On surviving Emotional sieges
So this started on a random day, two not so stranger colleagues talking, venting, making jokes on their manager and some innocent flirts.
And then again on a day after roughly four years, when one of them moved to another company, they talked again. One asked another, why do you like me like that, and the other paused, or rather stopped to find another witty, flirty line, but at that random moment, it felt like a call out to his feelings.
On another day, this would've been a random venting call, but not this day, not this person. He paused and replied, because I care. And she said, very clearly, this is fun and all, till you're not serious. On any other day, he would've thought again about it, but not this day. He asked why, but really it was, Are we not good enough for each other. And seemingly she saw the inner meaning, and replied, we might just be good for each other, but a marriage is not just two people. He, on any other day, would've taken this as an escape from other person, but not this day, not this person. He tried to tell her, everything is grey once more than two people are in it.
Suddenly all of comfort of the banter seemed to be going away. He read and re-read at what point, things changed. And he saw things the way they really were, on this day. In between, two days passed with awkward silences in between. At one point, he saw, maybe, maybe this would be the last time, they were talking. And he gave up there. On what, you'd say. This connection, this friendship, No. On himself, he typed he never meant to ask her out, although every trace of him would want him to do that. She believed him, took him back as a friend, or something.
He wandered off after this, to dating apps, he'd talk to multiple pretty ones, but all that he remembered was, how they'd laugh at these dating app stories of hers. He started talking to strangers, as if he'd become used to it. He, on some day, would talk to a random colleague in his new company and would talk nonstop about her, for hours, and some other day, would talk everything, but her with his therapist. As if she is a secret. As if she is not in his will, to be shared out. He'd be drunk, sober and then again drunk within a single day.
On a random day, while hearing about some historical shit, he heard about siege of leningrad and it struck him, that she is just other person. One would think, yes, she is another person, but for him, it dawned that she is not within him, entirely outside, living in her own version of the world. And that other person is kinda keeping his soul in siege. It doesn't matter how much he try, care, pray, pretend, crawl, hurt, he'd be there and nothing would change. He'd be under siege forever. One who dares to love, care or just truly see the other person, effectively puts themselves in a siege. No matter how hard you try, you'd still end in that siege. To survive this, he has to eat his humanity, his soul, eat what makes him human. He'd be a machine, and then it's impossible to put him in such a siege. Like people in leningrad, who at first ate birds, grass then rats, and then all of it is over, they ate the dead. The ones who survived kind of, were not humans, they were machines, and they survived. He'd wonder whether anything artificial, religion, caste, people matter to them. How it's so satisfying knowing there were people who've felt what he's feeling a hundred years ago, and survived. And perhaps that was the cruelest thing about it. The siege was never made by monsters. Just other people.