The Standard Tragedy of Love
The standard tragedy of love is not that it ends,
but that it can coexist with total self - erosion.
You are trapped in the ultimate paradox of intimacy:
the profound cruelty of a soulmate
who functions as a sanctuary and a executioner
in equal measure.
It is the agonizing choice between
the preservation of one’s own sanity
and the preservation of one's most profound love.
How does the mind reconcile this ruinous contradiction?
That the very source of my quietest torment -
the one who leaves me feeling invalidated,
exposed, utterly erased,
and perpetually insufficient -
is the exact same sovereign to whom I have surrendered my heart?
If I walk away, I know the haunting that awaits me:
I will spend the rest of my days seeking your shadow in every stranger’s face.
I will seal my heart against the world,
swearing an oath to never grant another soul this power.
You are already woven into the fabric of my biology -
lodged in every shallow breath,
every desperate pulse of my exposed chest,
every drop of blood and salt wrung from a body I no longer feel is mine.
Without you, I would have remained ignorant of love’s staggering depth.
And yet, I despise you. I despise the hollow, terrified creature I become in your presence.
Yet here I remain, paralyzed. I cannot endure another exit.
I love you to the brink of ruin -
a devotion so absolute that even death feels like an insufficient boundary.
You are bound to me forever, and in your own fractured,
catastrophic way, I know you love me the very most, too.
But why must devotion demand such utter devastation?
I am suspended between two voids. I am suffocating in the open air.
And in the darkest, quietest chamber of my heart,
I harbor a simple, treacherous truth:
I wish our paths had never crossed.
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