The Precipice Pt. 3
Friday. 08.06.2007. 2033 hours.
It's been a long time. It feels like forever since I've been plunged headlong, and I've walked the Valley of Darkness.
The screams. The cries. The moans. The gritting of teeth. The stench of death. The pain all around. The seemingly endless road to travel. No stops. No rest. Only exhaustion. Only pain. Travelling that endless road filled with dark gravel, crawling on my knees. With all that torture, all that gore, all that blood, all that tears around me.
I've only come to realise that it's all mine. That endless mire of frustration and exhaustion is mine.
The tears are mine.
The blood is mine.
The screams,
the groans,
the moans,
the cries,
the gritting of teeth.
They all belong to me.
The stench of death is the stench of my death.
The pain is mine.
The long road is mine.
It's all mine.
He may have taken me to the precipice, he may have pushed me off it. But I didn't climb. It took me so long to realise that all the horrors of that valley belonged to me. Yet I stupidly trudged on, on my knees, hoping to find light at the end of that darkness.
Who was I to call him stupid? I was even more so. How much better am I, when I did the exact same thing he is doing, just because he took me along?
I could've climbed. But I chose to stay. And walk on my knees. Maybe I thought he needed someone to walk with him. Maybe I thought he'd be sad and lonely. Maybe I thought he'd walk with me. But he'd all but disappeared. He had always been walking with someone else, and that someone else is the one he chooses to walk with, while I had to walk the route alone.
Yes, I am disappointed in him. But that is nothing compared to the disappointment I feel in myself.
He is a fool, yes. But I am a bigger one.
And to hear both being shouted over the tops of the mountains by trusted friends was enough to set things in motion for me.
I shall not live in the darkness of my blindness any longer. Not when there's surgery available.
If he still chooses to traverse that darkness, so be it. I can't change a stupidly arrogant and stubborn boy-man, who refuses to listen. I won't even try.
If he wants to waste his time, he can. But I refuse to let him waste mine anymore.
The route has been cut through the valley. There's now a path of escape. The price to pay, like everything in life, is to cut off the shackles binding my hands and feet. That I must do myself. And the climbing, I have to do on my own.
He could come with me. I have shown him what the valley was, and the path to freedom.
But I can't cut his shackles, and I can't do his climbing for him. That he must do on his own.
All children learnt to crawl and walk on their own. All children stumble and fall. All children were taught and encouraged to walk properly, but they have to do the walking and stumbling and getting up again on their own.
Someone commented we looked almost alike. That we looked good together. Like a pair. Like we have an amazingly strong bond, a chemistry. After seeing us only once. For a few hours. When we barely spoke to each other. Maybe. Maybe we have a bond, a chemistry. Complicity. Maybe we look good together. Like each other.
Well, so what? Yes, chemistry and bond is important, but there's only so much that can do.
For instance, take ballroom dancers. A perfectly matched ballroom-dancing couple can make the art look so effortless, so easy, so heartbreakingly beautiful. It's like they move as one, although they're separate entities. Like they were born to it.
But no matter how perfectly matched they are, and how wonderful they look together, it counts for nothing if one partner refuses to dance.
Bond, or no bond, chemistry or no chemistry, glorious perfection or not, it amounts to nothing. Nada. Zilch.
I'd do better to dance with someone else.
Funny how the only thing he could say in response, after the stunned silence all around when another party clarified the situation, was: 'No, I don't have that many pimples.'
For an articulate, wordy, sarcastic girl, after the first initial bombshell, this hurtful rudeness left me speechless. But perhaps my silence was more than enough to make a statement. Even his friend said: 'That wasn't a nice thing to say.'
No. It wasn't. He isn't nice. He may like to think he is, but he isn't.
If I were to count his sins, big and small, against me, it would take an entire lifetime of utter devotion to make it up to me, and then some.
Barring his parents, he probably owes me more than he owes anyone else in his life. To be used as a tool and then discarded isn't a nice feeling at all.
He isn't nice. Not at all. And I was stupid.
He can stay and rot with the perpetrator of all his nastiness and negativity, since that's what he wishes. The longer he stays, the worse he'll become, but that could no longer be my concern.
He probably doesn't realise that nastiness eats at the soul. He's becoming soul-less. I could not believe he said what he did, so swiftly, so humiliatingly, so publicly. The longer he stays there, the worse he's become. It's like the men of Pirates' Davy Jones' Flying Dutchman.
Part of the ship, one with the ship. Ugly, misshapen, horrendous to look at. He's turning into that. Part of the nastiness. One with the nastiness.
He's nasty. He wasn't in the past, when I knew him first, but he is now. And which matters more, really? The past, or the present? We can't change our past. But it's our present that shapes the future. So many people forget that.
If he so chooses, I'd take his hand, and we'd make that climb together. But I won't wait for him. With or without him, I'm making that climb out of this hellhole. The love and support of my friends awaits me. Happiness and brightness awaits me. Laughter and peace awaits me. After all that personal suffering that I bore so long on my own, I deserve to bask in the light of the honest and the true. And the genuine and the caring.
Unlike Bond, I get only one shot at life. Now that I have to work late nights in KL City Centre itself, I might get viciously raped and brutally murdered walking home tomorrow. I'd never know. He's wasted enough of my time. He's plunged me, unwary, without warning, into abyssmal darkness. His abyss. His darkness. The blackness of his increasingly soul-less spirit. And he made it mine.
Now that I've found a way out, he can come with me, and I'd take his hand, if he so chooses. Only if he wants to. But I won't wait. With, or without him, I'm making that climb.
It's been a long time. It feels like forever since I've been plunged headlong, and I've walked the Valley of Darkness.
The screams. The cries. The moans. The gritting of teeth. The stench of death. The pain all around. The seemingly endless road to travel. No stops. No rest. Only exhaustion. Only pain. Travelling that endless road filled with dark gravel, crawling on my knees. With all that torture, all that gore, all that blood, all that tears around me.
I've only come to realise that it's all mine. That endless mire of frustration and exhaustion is mine.
The tears are mine.
The blood is mine.
The screams,
the groans,
the moans,
the cries,
the gritting of teeth.
They all belong to me.
The stench of death is the stench of my death.
The pain is mine.
The long road is mine.
It's all mine.
He may have taken me to the precipice, he may have pushed me off it. But I didn't climb. It took me so long to realise that all the horrors of that valley belonged to me. Yet I stupidly trudged on, on my knees, hoping to find light at the end of that darkness.
Who was I to call him stupid? I was even more so. How much better am I, when I did the exact same thing he is doing, just because he took me along?
I could've climbed. But I chose to stay. And walk on my knees. Maybe I thought he needed someone to walk with him. Maybe I thought he'd be sad and lonely. Maybe I thought he'd walk with me. But he'd all but disappeared. He had always been walking with someone else, and that someone else is the one he chooses to walk with, while I had to walk the route alone.
Yes, I am disappointed in him. But that is nothing compared to the disappointment I feel in myself.
He is a fool, yes. But I am a bigger one.
And to hear both being shouted over the tops of the mountains by trusted friends was enough to set things in motion for me.
I shall not live in the darkness of my blindness any longer. Not when there's surgery available.
If he still chooses to traverse that darkness, so be it. I can't change a stupidly arrogant and stubborn boy-man, who refuses to listen. I won't even try.
If he wants to waste his time, he can. But I refuse to let him waste mine anymore.
The route has been cut through the valley. There's now a path of escape. The price to pay, like everything in life, is to cut off the shackles binding my hands and feet. That I must do myself. And the climbing, I have to do on my own.
He could come with me. I have shown him what the valley was, and the path to freedom.
But I can't cut his shackles, and I can't do his climbing for him. That he must do on his own.
All children learnt to crawl and walk on their own. All children stumble and fall. All children were taught and encouraged to walk properly, but they have to do the walking and stumbling and getting up again on their own.
Someone commented we looked almost alike. That we looked good together. Like a pair. Like we have an amazingly strong bond, a chemistry. After seeing us only once. For a few hours. When we barely spoke to each other. Maybe. Maybe we have a bond, a chemistry. Complicity. Maybe we look good together. Like each other.
Well, so what? Yes, chemistry and bond is important, but there's only so much that can do.
For instance, take ballroom dancers. A perfectly matched ballroom-dancing couple can make the art look so effortless, so easy, so heartbreakingly beautiful. It's like they move as one, although they're separate entities. Like they were born to it.
But no matter how perfectly matched they are, and how wonderful they look together, it counts for nothing if one partner refuses to dance.
Bond, or no bond, chemistry or no chemistry, glorious perfection or not, it amounts to nothing. Nada. Zilch.
I'd do better to dance with someone else.
Funny how the only thing he could say in response, after the stunned silence all around when another party clarified the situation, was: 'No, I don't have that many pimples.'
For an articulate, wordy, sarcastic girl, after the first initial bombshell, this hurtful rudeness left me speechless. But perhaps my silence was more than enough to make a statement. Even his friend said: 'That wasn't a nice thing to say.'
No. It wasn't. He isn't nice. He may like to think he is, but he isn't.
If I were to count his sins, big and small, against me, it would take an entire lifetime of utter devotion to make it up to me, and then some.
Barring his parents, he probably owes me more than he owes anyone else in his life. To be used as a tool and then discarded isn't a nice feeling at all.
He isn't nice. Not at all. And I was stupid.
He can stay and rot with the perpetrator of all his nastiness and negativity, since that's what he wishes. The longer he stays, the worse he'll become, but that could no longer be my concern.
He probably doesn't realise that nastiness eats at the soul. He's becoming soul-less. I could not believe he said what he did, so swiftly, so humiliatingly, so publicly. The longer he stays there, the worse he's become. It's like the men of Pirates' Davy Jones' Flying Dutchman.
Part of the ship, one with the ship. Ugly, misshapen, horrendous to look at. He's turning into that. Part of the nastiness. One with the nastiness.
He's nasty. He wasn't in the past, when I knew him first, but he is now. And which matters more, really? The past, or the present? We can't change our past. But it's our present that shapes the future. So many people forget that.
If he so chooses, I'd take his hand, and we'd make that climb together. But I won't wait for him. With or without him, I'm making that climb out of this hellhole. The love and support of my friends awaits me. Happiness and brightness awaits me. Laughter and peace awaits me. After all that personal suffering that I bore so long on my own, I deserve to bask in the light of the honest and the true. And the genuine and the caring.
Unlike Bond, I get only one shot at life. Now that I have to work late nights in KL City Centre itself, I might get viciously raped and brutally murdered walking home tomorrow. I'd never know. He's wasted enough of my time. He's plunged me, unwary, without warning, into abyssmal darkness. His abyss. His darkness. The blackness of his increasingly soul-less spirit. And he made it mine.
Now that I've found a way out, he can come with me, and I'd take his hand, if he so chooses. Only if he wants to. But I won't wait. With, or without him, I'm making that climb.
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