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 anyway. My own happiness sometimes collides with the dreams and wishes of others. And I have no right to hurt them just because I hold the questionable belief that I absolutely must be the main character in every single story that is told.
Every now and then I have to admit to myself that, in a play, I only occupy a supporting role and that the spotlight is directed at someone else. No matter how hard that may be on my own ego. Sometimes I am neither Romeo nor Juliet, but simply some random fruit vendor who suffers dutifully in the background.
If the slim, black-clad girl I like—with her white sneakers marked by life, who grins shamelessly at just the right moments—the girl I want to spend time with, experience adventures with, forge memories with, and face the perils of the world alongside, already has someone like that by her side, who—surprise—is not me, then the only correct path I should be capable of taking is the one that leads away.
Away from this captivating girl, away from her supposedly radiant happiness, away from the creeping pain I have grown accustomed to in recent times out of sheer ignorance toward myself and perhaps a touch of masochism.
Above all, away from the inner urge to perhaps still obtain—through some random, completely logic-defying miracle of this universe—the chance to become part of this slowly dissolving hope.
Before I cause irreparable damage. To myself and to the girl I actually wanted to win over. Because all I could achieve with this desperate plan is hatred, anger, and an almost unimaginable loneliness. And I certainly don’t want that. Unless I am already lost. But then everything is too late anyway.
So while she’s lying in bed with her boyfriend late at night, having watched a show, he was allowed to dive into her, and now, without sparing a single thought for me, has fallen asleep tightly cuddled up to him, I stand after a mediocre party in the rain, with two cold, rancid McDonald’s cheeseburgers in a bag, at the main station, waiting for the last train home—only to indulge in the one pastime I desperately wanted to prevent: thinking about her.
These embarrassing and pitiful emotional scars could be avoided if I followed the advice that emerged from a boozy round of others. That I should distract myself. That I should talk to the nice but uninteresting faces about more than just a few irrelevant sentences. That I might thereby find someone who could burn themselves into my emotional world just as deeply as the person whose attention I am trying to draw to myself by every conceivable means.
But of course I don’t want that. Because everyone else is just empty shells compared to this one girl. And even though I know perfectly well that this isn’t true, it’s far easier to regard this both subjective and objective lie as an established truth and thus dissolve undisturbed in my own self-pity. After all, heartbreak is much more fun when I abandon all hope.
Perhaps because this way of dealing with sorrow is also much easier than having to face the uncomfortable reality that I may not actually be infatuated with the girl herself, but with the false expectations I pumped into her from the very beginning.
Because what do I really know about this girl, beyond the scattered stories she so graciously shared with me, and the connections I had to piece together myself—otherwise I would have been staring at a patchwork of other people’s memories? Exactly: nothing. I know absolutely nothing. And realizing this fact is the first step out of my own broken head and into the real world.
On top of that, as could hardly be otherwise, I’m a good person. Of course I am. At least that’s what I tell myself so I don’t go completely insane. I don’t want to barge into someone else’s romance, no matter how broken and certainly miserable I might imagine it to be. Such a devious attack would not be my place and would also be deeply misanthropic. And probably very stupid.
Besides—and this is the most important point—it would get me nothing. I wouldn’t be the brave hero rescuing the helpless princess from the clutches of a painful relationship. No, I would simply be some random asshole who got too caught up in his own movie and, from whatever psychopathic abyss, decided that his only chance at happiness was to destroy that of others.
And no one wants anything to do with someone like that. Ever. Least of all the girl far removed from my own crumbling world, whose grin I see before me when I close my eyes. Her happiness should be untouchable. Even if she has decided that I myself may not be a part of it.
So I am left with nothing else but to scrape together the last remnants of my own sanity, my own reason, and perhaps a bit of my own pride, and arrive at the only right decision that is worth pursuing.
Namely, that I must tear down, burn, and blow up these bridges built in the wrong direction as quickly as possible, turn around, and finally walk once more along the ridge of mental health. Before it is possibly 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 slim, black-clad girl with the white sneakers marked by life. Maybe one of them is just as pretty, smart, and cheeky—if only I allow for that potential instead of dismissing it with irritation from the outset. And if everything goes well, I might even forget why I was so fascinated by that one shamelessly grinning person in the first place.