Breaking the Circle

“You’re always looking for yourself in those fictional worlds. But words can’t tell you who you are!”

In the dust that swirled in the wake of his girlfriend -- likely now ex girlfriend, he supposed -- Tenilan’s mind refracted pieces of desolation, desperation, and loss. Sitting at his rickety wooden desk in the middle of it all, he mused. 

Can’t words tell you who are? What would you use, if not words?

But he didn’t get very far in this line of thought, because other words -- the parting words of other girlfriends -- crept in.

I just don’t understand what you want me to do!

I’m done trying to get everything exactly right.

That’s what I don’t understand. If I am with you, how can you be lonely?

Is this another test?

Do you actually want me here or not?

Why don’t you stop talking about fiction and make that a reality?

I want to make you happy but you won’t be because there is always something that comes up! You feel guilty about being happy and loved!

You’re stuck in your own circular argument. That one jarred. Tenilan understood comments about his being too removed, too confusing, or too unhappy (though he had always held it wasn’t guilt, it was fear that held him back). But one or two of them on the way out had mentioned the “circular argument,” and he had never quite got it. 

After all, he was a folklore scholar. He had never even been trained in debate; he’d had his nose buried too far in scrolls, one teacher had remarked, to have any hope of projecting his voice. So what, then, was a circular argument? Through the haze left by someone leaving, more to give himself something to do than anything else, Tenilan reached for the nearest reference scroll and scrolled through it. The quill still stuck in his hand trailed ink over the parchment as he searched. 

Circular argument: term used in debate; a logical fallacy. Well that much he had already known; was it really that simple? Tenilan frowned. Beside the words was a little picture:

Tenilan thought about this with all the perspicacity of one who has something else much more pressing and unpleasant to consider. 

Is my argument really like that? he wondered. There was only one way, insofar as he saw, to solve this problem. Tenilan recovered his quill, drew the nearest scrap of parchment to him, and began to write. He began very simply with what he saw as the crux of the issue:

I am lonely and afraid.

So far, so good. But to break the rest of the familiar chain into small, logical steps -- Tenilan hesitated.

 I am lonely and afraid. 

↓

That fear makes me frustrating to others

That fear makes me inconsolable

Here again Tenilan paused. He had seen that perhaps the pattern of behavior, or the series of events, was not what this term was for. Perhaps it was much more simple than this chain was going to be. He set the problematic chain aside for a moment and picked out another scrap from the neat piles on his desk. On this one he began with the fear itself:

Everyone is going to leave

And after a short moment, realization dawning in dull eyes, he completed the diagram:

That, thought Tenilan, made a terrifying sense. Everyone is going to leave because I am not good enough to make them stay; I am not good enough, not open nor caring nor vulnerable enough, because I know in my heart that they will leave.

It was horrifying, actually, to see it distilled on parchment. Mesmerised by the awful hopelessness of it, like a victim drawn into a spider’s web, Tenilan returned to the other scrap of parchment and completed the chain of events as easily as if receiving dictation:

I am lonely and afraid

↓

That fear makes me inconsolable

↓

Inconsolability is frustrating to others

↓

Others give up & leave

And, with a feeling of inevitability -- as one who sees their argument and knows already how it will lose -- Tenilan drew a thoughtful arrow connecting the bottom and the top.

~~~~~~

Were anyone to look up Tenilan in a reference scroll, if such a complex work could exist, this is what they would find:

Tenilan: name combining prefix >Teni<, agreeable, with suffix >lan<, scholar. Known for expertise in folklore across the Continent, and notably for having been a member of the Order of Knowledge for over a decade without having published a single scroll.

Tenilan was an expert in old stories -- not as big a field as one might imagine,given the age of the world, but that just afforded him more time to focus on particular details. He was especially adept at elements of romance and adventure. Given any portion of an old love poem, he could quote the entirety; he had commissioned pictures of historic heroes and heroines with which to line his walls; his private collection of retold love stories was rumored to be second only to one on the Continent; and he himself had catalogued thirty-two versions of the Fall of Terre, also sometimes called the Love of the Moon. And while Tenilan knew in theory that it wasn’t wise to look to fairy tales for a practical guide on how to love -- he also didn’t delve too deeply into his fascination with the stories. 

So without delving into it, he’d been through girlfriends like books in a series -- one after another. His parents met each one cordially and never said anything about them once they were gone. For he did have parents, the lonely scholar, and a large family besides; yet somehow that family made his fear worse. It was, to him, an excellent example of people socially tied together but emotionally far apart. Once long ago he had thought them dead, and they him; and none of them had ever recovered.

Because how does one recover from a death that didn’t happen? It was the sort of question Tenilan pondered without ever writing down. Somehow there was far more shame in admitting sourceless grief than in giving an academic presentation on the presence of sex in primal odes. He had always assumed -- or rather, had hoped -- that one could make progress logically; that the more he lived, the easier it would become to get over his fear; how could one live, he thought, without making progress? It was all one grand adventure, was it not? And each time his fear cropped up on the path, he’d get a little stronger, a little quicker to evade it. Perhaps one day he’d even meet someone who would help him slay it.

But that someone hadn’t been any of the previous dozen frustrated women, and it hadn’t been any of his family or friends. And Tenilan was getting tired of watching people run screaming whenever it cropped up.

~~~~~~~

Tenilan sat and looked at his logical little loop of behaviors. It was imminently right, of this he was sure: it was exactly his experience, there in a neat little step-by-step diagram. And furthermore he knew from watching his colleagues and relations that he wasn’t the only one this diagram might apply to; it was widespread, inescapable even. It made sense. 

So what kind of sense, he wondered, does it take for someone to get out of that loop?

And then for the very first time, the desperate and erudite scholar of love stories thought, Maybe this is why people believe so much in love.

Not because a perfect match would come along with a sword and slay the dragon -- not because love was an answer -- but because love was the strength to make a different choice. 

Tenilan sucked in his breath and refocused on his diagram. 

I am lonely and afraid

↓ ↓

That fear makes me inconsolable I allow myself to be consoled

He wrote in the opposite choice. Then he hesitated, half in fear that this new choice would lead to a predictable new sequence -- and mostly afraid that it wouldn’t.

I am lonely and afraid

↓ ↓

That fear makes me inconsolable I allow myself to be consoled

↓ ↓

Inconsolability is frustrating to others Someone consoles me

Tenilan’s fingers knew the next answer with no hesitation. He had always known this -- well, always that he could remember. Even if people want to be there for you, want to stay, it doesn’t mean that they can. The world can conspire against you. This was, after all, a large part of the reason he was afraid. This was the dragon’s searing breath. 

I am lonely and afraid

↓ ↓

That fear makes me inconsolable I allow myself to be consoled

↓ ↓

Inconsolability is frustrating to others Someone consoles me

↓ ↓

Others give up & leave Maybe they end up leaving

The “maybe” was just to be nice: no one could say he hadn’t given love its fair shot. But Tenilan knew in his heart it would happen someday. 

And yet -- even though none of it was a surprise -- still he hadn’t realized how nicely it would all fit together. How easily the return arrow could be drawn from maybe they end of leaving to I am lonely and afraid, which of course he would be, and then again to I allow myself to be consoled . . . And each consolation would be its own story; he could see that at once. 

Tenilan caught his breath. He folded the parchment carefully, smudging the bits that hadn’t dried. He stuffed the scrap into a pocket in his tunic, and hurried through the dust out the door.