How deranged does one have to be to relinquish love and friendship for appearances, to comply with others’ wishes? How deranged to do so and, yet, not really do so, still pining for the attention, but suppressing that ache, that need, in one’s bones? How deranged to expect to receive that attention while giving nothing in return? How deranged to concoct an entire fairy tale, willfully mischaracterizing what happened for applause and ignoring one’s own feelings and desires? How deranged to refuse to admit that one was in the wrong first, too afraid to follow one’s heart, too weak to take the chance for fear of judgment, and having forced the horrible path that came, to refuse to forgive, when one understands why what happened happened? How deranged to deprive oneself of something good, something new, and open oneself up, instead, to the worst that sniff around, the worst of the old? How deranged to let oneself see someone who held one’s similar interests and a similar heart as unworthy, as deranged, because one was told to. How deranged to live one’s whole life by the rules of a crowd, unable to make one’s own decisions without feeling pressured to do so, even tacitly?
What for? What good has it achieved? How deranged is it to be too morally twisted and too insecure not to take it all back, to heal it, and to have something you needed? And how deranged is it for one to convince oneself that one did not need it, when one did and it was clear as day? And how deranged is it to make oneself the thrall of those who will never actually love one, choosing that instead, to be completely incapable or unwilling to make things right and leave the real trash where it lays? How deranged to label one who loved you as deranged and to condemn him for being unable to let it go, to ignore his calls, his anguish over it? To refuse to hear his words—when one has sought them ever since—because one has been ordered to ignore him? How deranged to play make believe for whom you’ve never wanted simply for convenience, to give your mind and body to those who only take it for their own egos. It is an admission of self-deceit and low self-esteem.
***
No one else will ever desire you as much and as truly. That is not deranged, and, if it is, then derangement is better and more true than whatever you think you have, whatever false definition, shaped by TV fantasy and self-interested men.
Does your life belong to you or does it belong to them? What has this ever given you but heartache, loneliness, unfulfilling relationships, and a cage that demands compliance? Why keep chasing what can never be real, when what was real could still be? You feign to want the humdrum, but you want the edge. And the edge is not with them, but with what you threw away and still think about every day, though you deny it and refuse to admit to yourself the significance of where your mind and heart wander … refuse to see it for their sake. It’s not their life. Time is running out to find yourself, to be the person you so desperately want to be. Will you continue to throw away your time for their kudos? It is YOUR choice, not theirs, and you have already once defied them and reached out. Repair what’s broken or lose that piece of what makes you real and human or be a slave. And, if you cannot, than except the reality— you are broken. Your heart does not work correctly. You are a sociopath. Because only a sociopath could ignore grief so cavalierly and calculate instead of feel. You think a man who you cannot hurt, a man who moves on, is a real man, a mature man, but, in reality, he is simply a man who never really cared for you.
***
But he had to accept reality too—that he was deranged—that he had been fighting for over 2 years for someone who did not exist and never had, that his love was only infatuation with a dream he had created. He had to accept that you do not exist, for no true person could be so cold. He had to accept that you only reached out for yourself, to assuage your own guilt and make yourself appear the better person when you are not. You have no heart. You don’t live your own life, content with being a tourist in other people’s, even the ones you choose to be with, letting your identity become subsumed by theirs … and only the worst desire someone who is no one. But he had to accept that you prefer the worst, that you see greed, selfishness, and obliviousness to the world as good traits, even when the obliviousness is to your own feelings, your own existence. You prefer the degenerate and the perverse, those who use you for their own gratification. You prefer the shallow to the deep, the falsely flattering to the sincere feeling, the detached man child to the loyal lover who sees only you, the shiny rock to the life that it’s supposed to signify—the love its supposed to represent—when it does not exist and never has. You prefer the expensive and meaningless to the heart-crafted and significant.
He had to accept that his words never meant anything to you, and that you’d only read them to use them to paint him further as a bad person, an an insane obsessive. You’d never heard any of them, and you had no care for what you had done, no regret, no longing to fix anything. You just wanted their pity and to mock him. He had to accept that there was nothing in you worth fighting for, or, at least, nothing you would ever allow to live. You prefer cages to freedom, control to self-determination, and he had to accept that this is just reality. He had to accept that you are incapable of or unwilling to see the bigger picture, see the meaning in the never-dying loyalty, the truth of it, not the vain interpretation fed to you by those who know nothing of any of it, not the whole truth. He had to accept that you saw no advantage in him, and that is all you care about. You will never see him as anything more than a crazy person, who wronged you, excusing yourself forever for how you wronged him and not giving one iota of a shit about any of it. And, in that, you too remain as deranged as he, because you know it isn’t true and you know you have chosen to ignore your faith … but, more importantly …. yourself. He had to accept that you are too old to change and nothing he could ever say would change that … and that you don’t want to anyway.