If I Can’t Be a Part of Your World
Of course, I can’t always have what I want. That would be far too easy. My own happiness sometimes collides with the dreams and wishes of others. And it’s not my place to harm them just because I have the questionable opinion that I must be the main character in every story told.
Every once in a while, I have to admit to myself that I’m only a supporting character in a play and that the spotlight is on someone else. No matter how difficult that may be for my own ego. Sometimes I’m neither Romeo nor Juliet but just some fruit seller suffering in the background.
When the black-clad, slim, and, at the right moments, impudently grinning person, with the white sneakers marked by life, whom I like, with whom I want to spend time, with whom I want to experience adventures, forge memories and together resist the perils of the world, already has just such a person by their side, but who, surprise surprise, is not me, the only correct path I should be able to take is the one that leads away.
Away from this charming person, away from their supposedly radiant happiness, away from the creeping pain to which I have become accustomed in the past out of pure ignorance towards myself and possibly a bit of masochism.
The main goal is to get away from the inner urge to maybe still, by some miracle that comes along and completely contradicts the logic of this universe, get the knowledge to become a part of this slowly dissolving hope.
Before I cause irreparable damage. To myself and to the one I actually wanted to win for myself. Because all I can achieve through this desperate plan is hatred, anger, and an almost unimaginable loneliness. And I certainly don’t want that. Unless I’m already lost. But then it’s all too late anyway.
So while you’re lying in bed with your boyfriend late at night, watching some show on Netflix, letting him dive into you, and now, not a single thought wasted on me, falling asleep snuggled up close to each other, I’m standing at the train station after some boring party in the rain and with two cold cheeseburgers from McDonald’s in my bag, waiting for the last train home, only to indulge in the one pastime I was determined to avoid: Thinking about you.
I could spare myself these embarrassing and pathetic mental scars by following the advice of others. That I should distract myself. That I should talk to the nice but uninteresting faces more than just a few irrelevant sentences. That I might find someone who can burn herself into my own emotional world just as much as the person whose attention I’m trying to draw to myself with every conceivable means.
But of course, I don’t want that. Because all the others are just empty shells in contrast to this one person. And although I know damn well that this isn’t true, it’s far easier to regard this lie, both subjective and objective, as a set truth and thereby melt away undisturbed in my own self-pity. Heartbreak, after all, is much more fun when you renounce all hope.
Because this way of dealing with grief is also much easier than having to face the uncomfortable reality that I may not be infatuated with the person per se, but with the false expectations I pumped into her from the very beginning.
After all, what do I know about this girl except the isolated stories she has so graciously shared with me and the connections I have been allowed to spin together for myself because otherwise I would have been sitting in front of a patchwork quilt of strangers’ memories? Exactly: nothing. I know nothing at all. And realizing this fact is the first step out of my own broken head and into the real world.
In addition, how could it be otherwise, I’m a good human being. Of course. At least that’s what I tell myself in order to not go completely insane. I don’t want to interfere with the other person’s romance at all, no matter how broken and certainly insanely unhappy I think she must be. This sneaky attack would not befit me and would also be deeply misanthropic. And possibly also very stupid.
Besides, and this is the most important point, it would bring me nothing. After all, I wouldn’t be the brave hero who rescues the helpless princess from the clutches of a painful relationship, no, I’d just be a run-of-the-mill asshole who’s been on a bad trip way too long and, out of whatever psychopathic abyss, has decided that his only chance for happiness is to ruin someone else’s. And no one wants to associate with someone like that.
Nobody wants to have anything to do with someone like that. Never in a million years. Especially not the person on the other side of my crumbling world, whose grin I see in front of me when I close my eyes. My happiness should be untouchable. Even if they have decided that I just aren’t allowed to be a part of it.
So there is nothing left but to scrape together the last remains of my own mind, my own reason, and maybe a little bit of my own pride and to come to the only right decision, which is worth following. I have to tear down, burn, and blow up these bridges built in the wrong direction as fast as somehow possible, in order to turn around and finally walk on the ridge of mental health again. Before it’s possibly finally too late.
Maybe the other nice faces aren’t just empty shells after all. Maybe one of them can evoke the same feelings in me as the black-clad, slim person with the white sneakers marked by life. Maybe one of them is just as pretty, smart, and naughty, if only I give her the potential to do so, instead of waving it off in annoyance from the start. And if all goes well, I’ll even forget why I was so fascinated by this one impudently grinning human being.