The young girl widened her eyes at this man’s emotional outburst, placing a hand to her beating breast; sweat trickled down her face as the sound of her heartbeat thundered in her ear drums. She felt within her breast a strange emotion, an inner conflict of sorts, two opposing goals that engulfed her in indecision and clothed her with wrath. “Who is this man?” she thought impulsively. Then she restrained herself and simply maintained the delicate neutral expression all women are taught to perform in order that they may survive in this world.
“You think too much,” she said after a long pause, but her facial expression betrayed greatly a sense that she did not believe the words that she had said.
"I think too much?” he repeated with derision; “Yes, yes, I do think too much. It is a fact of life that if one thinks too much, they become miserable. We exist within layers upon layers of constructs created through language, so much so that the nature of our existence is called into question through thought. Therefore, too much thought leads to the questioning of our existence. How can a man question his existence so much and stay sane? He cannot. It boggles my mind,” he said passionately, turning to the place he felt the young girl to be, “Right now you are brought up within a mass of constructs – be it money, fame, success, consumerism, femininity... All of it is frankly words.” And he gestured with his hands a spherical shape, and continued after a moment of reflection, “Imagine being ripped out of that against your will...They say that the self is constructed by our social environment, by the groups that we belong to...Imagine that you were rejected by all the groups you ever encountered in your life...You would be remarkably different.”
His bitterness and resentment towards all others intensified and matured quickly, and if he had at that moment gone back in time he would have done all the same things that he had done then, just with more meanness.
“Hm...It is not fair that people do not follow rules; maybe it is true that people do follow rules, but if they do I cannot comprehend any as a matter of fact,” he continued, following with fervent curiosity the chaotic splurge of ideas in his messed-up brain, “perhaps this is just another chain of thought that I have narrowed down and spun myself into, binding and entangling myself like a fly stuck in a spiderweb. It reminds me of the night before, where I was laying in bed as I often do, thinking bitterly and horribly about myself and my circumstances, how unchangeable I believed it all was! Isn’t that right? The images in my mind make it look so real...there is a big gulf between you and I, me and the world! This is how I experience the world. But then the woman I was attracted to opened my message on Whatsapp and replied to my message asking her to hang out and I did not feel relieved; for the first time I did not feel relieved – I felt disheartened because I realised that it was the perceived lack of rejection that tormented me, not whether I had the affections of a woman or not...Oh, all these social norms! Of, these social norms! But why do I not understand them? I do understand them I think, but I do understand them. You can never understand what it is like to be me. I am an outcast. The world has it in for me. Well, once I have this...thing... I will go back and redo everything and have the life that I want once and for all. I will be accepted, I will be loved, I will be wanted and desired and sought after and admired as I should have been...I think that I have snapped. Rod has snapped. He has broken into two – the storm has finally bent and broken him into two!”
“Well...I am not mad at her for leaving me, it was in her best interest, she is smart, but wouldn’t she be my friend if I just make plain my difficulties? All the things she did not like were things that make up who I am,” he said tearfully, cupping his breast. “What can I write to make her come back to me? What can I do?” he added, lowering his chin to his collarbone.
He clenched his fists as his mind whirled. “Why am I different!” he cried suddenly, throwing his hands in the air, forgetting that there was a girl next to him - “What should I do? It’s not fair – life is not fair! Why must I be myself? Why can’t she just love me like I love her? Why can’t people just act by rules, eh? Eh? Why can’t people just act by a series of comprehensible rules? This world is not for me. This world expects, no it demands that I conform to it, that I respect its traditions and its rules and its culture...Well,” he turned sharply to the invisible girl’s direction, as though he had some internal sense of where she was, as though a compass was his lonely heart, and her his north star, and he burned into her soul with his eyes, and said, with pursed lips, “you understand me, don’t you?”
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“I…I think,” she gulped, increasing her pace slightly toward their destination.
“You are young and yet you are old…you must understand,” he muttered, unable to ignore the fact that her gait had changed noticeably, so that she was now to his north-east instead by his side. He sought to reassert himself, “So, um, where are we going?”
“We need to just disable the trackers daddy has installed in us,” she replied nonchalantly. Then, after a pause, she continued in a more serious tone, and said, “You really are like no one I have ever met.”
This tickled the ego of the young man so much that he tried to refrain from smiling ear to ear.
“No one talks as freely about things as you do. You wear your heart on your sleeve. I, myself, have often wondered about similar things as you have spoken about now; often when I am alone in bed trying to fall asleep, I reflect on my life and my position within it, how things have changed so suddenly, so flittingly, and I wonder to myself how it all came to by: why am I here? Why do I think the way that I think? Why, why do I feel so bad about myself? Am I a woman? Why? What is a woman? Is it something thrust upon me by society or am I by nature a woman? But then I am forced to just deal with it, as daddy always says.” She sighed, “I want the pain to stop...”
“Wait,” he cried, his face contorting immediately into confusion, “Aleku put trackers on you guys? What the fuck.”
“Wait, is that strange?” said the young girl, no doubt looking dumbly at the older man.
“I mean-”
“It’s just so he knows where we are, that we’re safe,” she said, as she squeezed the doorknob, turning it slowly to the right. As it turned, as if by magic, for its hand was invisible, the hue of the doorknob crumpled red like a lightning storm.
“You’re a narcissist...that’s why she left you!” Aleku’s declarative statement catapulted into his mind suddenly at that very moment, “Because you think that you are the main character, that only you suffered in this world, that only you have the right to complain and get recompensed...”
As if by instinct, the young man thrust his hand into his pocket and took out his phone. He tapped a few icons and opened several social media apps all at once, flicking through his feed quickly.
“You still use one of those?” the girl remarked in disbelief, a slight tinge of disgust in her voice was betrayed, unintentionally of course.
“Not all of us can afford eyeglasses,” muttered Rod bitterly, raising his eyebrow in annoyance as he saw that he had no notifications – not one person had messaged him.
He then, although he knew that he should not have, went and looked over the pictures of that woman who ruled his heart. There she was, in full colour, that gorgeous brunette...
Before he entered the room, his heart jerked violently in his chest; another strong feeling, that he knew all so well, struck like lightning throughout his nervous system, throughout the sprawling mass of spidery wires inside him. But he did not react as he would have reacted several years ago, or even a year ago, for he had spent many years in therapy, and consequently had learned and practiced many techniques, that his tumultuous emotions could now be given form, personified, and thus combatted against; he was the David against their Goliath. He imagined himself in the colosseum, dancing with a sword to a roaring crowd. The difference was that then, even a year ago, the emotion was overwhelming, a death sentence, an existential crisis, a body-mind tearing split: but now...now it appeared to him not a burden, not a crisis of meaning, it had taken instead a solid and quite intimidating form, and he became suddenly a new man, awakened suddenly after a frightful dream which had been instigated by those around him...He felt pins and needles in his face around the mouth area, and there a smile of great pleasure waiting behind that neutral, fastened expression he had honed all those years ago as a child. Hitherto he would have yielded to it, but now...now not only was he driven by it, but he was also at the steering wheel. A thought suddenly struck him that it was a trap.