What care I for love? One who can touch my heart can hurt it. So give me one for whom I truly do not care, not deep down. Someone passable, easy to let go, easy to ignore, who my friends believe is a catch. Someone I can grow accustom to without any cost to my heart. Love can be faked if there are other considerations … money. Life is not about love. It is about the illusion of it, for other eyes. I do not need it nor crave it, nor do I look for it sincerely. And, if I do, I stab that part of me. I chase the real away as childishness. Love is for things, for security, not people. Give me convenience instead, a man, an ugly man, who has no deep yearning for me either, one I am not even attracted to. It makes everything simple, as I can hate myself for choosing it and, therefore, never be tempted by better.
What care I for passion or intellectual stimulation? I do not want to to have to think about anything, to be spurred by deep questions or concerns, to be caught up in feelings I cannot control. I do not want to be bothered with any of it. Give me a perpetual man child who becomes semi-erect by living vicariously through sports teams he has no personal stake in and bores me with his mindless preoccupations. That’s real life. Someone I do not miss when he is gone. That is all the passion I want. I can live with making myself prostrate for an old lout whose half-hearted flaccidness can’t satiate me, fill me, as his desire for me is as pretended as mine for him. As long as people believe it, I want nothing that grips me, nothing that really excites me. I do not want to be drawn to anyone uncontrollably. I want to shop and not worry about bills. I want to travel and have it be as if I am alone, for there will be no one to really share it with, no one who really cares. Give me wine to dull my needs, to create false passion where none lives. It makes it easier. It’s all about the lights, about the game.
What care I for loyalty? I know he whom I choose will secretly want others, those he cannot obtain. I know I will not be his first choice, nor his second nor third. I will know he chose me for my deference to his worldview, selling myself away, making myself a thing, a slave. That is how it’s supposed to be. That is maturity. And I will not care when he is exposed as having been with others behind my back, for he was never really with me anyway, nor I with him. It was only a contract, a deal cut for mutual benefit. I cannot expect his tepid heart to stay true to me anymore than mine is true to him. As long as I keep myself from falling for someone real, the cost is worth it.
What care I for kindness or faith? They are illusions as well. Life is about advantage, not caring. It is easy enough to fake being kind, and, lord knows, I have done it a million times. I care not if he is a bigoted cancer, as long as the illusion is maintained. I care not if everything he believes flies in the face of our professed religion, as my values do not follow it either. What good is being pious when it stands in the way of gain? To go to church and pretend is easy enough. I will never really confess.
No, I do not want truth nor passion. I do not want to actually care. I want what is easy and barely has any strings. I do not want to be torn in mind and heart by whom I choose. I do not want someone who would die for me. I mock that sentiment. I am old already, and death is coming soon. So why not be ready, years before, and just die now in soul and heart? I do not need to be a person. I do not need equality. I only need things and illusions, diamonds and a marriage no one is really committed to. I must steel my heart from complications, from passion, from real desire. I must swear off real love, as it is nothing but trouble and obligation. Give me the fake. Give me the illusion. I want what most have … nothing but a business contract.
And you, you who loved me true, could touch my heart, stay away. You who makes me sweat in the dark late at night. I cannot bear to see you, to be near you, for it brings back the hurt, brings back my lies. I sold my soul away to keep from falling for you. I have sworn you off, and I choose mediocrity, choose things, choose convenience. Do not tempt me with your deep thoughts, your burning passion, your hot flesh yearning to drown me in pleasure. No. I choose the illusion, I choose meaninglessness. I choose convention. I do not choose you and never will. I will not come to you. My penance for my guilt, for my selfish choices, is to deny myself forever, to never really feel again, to never think about anything that matters, and to never let myself know real … to never know you.