You stay shut. You endure. You endure your existence. The existence becomes hate. You must move. You move out of the statelessness you inhibit. The movement becomes a revolution. You revolt to retain your integrity. Your revolt injects an insidious micro dosage of poison into others around you. It’s a relief. You feel better. You’ve gained your sense of self back. You’re strong. You are real. You are you. 

Time passes, and the disgust creeps back in. You look at your reflection in the morning, something doesn’t sit right. It’s the the wrinkle between your eyebrows, it seems more embedded than yesterday. It must have been the bad sleep. Your girlfriend is making you your morning coffee. You watch her carefully. You analyze he every line. She’s not as pretty as the first time you met her. She’s not even as pretty as the girl you took out last night. Her morning voice and messy hair used to excite you, now it’s just a a mere resemblance of your mazy thoughts. You kiss her good morning. Silence engulfs the space, just like the silence inside that suffocates. You gulp your coffee instead of answering her. She waits patiently, but her eyes flare up with a knowing, a knowing of what you aren’t. The knowing you aren’t who she met fourteen years ago, but a provision of a facade of what you were. You mouth words routinely, the very thing she’s been allowing you for the past seven years. It’s familiar, it’s comfortable. She leaves you in the kitchen, in your own shackles of cowardice. The repulsion infuses your being again. You shake it off, and sit at your computer. Clients await. 

Hours pass, your fingers type mechanically, your eyes reflecting the oblivion of numbers and letters, filling the silent void inside you. The ticking hour arrives. You jump to the leash as your puppies jump to you. A briefness of meaning sparks. Your puppies lead the way to their park. There, you observe couples in embraces, couples smiling at one another, couples with meaning in their eyes, humans with temporary or permanent purposes. The repulsion embers again, it convulses back to your morning. You pick up your phone. You urge for you again. You text her. It’s in the ether, the dopamine vault has been activated. Minutes pass as you habitually watch your puppies play. Cha-ching. The testosterone validation has embarked. The vault begins filling. You’re back to you. 

You smile with hope, you laugh with zeal, your heart rushes, unsure what to say, you give it a shot, the thrill keeps you high. You return home, quickly change. White lies. They keep you afloat because you’re wise. 

You pick her up. Her being shatters you. You’re hypnotized. She controls your every move. You navigate poorly, everything that has worked before doesn’t play, yet somehow every mistake you make is a sway. How can this be? You drown your anxiety with alcohol. Your words become comedic rivers, her laughs flow with ease. A touch on her knee electrifies you in a tease. She lets down her long, silky hair, enrapturing your senses with her flare. Her eyes sparkle with innocence and intrigue, not saying much, she encapsulates you with her tenderness. You’re in a fog, it’s off script. It’s not supposed to be off script, yet the flow is stronger than your planned out trip. You place a dam on the river, but the river breaks free. Panic. You can’t hide. You are vividly transparent. You are dammed. You have finally realized you are actually dammed. All the control you have had is gone. You are actually done. You want to kiss her, you need it. You tremble in front of her and she sees it. Her eyes are unwavering, her knowledge unbreakable. The hunter has become the hunted. 

You need to break free, but you’re trapped in your own shackles of spinelessness. Like a dog on a leash, almost able to reach for his treat, almost free. Everything is always ‘’almost’’. You’re almost you, you’re almost alive, you’re almost living, and you’re almost dead, you’re almost gone, you’re almost existing. You are almost. 

She brings you back to the times when you were free. Free to feel. Free to be. She brings you out of your comfort zone of lies, because she is true, to your surprise. She is her and not the typical franchise. She is something you admire to be, she is something you want to inquire. She is the opposite of you in attire, yet she is the spark of fire you’ve actually searched to breach higher. She is the missing link to your life’s desire. 

She is your “almost”. 

You are complicit in your “almostness”. 

You guys escape, you voyage through stories of her and you. You, a child of exodus, her, a childhood with perilous experiences, but both always on precipice of - ‘’almost’’. An evening filled with listening, acknowledging, laughter and humor. An elixir of breath, a bridging back to earth.   

She leaves home with belief, yet you live in deceit. 

You persist your selfish thievery as you hoard benign thrills and nostalgia to fill your hollow heart. Like a good merchant, the currency to purchase the thrills you seek is through your acquired wordsmith skills, and to keep the nostalgia breathing you must add the carefully trained touch to mask the withered soul and crying, mired essence. 

Days pass, weeks follow, your essence reaches out of its shadow, it enables you joy, in front of her it becomes coy, you morph back into a little boy. The purity of being. She too enjoys it, laughing like never before, but little did she know, an illusion of connection has been adorned.

The darkness of your lies in your bed, carry the deep-seated repulsion you are incapable to shed. You sow the ripples of your sheets with diamond gifts, and successful commands from the past which you paraded for seven years. She accepts your gifts, but this time, without forgiving eyes, this time it’s different, this time she is wise. 

‘’Such is life’’ as you like to say. As duality dictates the rules, you have two choices, resilience of the heart or your cage controlled by fear. This is where the ‘’almostness’’ comes into play. Partial truth to your heart is easier than speaking the full truth to your fear. The heart is forgiving after all, while fear is condemning.

And so you are back to where you have started. The tormented cycle of self-repulsion persists and so does your micro dosing of poison. The revolt was never out of resistance, but of mere self-repulsion. 

Your deceit lives like the charlatan cons, and her belief has been birthed into this vox.