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I can't.
I can't.
I can't remember when it started. But I can recall the very moment I became aware of it. We’d come back from the Ritz, and we were drinking what we always call "the last nightcap", even though there’s always been more after the ‘last’, in the back room of the bookshop. It had been a night no different than any other. We were talking about everything and nothing, in the welcoming and serene semi-darkness of the bookshop. I’d like to say that I was sloshed, but I was not. I was talking about some old event, I don't even remember which one anymore, it doesn't matter - I just wanted to hear him laugh. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved his laughter. Each time, it’s just as if, in an instant, he was stitching together something that lay scattered in a thousand splinters inside of me. He laughed then, his genuine and hearty laughter you’d never imagine at first glance, reverberating throughout the back room and bringing light to every dark nook and cranny. And when his laughter died down, he opened his eyes again. They were glowing with bliss. And he gave me this intense look, so brimming with kindness and warmth that it left me breathless. And I knew. I guess I shouldn't have been able to. But I did know. And I cherish as much as I curse the memory of that evening, because, maybe, there was nothing new about it. Maybe it's always been like this, since the first second we appeared on Earth. But until I was aware of it, I didn’t know how much it hurt.
Undoubtedly, I love him. I've always loved him, even before we had met. When we were enemies, I already loved him. That's the way I was created. To love all beings and all things. When had this love started to shift, to become something else? The first time I realized that the angel in him had not completely disappeared? The first time I realized that his perpetual flippancy was feigned, that his unceasing irony was instrumental to keeping at bay his dull, relentless pain? The first time I realized how unbearable life here would be without him? I can't say. It’s sneaky, I guess, how this steady and unconditional love, filling me with the most immaculate joy, has toward him changed into a feeling belonging only to him, devoted only to him - a kind of love which, I perfectly realize, I should not be able to experience. Because together with this joy comes nameless agony. And yet, this too is love. I know. But how could this love bring along so much disquiet and grief, if its origin is divine? And if it’s not, what right do I have to experience it?
How could I tell him about the warmth that spreads inside of me when I end up fully enveloped in the sweetness of his gaze, when his smile catches me off guard at a turn of phrase? How could I tell him how overwhelmed I feel when his hand lands on my arm or when our fingers brush against one another by chance which, I won’t deny, I have done everything to help? How could I explain how essential he is to me? He’s the only being who cherishes me despite knowing who I am. The only source of light in this infinite solitude. I feel like I'm not doing right by him for thinking this way. I don't love him because he's the only one who shares my existence on Earth. I don't love him because I don't have anyone else to love. I don't even love him because he claims to see something in me – something I’m not sure exists, but which I hope, with all my strength, that he is right. It’s his flaws, inconceivable in an angel, that turn him into a creature not to be worshipped and dreaded, but to be loved. I love him for the books and for the chocolate, I love him because he can be a real prick and bury you with a venomous phrase and regret it the very second later. I love him because it’s impossible not to love him. In his presence, I feel understood, accepted, forgiven, cherished. The pain fades at last. But this is true for everyone crossing his path. Who am I to hope for preferential treatment? How can I dare to believe he can love me more than the others - love me who is the least worthy of his love? He loves everybody the same way. This is both my blessing and my damnation.
I have long tried to persuade myself that what I was experiencing was the resolution to save him. But I don't love him despite what he is. I love him for what he is. He is a unique blend of perpetual fear and faith in the universe, cynicism and innocence, boredom and wonder. He is the very energy, and the pleasure, and the intoxication, and the cheerfulness that makes my life fascinating. How could I express the emptiness and the longing that take over my days when he is elsewhere? That leap in my chest every time the doorbell rings? This disappointment that follows my high hopes, when it’s not him crossing the threshold? This joy when, to the contrary, I recognize the way he pushes the door open? It's foolish, this ecstasy, because I know full well the torture that shadows his visits. How could I express the anxiety with which I examine each of his words and gestures, in search of the slightest hint of a mutual feeling? How vain and foolish, this hope! How I would like to be able to uproot it from my heart! Sometimes, I feel like I’m perceiving a fleeting sensation, filling me with ridiculous hope. But it can only be an echo of my own feelings, a projection of my absurd desire that all of this might be possible. I know all too well that he cannot, that he will not ever feel love. Not for me, not for anyone. Sometimes it seems like I would feel better if I could at least blame him. But it is not cruelty on his part. His Fall made him like this.
I can't tell him. What would he do with my admission? How could he believe it? Undoubtedly he would regard it as a joke, or even some ploy by me, some attempt to corrupt him. He'd then start avoiding me. And even if he believed me, it would be worse: he’d accept my declaration with indifference. With disgust, maybe. Who would want to be loved by a demon? And it would be me then, who would flee his presence, for I could not bear such a rejection, such a misery. It would be even more painful than my Fall has been. I need his laugh. I need those eyes on me. I need to believe that there's still something in me worthy of being saved. Hence, I stay silent. I muzzle my love, I shrink it, I hide it carefully so that he cannot sense it. Only in this way can I linger at his side. This is all that matters.
I can't tell him. He'd laugh about it. And maybe rightly so, but I know that I couldn’t stand for him to find my love ludicrous, that I couldn’t endure his irony brushing it off. He might even see it as pity, and undoubtedly this alone would drive him away from me. How could I contemplate my existence without the joyful disorder he brings into it, without the questions he forces me to ask myself? Without him, him, simply him, why seek meaning and reason in something which cannot be explained? Hence, I stay silent. I stop my body from shaking, I stop my hand from resting on his cheek, I stop my mouth from shaping the words swelling inside my chest that threaten to ruin everything. So I can keep walking by his side. I can't hope for anything more.
I can't, but for how much longer...
...how much longer can I endure it?