Resurrection
Eros, torment and the importance of the villain arc
“If you kiss me, it’d be like kissing a dead body” he said to my flushed face in a crowded Madrid bar. My stomach twitched, my eye held a tear with all its might, my face motionless as to not show the startle of hearing anyone daring to speak like that. Some mumbling that explained his brokenness followed and I remember excusing myself to the bathroom.
I was really tired. The night before, in a spontaneous act of courage and a dropped guard, the dead body had come alive. He had looked at me with eyes of admiration, mapped all my face features with his hand and spoke of words that ringed to my ears as confirmation that my feelings were reciprocal. There was love, terror, guilt and happiness all at the same time in his eyes looking straight at me. When we parted, I had gone up to my room at four in the morning feeling blurred, confused, spellbound. My sense of fear that this might mean something that I’m not prepared to offer was repressed by a touch of my hand in my face and my mind repeating “Don’t think too much, tomorrow will tell”.
Tomorrow was a Friday and Women’s day on some year long before the modern plague. After collecting myself in the bathroom, I went back up at the bar with a sense that maybe I had imagined this. I remember going back to him and asking whether he is serious or perhaps words never left my mouth and I just looked at him with enquiring eyes. Then came the next phrase to haunt me that year “Why are you insisting so much on me, especially on women’s day?”. I remember shouting an “As If!” in my head, ready to explode with words, what a terrible thing to say that was. If nothing else, especially on women’s day, I’m asking for what I want and what I wanted was him.
I didn’t say any of this. I was dazed and this conversation felt too surrealistic. I just wanted to go home, wash away the resentment, cry gallons of tears and sleep.
The months that followed wreaked havoc in my emotional state. Refusing to follow suit on this melodramatic self repent of his and not being able to comprehend that a person that looked at me like that does’t want to see me again, I embarked on self torment of intellectualising, counting every word and thought. Self-directed commands “just move on” were interchanged with hopes of “but maybe he needs time”.
It rained a lot that spring, so much that Madrid flora sprouted like never before, the following autumn saw the streets with tons of heavy leaves hiding the pavements beneath them as a testament. I used to tell myself that the weather matching my inner world was a gift. You can always indulge in sadness when rain is heavy. You can better soothe yourself when the wind is loud enough to stop you from hearing your thoughts and light enough to caress your hair and skin. Sad feelings under a hot sun feel excruciating in a sense.
As a way to pacify my need to speak with him and the fear that this is the end of our very short story, I would keep his thought as a ghost and a promise. I would collect things from my travels that I thought he should see, books that I though he would like. Vintage wrapped chocolates from Lisbon. Oregano from the mountain near my home city. The outstanding 2016 Assyrtiko de Mylos of Haritimos Hatzidakis, one of Greece’s best winemaker who took his own life right at the beginning of the next year’s harvest. Thyme and pine honey. Beach rocks from the Aegean packed with its water in a small jar. Music books from old bookshops in London.
I used to say to myself that I would give them to him if he decided to see me. I knew that was very unlikely but it was a way to keep the wheel of eros going.
Knowing what “a Greek bearing gifts” might mean he kept avoiding contact even when it was clear that an attempt for his attention would not be made. Please just take all of this and listen to how I feel and let me have my peace was all I wanted at this point. The gifts kept piling up like ghosts in an abandoned room. I would look at them months later trying to remember what was I thinking. I gave the oregano to friends, I stored the wine to age, I gifted the books to folks who actually wanted them. The rocks are yet to be returned back at the Aegean sea, hiding somewhere in a drawer.
By the time I had started accepting defeat and entered a prolonged villain arc, rumours from common friends reached my ears. The dead body is risen, seen partnering with someone else. I was genuinely happy for him, if he’s in love again at least he’s ok, at least he’s doing better. Nonetheless, the news just sunk me deeper into self torment and the terrible and very unnecessary compare and contrast battle had started. I was not just defeated, I was defeated by someone else. Were they better, more intelligent, more beautiful? You know the drill ladies and gents. Unhelpful game. In the end, it is only our self love that is put to the test. The thought that people can be measured up to each other and thus our self values defined is only a reality constructed by our inability to paint our own picture of ourselves. One needs to trust its own frame. To let torment bent it but not break it. Once you’ve come home to yourself you know that other’s peoples choices have very little to do with you. Alas, at that time it felt quite heavy.
I learned tons when exploring the depth of eros. My capacity to feel and love was actually huge - it was just directed at the wrong person, misplaced ambition. I read more and better. I practiced deep listening. I spent hours with headphones, frequenting ambience, Handel and Gregorian hymns, My bloody valentine guitars overflowing a room, sinking and sinking to notes, spending all the time I need to really listen. I went from looking someone in the mirror to looking at myself. I measured and appreciated all the good things I have. This stronger sense of self. The idea that you can have everything but without love for yourself or others you are lost. Moreover, the greatest gift of all, the biggest return of investment, was the ability to connect and empathise with more people, especially the ones dear to me.
We joke with my friends that my experience was a nemesis resulting from the hubris committed throughout my life. I never quite understood infatuation. There were so many more important issues and troublesome feelings. There was only cause and effect in my world, self control, effort resulting in achievable goals. I was very close to all my friends going through similar feelings in the past. However, I had not fully understood why P would spend a whole summer in his basement playing the guitar and watching Lost in Translation because a Greek Erasmus student had loved him but not fully. I didn’t get why A felt that falling from the sixth floor would result in the emotional pain caused by a beautiful Turkish girl, to fall silent.I didn’t get the exaggeration. The music and poetry written. It was all just too dramatic for me. Saved for the word of fiction.
I also empathised more with the people who had loved me in my past lukewarm state. I understood why they went to extra lengths and why this felt bothersome to me. I didn’t like being a mere token, a projection. I felt they didn’t really see me but instead picked all the potentialities and possibilities of me and them. A selfish way to love. I realised I had done the same to him. I tried not to feel too guilty about it though, in the end, both roles - the enamoured and their object of desire - require honesty, courage, responsibility and perhaps his lack of those made my path just a bit harder.
Ironically, I knew all along that I had consciously chosen this. For years I was lamenting that I hadn’t really fallen in love, with the verb fall emphasised here. The moment I realised the encounter with this man felt weirdly mystical I remember being wide awake deciding to engage with his idea, unaware of course of the level of engagement but still being certain of the possibility of transformation.
Two years later, early December, I find myself in Toronto at the burial of my uncle who had died suddenly, leaving my mother in deep sadness. The events of those days had put my mind in an alertness, with the sharp understanding of what matters, with a strong sense that time is slow but also very fast. After snow had covered his grave and we had gone through all the tedious bureaucratic things one has to go through, the inspection of his belongings, handwritten notes, diaries, clothes and personal items, I saw my mother allowing pain visit her with all the dreaded unanswered questions and calculated stages of grief. I felt the incapacity of doing anything of real value to her choke me up and tried to fight my urge to fix this as if it’s small wound from a cut. I knew that there is only so much one can do for the other. Be there for them while the enter the mouth of the dragon alone, wait for them cheering on the exit. Being patient during the time in between.
A death of a person is quite a tragic event for the ones around them. In no way a heartbreak is compared to the actual death of someone. It does however feel like you need to bury that person under the snow for some time, otherwise, you end up believing that maybe they are lost at sea as my friend C says, alive, with the possibility of coming back to you.
My catharsis arrived late but clear. Until then, I learned to put one foot in front of the other, let the days take its course, going against effort. One day, I was happy again, free from the chuckles of infatuation, with a better sense of the world. To this day, when asked, I advise people around me to find themselves seeking rejection more often. Romantic, professional or otherwise. Find it, then use it to understand yourself better, to put the correct meaning to the terms that play an important part to our lives. Love shouldn’t torment, work should at some degree feel good, relationships with others should feel somehow reciprocal. Let the dark night of the soul happen, trust in your ability to cross to the other side. I’m sure there are easier ways to build one’s life but that is what has worked for me. I might say all this though from the safety of the crossed dangerous highway. I assure you though, no one died from heartbreak or rejection except I guess the teenagers living at the age when The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe dropped - terrible trend. I know my life is still young and probably I’ll meet once more with different types of pain, ache and rejection in the future. I hope they find me more self aware, I hope I have the ability to sit through the important ones and brush through the others. I hope to always be able to recognise which is which.
p.s: Immense gratitude for all my friends who sat through this story many times, nodding through waiting for me to wake up. We’re all walking each other home.
Such a gorgeous, honest piece of writing. So many things to take from it.
Thank you. I will come back.