.

And with them, a root of yourself that had fused to their presence disappeared too.

Gone just as fast, devoid of any signs of life. Just as dead.

Belatedly, you’d wonder why, wonder how - wonder what happened. You know they definitely existed, but now, as you attempt to fathom, it seems impossibly so.

This goes on for the remainder of your life.

So long as you continue to inhale, exhale, perceive and think;

Your vision replays nothing but what came to pass.

While you’re in it, the faint awareness of your current state stutters alive as records of your shared past bleed into your vision.

You glimpse at the certain stutters of-

The gentle caress of a noose, grasp tightening just below your jaw as the weight of your neck yields to gravity’s insistent pull. The crisp, refined shackles spoon your wrists in assurance, prompting you to dimly wonder how it had come to embrace you to begin with.

Then, as you dangle limp, gaze firmly guided by your noose, you watch, rewind, and replay every moment that had built you up from splinters to who you once were, when that miracle had been with you.

Every joyous occasion. Every miserable second. All that had braced you into the better, chivalrous individual alongside your precious one.

And then—the finale, where—

A scythe carves in to butcher your mind and heart, claiming unequal pieces for itself before taking its leave.

What happens in a blink of an eye is processed in such ways that every timestamp had shredded itself apart to sparse, indefinite capsules of recurring memories, each one indignant and in demand of attention.

Each wreaks havoc with its own shriek, their unreserved torrents of lament nicking your ears and face before embedding itself back into the bleak ditch in your chest that the scythe had gorged open.

For every repetition, your screams and the privilege to agonize had all been siphoned out by those shards of time. The incoherent and morbid suffocation you’ve come to bear had all but just begun.

Then, you watch, muted, as it-

Rots

Spoils

Festers

Putrefies

Under your very gaze.

Was it your consciousness? Your body? Your mind?

Or all of you that succumbed to decay?

There’s no way to tell amid the chaos of denial and desperation.

The hollow in your chest, once seemingly pristine, now morphs into the putrid corpse it has decomposed itself into. Each unrelenting shred of memory and emotion gouges within, making itself at home.

Like parasites, harsh profanities claw at your caving chest from under the skin, intoxicating and contaminating your senses, instilling you with learned helplessness, guilt, and despair as your will to resist is deprived dry to the bones.

Instead, you are polluted with shame, misery, and mournful resignation of what you’ve led yourself to become - of who you’ve surrendered your ego to.

Under their mercy, it is the deliberate reduction of your being that you’ve merrily signed away for another.

To another existence. To that person, who had become your precious in turn. Part of your being, down to the naked essence of what made you, you.

Now that they’re gone, so have you, along with.

And only then, do you truthfully realize.

The sheer magnitude of power over yourself that you’ve given away, under another being’s mercy.

As well as how devastating it will be, had things gone wrong.

And it had.

Under arduous briefings, you muse to yourself hysterically; how could such inhumane foolishness ever come to be? Among the undulating, cannibalistic pain you’ve watched yourself submerge within for the allure that preceded it - was that what rendered you retarded for what sacrifices you’ve willingly undergone?

The sweet, sweet siren that progressively teased the unconscious zeal to placate your desire to belong, to matter - was that the only addiction seducing you to give in to taking the escape?

No.

It was also the mute, yet impatient and desperate plea of the unfiltered, raw greed to be whole; to be a complete, independent, and autonomous individual; impregnable amid all outside, corrupt forces hell-bent on fleshing you apart.

The disgraceful desire enough that your very ego has prostrated itself before you to get rid of.

Or, at the very least, thoroughly suppress into an unsuspecting pit inside yourself that would be gleefully overlooked with generous doses of deliberate ignorance.

The foundations you’ve built your existence on had been rotten to begin with.

Yet, you refuse to acknowledge such until after the poison has done its damage.

That audacious denial of deciding to build, board, and stay on a sinking ship would be equivalent to jumping into the sea of fire to find salvation - but is that salvation the one you wanted?

Only after the skin charred, bones harrowed, flesh shredded, heart butchered, and chest caved, infested - did you admit your induced foolishness.

Why were the foundations of your existence built entirely upon another being, and not oneself?

Why ignore the rotten parasites that contaminated and siphoned away your autonomy as an impregnable, independent, individual?

Foolish.

Why deny that while your escape did not disappoint, when they’ve fallen, as did you - tenfold - under the whims and mercy of another being?

Foolish.

What are the corrupt forces hell-bent on picking and savoring you apart, you ask?

The foreign beings outside yourself deprived and eager for the love, respect, admiration, dedication, protection, support, devotion, loyalty, blessings, and fortune that you bear - they allusively woo for but can never replicate? Much less reciprocate.

It’s equivalent to watering a plant with no roots.

Your uninterrupted delirium of a worthwhile bereavement - is it really?

Such false consolidation. Welcoming what scraps you stumble upon that stutters mere fractions of afterimages, hoping they’ll put up worthwhile comfort.

This voluntary immersion you’ve lulled into - it seeps in all at once, in occasional, uninvited dribbles, or none at all. As you wake, dip yourself out of bed, make your way to your daily destinations, all that lingers drifts your conscience back to the encasement made up of the scabs upon scars leeching off of your chest.

The serene dulling of your vision, scenery soaking away your focus, the lone splinter of nostalgia unabashedly remains your sole engagement.

The myriad of emotions flit through alongside the pulses of your heartbeat - all the anger, guilt, regret, longing, depression, resignation, hope, excitement, fatigue, sorrow, acknowledgment, trust, understanding, comfort, wistfulness, joy, dread, shock, grudges, stubbornness, restlessness, patience, familiarity, suspense - which echo past you in desperation to be heard once more.

Words, scenes, pangs of sentiment bleed through the melancholic vision and coil around you, the captured moments stuttering alive with the help of your breath for another time.

Countless more jarring flashbacks both stimulate and prolong the nostalgia, the intensity in each pulse of emotion dilating. Whether a few moments or hour passes feel all the same.

With time, the splinter recedes back into your chest, the remaining dredges of your encasement dispersing the dulling veil around your vision.

And, as you resume your day,

What if you realized that everything you wanted from someone else, you actually wanted from yourself?

The lungs in your ego seethe away;

Choose yourself. Even when you want to choose others. Especially when you want to choose others.

Because it’s a need for you, and a want for others.

Love yourself more than anyone else. In order to see your surroundings and share your love, you must be strong first.

One day, you will kill this pain, or this pain will kill you.

The past must die - or it won’t let you live.

Yet, what could a dead, beating heart like this do?

Maybe it can only wait, until the day it musters enough courage and convinces itself that it’s deserving of love. A love unperturbed by the world around it, one that comes from within.

And in this endless ache, what can a heart do but wait, wondering if it is worthy of the love it never had?