musings of a melancholy soul

[melanchoy-musing]

hello!

this blog is dedicated to the restless ponderings of the human soul, the eternal desire to pour oneself into words that may be understood & empathized with, the wrestling with concepts too large to fully grasp, anything you can think of, really. i cannot promise i will post regularly, or even coherently & i am not sorry for that.

i never intend for this account to be linked to my others—for you see, my soul will reside here & a soul is an immensely private thing. i’m sorry for that, but i think it’s an understandable desire. privacy is something we simultaneously crave & detest. thus, i compromise with this account

-kyrielle

[melanchoy-musing]

we are 19 & 19 & 21 & we’re flying through a state forest & i think this part of us has passed into forever. you’re singing the words to a song i don’t know, wind is throwing my hair in my face, & i am, for the first time in so long, carefree. we’re laughing & falling into a frigid mountain creek & all i can feel is joy. i almost caught myself looking over my shoulder caught for a pair of wings. my soul, which i’d thought might’ve begun to wither, is suddenly so full. how i wish we could we could spin this moment into an eternity

[melanchoy-musing]

& if i said i still wish i could sprawl across you at 2am and laugh over nothing & everything at once? that i wish i could rest my chin on your shoulder & slip a hand into your pocket? that i remember when i promised i’d teach you to ride a bike & we said we’d get matching motorcycles? how we thought we could make it work & i felt as if i could explode from the sheer relief & love & joy of knowing perhaps i am not fundamentally broken & can still be loved, if not in a romantic way, that someone might dare to make me their soul’s other half, despite that?

i told you i sought to know the ins & outs of your soul. i told you i wanted you to be mine & i did—i do—because all i have ever longed for is to be that which comes first for someone.

but a dog never comes first & i should have learned that lesson long ago. i think i know it now, it is the familiar mantra of my life, but i, like a foolish, desperate animal, will never resign myself to that. i will always be the lovesick bitch but cringing from your boot & lunging to snatch the smallest scrap of affection that you accidentally drop.

[melanchoy-musing]

i am more a graveyard than a person, i think. my soul is overrun with the moss-covered headstones of everyone i know & have ever known. there are so many unmarked stones awaiting the names & epitaphs of those i have yet to meet.

you see, hurts less if you lay someone to rest & mourn them before they can leave. thus, i have become a graveyard, a living memorial to all those i have ever known.

[melanchoy-musing]

i sometimes catch myself scratching the memory of a mosquito bite & i can’t really say why. perhaps it’s habit, some familiar pain i’m accustomed to. maybe someday i’ll learn to let the bites fade with time, rather than dragging them back, till long past when they ought to have vanished.

[melanchoy-musing]

i still think of you, catch your shade lurking in the corners of my memories. your phrases wander into the empty rooms of my mind when it’s late. you do not deserve that & we both know it. but it’s been a year since you ruined me & i suppose it is only fair i allow myself the time to think. to remember. to remind myself how much i do not miss you. ironic when i find myself writing this, isn’t it? we always were.

you and me 100 hours, 11 seasons, and a movie. that’s what you told me & i felt my world ending. how many times my own little world has crumbled around me since then. how many times i have rebuilt it since that day you first shattered what remained of my kingdom. i recall it so vividly—how sick i felt, how i wished i could burst into tears, scream, do something drastic. but i was in the car with my family, you see, & dramatic outbursts in a confined space are so rarely welcome. instead i told my father, my voice low & saturated with dread, about the new atom bomb you’d been cruel enough to drop on my already damaged world. i had lost one of the two pillars supporting my world six days ago & i could see the other vanishing before my eyes.

if i’d thought that had been the worst it would get… how foolish i was. it is so strange, how we reform & remold & remake ourselves, to suit those we fancy love us. i tried. the one thing i had been so firm on, so resolute about, i gave in. i tried to love you in the only way you could understand & what a wonderful soap bubble we lived in. it was beautiful, the world we dreamed up. two halves of one soul, split across the world, one day united & inseparable from then on. i had never been willing to try this sort of love before & it seemed breathtaking. how strange, how unique. i could almost understand why the poets have been fascinated by eros for aeons.

but time passed & the bubble we’d created popped. we both knew it would & that was the tragedy of us. you were a hopeless romantic & i was a jaded cynic. you sought to be gentle & i am all rough edges and sharp fangs. the letters they would use to fit us into boxes of personality types were nearly opposites. despite that, i hadn’t met anyone like you ever before. somehow, we understood each other on a near spiritual level. never have i felt that level of soul deep connection before with another human. i do not know if i could bear feeling it again. we were soulmates, i think. but the stars that governed us were fated never to align & we knew it. how cruel it felt. we could feel our end drawing ever nearer, but we closed our eyes & clung tighter, both to afraid to face the tempest bearing down on us.

in hindsight? perhaps god knew how we would break each other & he sought to protect the both of us. but then, you don’t believe in god, not really, & i believe in far too many foolish things like a god & fate & magic & souls. how ironic. we always have been.

you always said you didn’t want to hurt me. why then, have you hurt me worse than anyone else i have known? how could you cross those sacred boundaries i drew so clearly? you knew they were there & i suppose i was so desperate to force this—us—to work, to be real, that i was willing to push my revulsion aside. i should have listened to myself. i didn’t, though, not until it was far too late. i used to agonize over how i could not bear hurting you—not like she had, never like she had—but i did, didn’t i? i do not think i can fathom the depth of the pain you must’ve felt, to one day have the person you desire, in the way you desire, but the next? no longer & i did not seem affected. i know it seems cruel, but you must understand that i cared for you too much to continue lying to you. despite it all, i will always and forever be honest with you. i cannot bear lying to someone who held the other half of my soul. because i did, once, and that was what ruined us.

i can fathom that you are furious. were furious? i know you changed. towards the end, you were cold, twisted & cynical. you almost verged on cruel. how different from the way you used to be. & i cannot fault you for any of it. i know i did wrong and i am sorry. but i am not sorry enough to let you crawl back, begging for mercy, as you have so often. i have given you grace upon grace, far more than you deserve. and you twisted it every time, threw it back in my face. & i took it. that’s what love is, isn’t it?

no. that is not love, that’s the wretched caricature of love i wore to try & please you—and, i thought—myself. love was setting you free. you must carve out an infection, sear it till the poisoned flesh is no more, to heal. that’s what we became. something twisted & rotting. no longer.

i do not doubt that you are angry & hurt. i do not fault you for it, i behaved wretchedly & do not deserve forgiveness. but—neither do you. you wore my mercy thin and spat in the face of my shaky trust so often. i wish i could say i miss you, but i do not know if that is a lie or a truth. i miss parts of you, short flashes of the good times we had. but overall? i do not truly believe that i miss the whole of you. i do not hate you, though, i do not think i really ever can. it’s easier, perhaps, to feel nothing for you. how sharp a contrast to the fierce, wild desperation we felt merely a year ago.

how ironic, as we always were. how ironic, as we never will be again.

[melanchoy-musing]

how is it that the other side of the world can feel like home? the stars are turned on their heads & yet i long for the family i left there, despite the lack of blood relation. i miss my sister, my brother, the parents who love me more than the ones who created me. i miss the love that was so present, the knowledge that i cared for others & they cared for me as well. i miss my sister. how cruel, that i cannot see her every day, even though we share a heart & soul.

even if it feels like forever, we’ll meet again. i can crash into her in the airport’s sterile, surreal halls, i’ll feel her arms around me, we’ll both cry as we hold each other so tightly, as if we can’t really believe the other is real. one day, we’ll stay up till the sun begins to rise, exhausted from laughing all night over nothing, but exhilarated because we have each other right now & is that not all that matters? she can show me everything she talks of so often and i will finally know exactly what the chips at that one restaurant are like. i can say exactly what i want when i’m home—there’s no need to censor yourself when you’re home, you see. someday, we’ll be able to sing our songs—but not to a blue, emotionless screen—rather, we’ll sing them to the person the lyrics are about and it won’t matter how many seconds & minutes & days & weeks & months spin by where we’re apart, because she’s right there, next to me, & i do not think i’ve ever been happier.

one day, i will return home. and i pray that day is soon.

[melanchoy-musing]

time passes & years go by as if they’re nothing. until, suddenly, the illusion unravels & i wonder if i’ve fallen five years backwards. everything is the same, yet nothing is the same. years have wound by, people have fallen away, the world is not the same.

we are the only constant in the equation. and even so, we are different. we have both been weathered & worn away by the world. i have a new name that no one knows, a new place to call home. you have a quiet strength, confidence in yourself, you are more whole. we are wiser now, perhaps. surer of who we are, unlike five years ago. we clung to each other then, not so now. not like before. i do not know if i am glad of it, or if i hate the subtle chasm that divides us. i think i hate it. i miss being your all & you being mine. how codependent of me.

outside of the sphere of us, everything is shattering in slow motion. none of what i believed five years ago holds true & i view life through a cynic’s eyes at the ripe age of nineteen. you have learned to test what you’ve been taught & have grown beyond some of it. the world is not an easy place in which to live, is it, my love, my heart, my soul? up is down, right is left, north is south. i listen to kesha now. logic has become stale & discarded as a relic. you’ve left the home that was your all & created another haven for yourself. wars rage, on a continent far away. so distant, as of now. but that won’t last, will it? i think we both know that. who doesn’t? the world is a fluid thing, never static.

& so we cling to that which is familiar. laughing over how our kingdoms collapsed every other day in middle school. clinging to each other’s hands—they still feel the same. they’re bigger now, but the calluses are in the same places as ever. your nails dig ever so slightly into the back of my hand, but i don’t mind. i never mind pain, do i?—rediscovering the things that filled our younger days with joy. i have that shirt of yours. the one you bought because it looked just like my favorite one that you stole for so long—because it smelled of me. i don’t know where it’s gone, it disappeared years ago. but this one hasn’t. & it smells of you.

i wonder if we’ll stay static for the next five years, despite the explosion of the world outside the sphere of us, just as we have for the past five years.

[melanchoy-musing]

how soon love is sullied. what was, perhaps, once pure, beautiful, something to cherish, hold dear can so easily be twisted into something barbed. holding near & dear becomes holding too tightly. how rapidly admiration become idolatry. it’s insidious, is it not?

at first, it seems a refined, holier form of the love that is so sweet to you. this is a concentrate, ambrosia reserved for the gods alone, not mortals such as ourselves. oh, how easy it is to lie to ourselves. to allow ourselves to believe godhood is within easy grasp. & what a lie it is. the thought that no, we are simply discovering a purer, better sort of love. the sort of love where you crave the other, your hand is always seeking theirs when they are not with you, when you feel an ache in your soul if they’re not next to you. when the day becomes a hundred times more saturated, life has meaning & color & purpose again when they are present. how suddenly you feel alive again, simply because your person is here.

but they’re not really a person, then, are they? they’ve become a god. an image, etched onto the contours of your soul. an icon, like those of the saints, illuminated by the fury of your love. a love that has begun to warp & detach from reality. a love that is tainted, that stains everything they touch with ethereal, slow-acting poison.

suddenly, you are no longer equals, two souls drawn to one another & becoming more entwined as time winds on. now? now, you are a willing supplicant at the altar of your unwitting god. how soon that willing reverence begins to rot, when your god does not live up to the perfection you have cast them in. how soon hatred begins to coil & twist in the innermost parts of your soul, the region you used to long to share with your god. how soon you learn to revile that which you adored.

how tragic, to revile that which you loved so deeply that you sought to worship it. how lamentable it is, to sit in the stained glass splinters that remain of the cathedral you so lovingly crafted. the place of worship you wrought, the ruin you brought on yourself—all for love.

except it’s not really love, is it?

[melanchoy-musing]

the concept of star-crossed lovers resonates so deeply with me & it is both fascinating and strange. strange—for i do not love in that way, something within me cannot seem to understand or create that unique aspect of love. i long for a love of that sort: passionate, fierce, dusted with the sordid beauty of eros. a love that others of my craft—my superiors—have sought to capture in their art. the fiery love that will burn kingdoms into ashes. the form of love that is said to be the universal language of all humankind. but i cannot speak it & wonder what went wrong in me.

& yet? there is an air of finality around those lovers who are star-crossed. the same morbid stillness that lingers around the bones of an infant creature so often haunts them. it is something beautiful, in a way, but deeply morbid. they know how their story was written, how it will play out, when the final act comes to a close. but there is something about humankind that is so deeply, viscerally convinced that—perhaps. perhaps we can change what was meant to be, alter our very destinies. i think that is, perhaps, a vision of the human soul. we long for hope, dreams are woven into the fabric of us. so, we rage against the waning light, fight ever on & on, despite the looming terror, even though the stars so clearly write out our destinies in the heavens.

maybe that is why star-crossed lovers fascinate me so. because they embody the beautiful, stubborn human spirit so well. they know how it ends & they choose to spite that, to feel as much as they can in the time they yet have. & that is an awe-inspiring thing.