"It doesn't look like it fell; it was cut this morning." My dad put in my hands one of the flowers that grow in the yard, flowers that grow fast but disappear just as fast, thanks to one of our little dogs who has discovered an inexplicable love for eating them. When I took the flower in my hands, my first thought was, "How can it look so alive even though it is dead?", or at least, it is slowly dying as it is stripped of the stem that held it.
And to think about that sensation of being detached from that which sustained you, even if it was the idea and the illusion of a person, and not the person himself, is as if the ground collapsed, the oxygen was taken out of the lungs, life passed slowly for you to succumb to madness, and everything happens torturously, as if we were participants in a game in which there are no rules. A cruel game, a wicked game.
Chris Isaak has accompanied my moments of self-punishment with his song "Wicked Game", and the music video that accompanies the lyrics of this desolate lyric, conveys to me that nostalgia and that emptiness that remains after desire, a desire that is not consummated in a healthy and loving way, but a desire that has the sole purpose of snatching and destroying what you carry inside. I grew up seeing how the people around me: family, friends and acquaintances, many of them, have been consumed by a feeling like this, without paying attention to the warning that not only shouts the song, but life itself:
“This world is only gonna break your heart”.
I think it is an inevitable part of the human experience, and not necessarily a consequence of a romantic relationship. The heart does not put conditions for that which hurts because it is simply uncontrollable. And that's fine, that should not make us afraid to live and to love. It is a natural part of life to live, as it is to die, even if it is living.
Isaak's words for a long time were distant to me, as if it was a kind of warning without an addressee. And when it has finally made sense, I see that if the world is on fire, it is we ourselves who must save ourselves, it is we ourselves who at some point, must stop playing games where we will get hurt. But, allowing myself to be vulnerable, I must say that often all we want to be is saved, because we don't know how to do it on our own.
I want to hold on to that something that can sustain me, that is inside me. I don't want to seem full of life when I am consumed inside. I hope we all give up the games, and no longer dream that we will lose ourselves in the process.