Fiction: Beholden

We both know this isn't love.

Photo by Gwen King on Unsplash

It isn’t love.

I know what love feels like. This is something vastly different.

I know the soft, patient ache of love. It’s the kind that waits, that forgives, and that survives almost anything. It holds me at night. It tells me I’m adored and worships the ground I walk on.

By contrast, this is something much colder. More deliberate.

It’s as if he’s threaded himself through my will. Sometimes, I think that it was fated, as though some grander scheme has connected us with an invisible thread, destined to be tied together for eternity. I steel myself. I tell myself I’ll be stronger than those binds. No matter how many times I rehearse the word “No” though, it dissolves the moment he enters my thoughts.

Marguerite Duras stated, “Very early in my life it was too late,” and I understand exactly what she meant. Some desires arrive already finished, only waiting to be remembered. From the moment we met, I recognised the power in him. I still remember that moment, so many years ago now, as electricity pulsed through the air between us. I remember the feel of the sun on my skin as though it was the first time in a spotlight on a stage. The lines he spoke tumbled from his lips like strings drawn taut, and I felt myself responding before I even realised what was happening. Each word was a quiet tug, and each glance became a subtle pull. It still is. I moved without thinking, guided by forces I could neither see nor resist, and, even now, the memory makes my chest ache with a mixture of awe and quiet despair.

I was the first. That’s a fact. Many others have followed since, but I was the first that noticed his quiet gravity rearranging rooms. I noticed it because it rearranges me.

I tell myself I have a choice. I tell myself I could walk away if I wanted to. My body knows better than the lies my resolve tries to tell.

I’m his the moment he beckons.

I remember the first time I read D.H. Lawrence’s words, “But I cannot rest unless I am entwined with you…”, and I thought, instantly, of my puppeteer.

He doesn’t ask for my devotion. He never has. He likes to remind me of that sometimes when I tell him that I need to walk away from him. Once, I asked him which word he’d use to describe me. He paused, thoughtful, then said, “loyal.” He sounded almost amused, like he was tasting the word on his tongue before spitting it out. He simply assumes my devotion though, and that’s what makes it worse. The way he moves through the world, utterly certain that people will bend toward him, like flowers turning toward a cruel sun, is almost impossible to resist.

It’s pathetic how quickly I return.

Photo by Wesley Pribadi on Unsplash

“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how,” wrote Nietzsche. I have a why. It’s him. So, I endure this ache endlessly.

I build philosophies around my surrender, where I call it curiosity, compassion, and inevitability. I want anything to make it sound noble, but the truth is simpler and far less forgiving: I can’t deny him.

I’ve studied detachment like a discipline and practiced self-control as though it were an art. I can do it when he isn’t present. I can walk away. Then he returns, and I recognise my own failings even as I let him pull on that string or this one once again. All it takes is a glance, though, or a word spoken too softly, and my composure fractures.

I hate him for it. I hate him for how easily he unravels me. I told him so, too. He laughed and told me that I’ll never be able to walk away from him. I know from the push and pull that we dance that the hate never lasts long enough to matter. It just burns long enough to make room for longing.

Yukio Mishima said, “There is a limit beyond which desire turns into self-destruction". I think about it often, yet here I am, again, being compliant under his direction because I can’t tell the difference in his presence.

Sometimes I wonder if he knows just how deeply I feel this. I wonder if he can sense it: in that tremor before I speak or in the way my sentences shorten when he’s near. My mind will swim, and my eyes fixate on his mouth. I nod along to whatever he says. It’s a trance I can’t shake. There’s always that flicker of pleasure in his eyes, something almost tender in its cruelty, as if he’s saying, “I know exactly what you are, and I won’t save you from it.” I’m the puppet. His puppet. He takes great delight in being the marionette master.

I once believed that intellect could shield me from my desire for him. I thought knowing better was the same as being better. I’m an intelligent, articulate, confident woman. Who is this man to reduce me down to a compliant doll to manoeuvre as he wishes? Now I know that reason has no defence against hunger.

I can write essays on power, quote poets and philosophers until my throat is raw, but the moment I want him, all of those words collapse into silence.

Maybe that’s what binds me most of all - the silence. It’s possible that it’s in the quiet understanding that some connections exist only to undo us. There’s no morality in it. No redemption. This is a connection that has spanned a lifetime. He knows it too.

It’s just the unendurable truth that I would let him ruin me then call it grace.

Each time I swore it was the last, I meant it. I assure you. Still, the minute he reappears, the ache begins anew. I see his face in an old photograph. I see his smile on social media. I see his name appear on my phone screen. I see his mouth in front of me as I sit across from him. I can’t seem to let it go.

Years mean nothing to a hunger like this; time only distils it.

I think that’s what people don’t understand about devotion, although they should do. It doesn’t always look like love. Sometimes it’s a prayer whispered into the dark, to a god who insists he never asked to be worshipped but puts into motion a lifetime of longing. I know, even as I write it, that one day he’ll leave for good, and he won’t look back. It won’t be out of cruelty. It’ll be indifference instead.

I’ll still ache, and still find traces of him in everything that doesn’t hurt enough.

I know this was never about having him. It was about being beholden.

It’s just the unbearable truth that I would let him ruin me, and call it grace. Anaïs Nin wrote that she wanted to be a woman who goes mad with grace. I think that’s all I’ve ever been.

It isn’t love.

Still, I feel the pull.