If there is any consolation to the demise of a fictitious journey, it is that another awaits. The runaway train stops for no one. It carries on with its pilgrimage, purposeful and relentless, but with no destination in mind. It is like the shark that keeps swimming for its survival because if it halts, it ceases to live. There are hundreds and thousands of silos, basements, and dark rooms that people escape into; they are all but a figurative representation of a sensual experience in solitude. Writing, listening to sad music, or taking long, circuitous walks - we all become the habitual recluse once in awhile. Film and music just happen to be my drugs.
Each time I immerse myself in these escapades, I plug in, but I shut out. It is no secret that I have been estranged with my family for awhile now. I do not relish in the isolation, but I appreciate the corresponding freedom it awards. If I wanted to assuage the guilt of my alienation, I would console myself with the reason that they are better off without my involvement. It has become a habit now, that every time I enter my room I would lock my door. Sometimes even I feel the disenchantment it must bring to my parents when they hear the definitive click of the locking mechanism - a harbinger of another solitary confinement. Each time it happens it's like a part of me is locked away from them even more than it already is.
In film and music I would look for beautiful moments and words that evoke a deep desire for care and affection, just to assure myself that somewhere, somehow, somebody feels something more than the conventional sentiments of a wearied soul that is incapable of transcendence. To me, a world where currency signs and numbers dominate is a parallel universe. In my world, literary expressions are strangely gratifying.
So when I see you struggle in your endless pursuit of happiness amidst an arguably self-inflicted grief, I almost feel sorry for you. Ironic, I know. I sound like a sanctimonious idiot who probably doesn't even understand the meaning of true happiness - at least not enough to be giving a lecture about it to another - but if you ever see this, I just hope it strikes a chord in that delicate heart of yours. I truly, earnestly, hope that you would stop searching for a perfect happiness that would be the envy of many for years and years to come. It isn't that I don't believe in its existence. I do, but a fixation on finding it with every other person is not going to be helpful. In Before Midnight, Julie Delpy finds incomprehensible the notion of being conjoined in matrimony with another for 74 years. It may sound heretical to many, but I actually believe that the heart is capable of loving more than one person in a lifetime, or even at any one time. We grow, we change, and we evolve. At different junctures in our life we may want vastly different things than we did before, so is it really that surprising that there are different people who can fulfil these disparate desires? By insisting that a same person satisfy our changing needs is to force them to grow and keep pace with us. It is stifling to individualism. Yet if achieved, these spiritual evolutions in tandem would do more good than harm to a couple. Nobody will blame you for trying, but in its wake of destruction, try to look through the debris to see who are the people truly hurting.
Because I stayed for the party while your ship sailed away.
And all I could do is watch.
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