This morning, on my way into work, I noticed a droplet of water-- a tiny tear drop trickling down the upper lefthand side of my windshield. Since I had the opportunity, as I was sitting at a traffic light, I contemplated that teardrop. I must have looked extraordinarily foolish cocking my head this way and that at what seemed to be nothing.
It's just that the tear drop (that materialized out of nowhere) seemed so sad. I pondered it, and then I pondered the sadness in the world.
No. Allow me to rephrase. I pondered the sadness of my world. It's true. I've been pretty sad lately. Unjustifiably so, of course. I have no reason to be sad. I'm working the job I've been pursuing for two and a half years. My parents and siblings are my best friends. Financially, I'm as free as I choose to be. I have a quality education, a sharp mind, and ambition to attain whatever I chase next.
No, I have absolutely no reason to be sad. But my teardrop had no reason to be on my windshield, and it was still there. So trickles my sadness down into my belly and settles.
There is no mystery in my sadness. There is no contemplation for my melancholic reverie. My heart is broken, and it has been broken for a while.
Once, I met a girl whose future I willingly, no, eagerly melded with my own. There were nights, when I thought she was asleep, that I would press my palm to the tiny tattoo on her sternum and pray that I wouldn't love her anymore than I already did. Because I couldn't. The love I had for her was too overwhelming. I thought I might die if I took on anymore-- that it would rip me open. In the end, naturally, it did.
We were too young; too, too reckless. She wasn't comfortable in herself. I grew resentful and then jealous. We destroyed each other the long and painful way. Small tears at first, miniscule rips. She would flirt with someone else then I would ignore her all night. She stopped wanting to make love to me, so I'd sleep on the couch, leaving the bed abandoned and cold.
I also instigated. I'd push her into situations just to test her... because I knew she couldn't resist them. That pretty girl she had been talking to? I'd tell her to get that girl's phone number. I set her up for failure.
She failed.
It should have been easy, the end. I should have crushed her heart in response to the way she ground mine and scattered it about. But, alas, love is never dignified. As I crushed her, I ached and bled alongside her. And I still do.
I have no idea how to exorcise her from my life. So, I just mourn over and over again. New wounds layer upon the old, and I've settled into the idea that this is my life. My life, punctuated by unwarranted woe, uninterrupted loneliness, and unnecessary isolation.
So, I have no right to feel dejected. I chose this.
Yet, there I was this morning, commiserating with that unassuming rivulet of water. I transferred my dispondency squarely onto it's tiny clear mass, and decided that it, like me, must be lonely.
Then, it was gone. Wiped clean by that apathetic, unmerciful wind.
Tragedy is always less significant than we imagine it. The most profound love eats slowly at itself, while nature's teadrop disappears from sight just as you are unlocking its (or your own) dreary demons.
