Dark Hope (A Short Story)

Disclaimer: The following contains explicit content. Please DON'T READ if below 18

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It is when you get the feeling of: OK, whatever, just let it burn and let the smoke reach the sky. Let it cloud the light of the last matchstick burning, consuming the last molecule of oxygen to stay alive. Let it produce the last of its life energy then fade slowly and painfully away. Just give it up; there are no molecules left to light up the last match for one more second and there is no hope left for you to reach the light fading by the second now.

It is frustrating to reach such feeling of depression. Why would I reach such a level?! Is it all because I saw him with another woman?! I’ve always known he was trouble. It’s not something that would put me down. It’s something that gave me advantage over him, it always has. Knowing his nature and playing the role of the dumb, stupid girl who loves him unconditionally and unwillingly is just as sweet and victorious as reading a new poem, writing one or watching slam poetry finals. It is something that has always kept me stronger and in a better position than his. So why am I so frustrated now. It can’t be him, can it?! Could I have fallen for him?! It’s so unlikely of me. I don’t fall in love, I’m incapable of loving. This doesn’t mean that I’m mean or heartless but it is something that I’ve acknowledged about myself. I do not have the ability to love, yes I’m smart, I know this about myself, but not a person who can love and indulge in it and lose myself over it. Maybe he noticed that and knew it about me?! But how would he know, I’m good at sex, I revel in it. Sex is an expression of love, if you do sex hard and strong you express your feelings! Maybe that’s the problem, I’m too expressive and too dominating that he noticed how much I do it passionlessly, I just go on with the euphoric feeling that fills my needs and then PUF, I’m gone, it’s done with and he is nothing to me. Maybe, he is seeking affection, a feeling that will make him feel loved, truly loved, not just sex love. I have to stop thinking that all people are like me, affectionless and sex addicts!

The thought never left my head, it made me relentless and sleepless. I couldn’t comprehend why would I feel as such if he is just a sexual expression to me, I mean, I can get any other man, can I not?! But this too made me disgusted, yes I can say that I feed on sex but hell, I’m not a hooker, I’m not the girl for one night stands, this is abhorring. So why am I feeling such infuriation and depression, I have no clue.

Days passed and he didn’t know that I knew about his cheating, he never knew that I knew about his previous ones as well, so why would he notice it this time. This actually invited my demons in and made me think of two things; either he is way smarter than myself and he knows that I know and he doesn’t care and playing dumb himself, or he has lost all hope in me to give him a genuine feeling of love, a sexless passion that would make him feel that I want him and I love him just as he loves and wants me. I liked the second thought better. This invited another two thoughts to come along, either I love myself so much that I refuse to admit that he might be smarter than me, or I love him that I want to give him what he best deserved. I didn’t go through the possibilities more than that. I knew that if I did, I would hate myself more and sympathize with him more than I am already. I felt sorry for him, he is married to a woman who is unable to give any genuine feeling whatsoever as long as it’s not sex. The only thing I feel is euphoria; the burning skin and goose bumps when I’m enjoying myself in bed. It feels like rebelling against the world, myself included.

The thing that I loathed the most is how come I’m a writer, I’m an expresser of feelings, and I feel nothing. How come I explain how others can feel while I myself unable to feel what they feel, I’m unable to identify with their feelings. It’s like a painter who cannot see what he is painting, nor can he see the colors he is using! It is very hypocritical of me to call myself an expresser while I lack expression. It’s even more hypocritical and irritating of people to call me one. It’s either they are so blind to see within me or they are so desperate to get a grip of their own feelings that I express for them. They feel what I tell them to feel, I dictate them their feelings that’s why they cry when a child dies and when a father leaves his kids to go to war. They are just as numb as I am. If an emotionless creature teaches people how they should feel towards something then there is no essence, no true feelings or emotions to be taught, there is only nothingness. It’s like a lost puppy showing a blind man the way home. I’m walking these people towards the void, towards nothingness. This thought itself made me give it another piece of my mind, I’m reveling in a world of possibilities that might never end and lead me to self-destruction.

I realized that I was going in an endless circle of thought and confusion. I was doing the thing I’ve always done best; building theories and reaching endless possibilities of an infinite set of conclusions. Each thought had its own theory reached and each had its own conclusion lighting as a bulb in my head, leaving me to just walk towards another one, in a circular shape. It was enjoyable, yet tiring and exhausting.

Trying not to get distracted by my irritating brain nature, I decided I should focus on one thing at a time. The thing that I was concerned about is knowing why I was so frustrated. And then another thought came along, a distracting thought yet useful. If I can be that irritated then it must have surely hit something in my shell, making me care suddenly. It’s no more the dumb girl keeping up the pretense of love. Maybe I really did feel something for him, not necessarily love but maybe the feeling of domination; I’m losing my grip on him! This freaked me out for a couple of seconds and I started to reach my insanity corner, breaching all the security alarms banging.

For the first time, in a couple of weeks now, I feel something else that is not infuriation. I liked that I could feel such anger and such jealousy if I may say. I suddenly realized that I can feel, I have a feeling. It doesn’t matter what this feeling is but it exists. This means that there is something beyond this shell of mine that can actually be more humane and more affectionate. There is something beyond the wires and the technology and the world of letters and words that I’m ravishing in and still know nothing about. I am playful with words, I know that. I am always told that I’m one of those who can translate every feeling as accurately and as visually as anything tactile ever. I never believed them until now. I’ve always thought that I’m useless and I’m emotionless, but now I can acknowledge what they’ve been saying; I do have feelings, I do have affection. I’m capable of loving. I do this in my own way, a way that only I can understand and no one else has the capacity to endure. As twisted as it sounds, it put me to relief! I finally can see that there is hope for me to reach the light of the last matchstick burning. I do have hope in steering away the smoke of the fire, my darkness burning and intermingling with my desire to give in. the whole time I was suppressing the emotion of love in me and expressing it as violently and vulgarly in sex. I never thought that it can really be a feeling of true affection towards him. After all I never really gave it an ample thought of why I was never with any other man but him. It’s because unconsciously I’ve always realized that I do love him and only him. I was just a chicken enough not to admit it to myself.

On that night I decided that I will show him a moment of true affection and passion. I will show him how much I cared, sexless, lust-less, without any intentions towards anything but reaching his heart and making him understand that I loved him for being him, not for the pleasures he gave me. I put on my best dress, it was not revealing because I wanted him to see it in my eyes not in my sensuality. I lit up a couple of candles and I cooked dinner, I cooked myself this time, I actually never cook at all. I drew my eyeliner, as simple as he likes it and as pure as he always calls it, and I waited for him. He came in exhausted but when he saw me his eyes glittered. I saw love and passion and affection that I haven’t seen in a long time. I have always noticed it but I have never seen it. He realized that I wanted him in the way he wanted me. He realized that I started to love him the way he does. I started loving him in his way, not mine. He realized that I have finally seen his pain, the one I caused him unintentionally. And he smiled the purist and most innocent smile that a husband can ever bestow upon his wife. He was like a child, newly born and feeling his mother’s heartbeat from the outside for the first time. He felt safe and made me feel his feelings of safety. I just looked into his eyes and realized how dumb I was, literally this time, not pretending. I can see the love that I have missed, enshrining myself away from his affection. It was the first time in forever that I have finally seen the match burning, gloriously and victoriously, saying mutedly that it will never fade away. The match didn’t fade and the oxygen didn’t die. It was my fear that imprisoned my passions, my life energy combusting.

It was only then that I realized that even though it’s burning and crumbling down to ashes and its smoke is reaching the sky, there is always a hole in the size of a matchstick that resembles disillusionment and resolution. There will always be a molecule of oxygen that will keep the match lighting my way, I just have to figure out where I should position the match to catch the molecule to light up my path. This is the hope that I’ve always carried within me but never knew that it even existed, it’s the hope devoured by darkness and brought to life through the dark; it is dark hope, a hope only mine. It’s my moon, a moon only for me.

Alone it stands in the dark sky

From time to time it ages and dies

Then gets reborn from the womb of hollowness

Giving life to its deathening deepness

Like a Phoenix born of ashes

It is a rock out of existence

That thrives through day to come back each night

To give hope to the hopeless, wandering sights