"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king."
- J.R.R Tolkien
Manik Malhotra cannot be perfect. He cannot be. Not tomorrow, not fifty years from now. You don't love someone because they're perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they're not.
Inside, he's incomplete, inside there is ugliness embedded in his very soul. Inside, there's a past that doesn't let go. Inside, live demons who win certain battles every once in a while, no matter what he does.
His friends know him, but they don't even know him.
His mother birthed him but she kills him with sadistic pleasure too.
He feared darkness all his life yet right there was his residence.
He fears loving her more than life and that's what he does every time.
He doesn't even know how to fight what she makes him feel. She's taken his predictability from him, she's taken everything. Everything he's ever hidden, every mask he's ever worn.
They don't know him. They never did; not completely.
But somehow, somewhere, she ended up peeling all masks.
He doesn't know how to live his reality anymore for he'd never lived in reality.
He'd hardly ever acknowledged his identity.
Who said breathing and surviving was living?
Living isn't that hurtful, living isn't that scarred, living is a lungs that's more than full of air. Living is not the wreckage of heart. Living doesn't use pain to break you; living doesn't feel like nails in your spine. Living isn't a map with bloodied scars.
And I am feeling so small
It was over my head
I know nothing at all
And I will stumble & fall
I'm still learning to love
Just starting to crawl
And then like the first smile of Sun after ages of a storm, he took his first breath to just...live. With her.
Somewhere along the road he wanted to be an illusionist. He didn't want to be alone so he found them, but he never wanted to give himself away either. He held to the shore so hard, so the water can never carry him away. He wanted stagnancy, he sought stars only because he knew he was a permanent inhabitant of the darkness. Why else would you need them if you had light? Stars only shine at night. and night, night was what he knew. A never ending dark recess. He wanted to weave illusions for the world so they never see the him he came to fear.
Not because it was that ugly or fearsome.
Just because he feared fright.
But love rattled him; he lost his grip on the shore.
The waves carried him away and then a storm was unleashed.
And now he's simply lost. He thinks he's drowning, but oxygen bursts through his lungs when he sees her.
He thinks he's surviving but crashing water burns his insides and eyes and he can't breathe when she hurts.
You'd think if he loves her so much why can't he let go of that one mistake? Why can't he forgive? Why hurt her? Why mock her? Why do this to them?
Because he knows he can't walk away from her. No matter what he does, inside, his soul knows that he cannot bear distance from her. But he can't be with her either yet, because a crisis has been surging through his soul, because he feels unworthy of himself, because he cannot bear the thought of the monster still existing amidst him. Because without her assurance, he's drifted apart, he's lost.
He wants to say something, but he can't.
He wants to do something but he can't.
His inner sanctuary has been invaded.
The fact that he loves her beyond the point of return and that there's even a 0.0001% chance of being incapable of winning her complete trust, is driving him crazy. He wants to do it. He wants to get on his knees, bend his head and cry out and tell her that he needs her belief, he needs her solace, he needs her to trust him to emerge from the storm and find himself, because nobody has ever thought he could, because he'd never known if he would, because if she doesn't give him that, he'll be lost, he'll be consumed, he'll be thrown apart.
But he can't do that. He doesn't know how to.
So he does what he does best.
He lashes out and hurts them both.
He hurts her, he tries, and then hurts himself in return.
He makes sure she knows it's the monster in him doing that.
And then he goes on to show her how the monster no more exists.
He shows her that no matter what he does he needs her belief.
And he does all of that in his own dysfunctional way.
Because,
Again,
He doesn't know any other way. This is him. A boy still trying to find the missing pieces of his lost humanity, naivety, identity, sustainability.
He wants her to feel the pain he's going through but he can't bear her being in pain. He can't see her in tears.
In the storm that's tearing him apart, she's the miracle he's holding onto with both hands.
She is the air between the dance of death and survival.
She's the wall that stands between him and complete darkness.
He's lost.
And why do you get lost?
So you could be finally found.
Only to be found.
"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."
- Neil Gaiman
RIDA.😳
