It is bad this time. No one expected it to play out this way. One moment we are all seated, laughing and saying shit. We are flipping over memories of PTSDs escapades, because you know what? This is a priceless place. We call it home, and it feels different because this is finally home. We are holding hands, smiling and trying to put shit-storms behind us, because for one, being here symbolizes a new beginning. Two, the den from which I came is not a place worth repatriating. Third, never in my manly life have I felt close to losing life, sincerely. Though to live life is to live time, during which we cruise through sandy beaches and sunsets laced with folksongs and tales. The universe, untimely, is bound to give us an unlubricated deep anal, and for a moment, we cannot breathe through the shit-storm.
The shit-storm wages war. She walks in quietly through the living room, and sits her ass on the bed. She stares at our faces, with creases of smiles forming scarred scowls, which are yet to be bruised permanently. She does not speak to anyone. She begins packing clothes and utensils. She does not maintain eye contact. Her muscles do not flinch any second; she is busy making herself busy. Doing things that would quickly get her off this awful place, home. She wants us gone, it is clear but she does not say it. She screams it, and we see it through her pointy nipples carelessly begging to be let out of this predicament. I do not see her. I only watch her through my rear-view pretending to be caged in a castle, oblivious to the outside world, her. I smile. My laughter fades.
…..beat….
She who came into the house with yellowed cheeks and breaths fuming Armageddon left the house naked. Leaving nothing to chance but spiders petrified on the walls, and cobwebs between her legs. Her golden gates shut, soon to be agape for someone else. There is to be no penetration, none from us whatsoever. We stood at the helm of the soon to be emptied house, begging for a reshuffle. Some wept over the same, and cursed the forgotten ancestors. One time-one time why does change have to be brutal? Why do families get together only to break in the end?
Is it our indecisiveness or is it the powerlessness of the choices we are given? Does the universe stand arms akimbo, watching in silence while mocking us for the stupid times we think we are in control? Or does time travel to reveal what is real and what is not? Does time alone justify regrets are nothing more but abundant blessings of a life unknown?
Over time, I have learnt to search for the answers in my past and failed. I have looked the other way. I have endured shit-storms well enough to know that all good things must end, sometimes. When it happens, Denial seems to be a speck of dust eluding our wants and veering our pain off another trajectory. Such is the fate of a man clutching on blissful mortality.
To be conflicted is to be human, and I have never been. I have never stared at the prism of life in strife. I have never watched myself move cautiously and recklessly. I have never filmed myself create and recreate my messes. Never been so much in love, alive and hopeful, and death to be a distant horror. This is life though. Even when it is unpredictable, as it seem, you are finally living life. Not in your own image, but of your purposeful desires. You have mastered your instincts so well, and each strand of its fibroids are telling you that there is always a moment to stand on the cusp of manhood, but what do you have to show for it? What?
And love, this sheer hopeless feeling got everyone hurt and scared, no one wants it. No one applauds it nor dares to look her twice in the eyes, yet they stare at her with longing eyes. Everyone expects perfection from love. However, to be hopeful is to be optimistic, easily confused to be naïve, about the existence of unconditional love. Regardless of the strides, the shit-storm carries on as though she is the desperate definition of mockery. The shit-storm only proves that you are never in control of any moment, that we are just imperfect beings with no manual to perfection.
The aftermath leaves everyone charred in his or her fancy ways, and barely can anyone care to admit when to tell the truth is to disappoint and to be shown the door is to be disregarded.
To find home, is not a happy place, and to have a borrowed life is to live in a comatose. Like what can I show you about love, when your sister hurts you every day?
My heart splits into half – of whatever remains of it – does not heal. Still we hope that the end may be different, and not a repetition. Inshallah.
Written by Phill Ibsen, Master of Descriptions.
Phill.ibsen@gmail.com
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