World War 4: Sticks and Stones

Eliza's Curse

It was not his imagination. I truly did see the love of my life, the only one who I thought would not, could not be corrupted, kill an innocent man on behalf of solely a feeling of hate. Ben was real to me. For so many years, he held me, told me I would be okay. He told me he loved me. No one had ever told me they loved me. I saw his love for the world fade into what could only be described as passionate anger past his tearstained, deeply saddened eyes. I was broken in that moment. Broken to pieces. Not because his evil actions made me lose my love for him, but because my love was so strong that it inhibited my ability to stop his evil actions. All I could do was stand and watch with my mouth wide open and my soul stained with heartbreak. He looked back at me and I screamed all that I could think to scream. "I HAVE NEVER FELT SO DISTANCED!" These words broke me even further and I ran away so as to not keep looking on. That night, I wept. I wept until my body was numb and sore from weeping. Each tear that fell from my eye reminded me of a moment when I was happy with Ben. Truly, undeservedly happy. 

The first tear took me back to when I first met him. It was a cold day. It was so odd to me that it was cold because of the fact that I was underground. It shouldn't have been cold, but alas, I was freezing. I felt to be on the verge of death. As I shivered, I felt myself start to cry. It was just a small whimpering cry with small whimpering tears, but it felt so big, so scared to me. No one cared. My brother was the only one who I mattered to. In my sorrow, I felt a hand. It was the soft hand of a child, someone like me. It was someone lost like me; afraid, like me. All that I could hear through my sobs were the words, "are you cold?"  I could not understand how he deduced that my sorrow meant cold. All that I could think to believe was that we had some sort of unwavering connection even before we met. It sounds superstitious, but there was no other reasonable explanation. At that moment, I turned. I expected to see my brother, but it was a small boy, about my age, about my state of loneliness. I nodded to him and immediately, I felt a blanket wrapped around me. That was the last time I saw him for months. 

My next encounter happened to be a more lengthy one. It was a day when I was out walking with my brother. My brother was my only source of contentment. He held me to reality. He never once would say he loved me, but I knew for certain that he did. He was very kind, very gentle, very caring, very grounded. He felt every emotion that I felt when I was hurting. He cried when I cried. Laughed when I laughed. He validated my very existence when I felt like no one else would. In walking with him, I saw the boy that had saved me when I was cold. I doubt completely that I would have died without him, but I needed him nonetheless. It was a passing glance, but I felt a deep, coursing desire to go to him. I did. I went to him as if I was being dragged to him by an outside force; as if it were my destiny. As I was being dragged, I thought of what I would say, what I would do. The jokes I would make, the things I would thank him for. Everything that I thought to say was null and void by the moment I walked over to him. All I said was "hi," but it was lightning. It struck me with full force, set me ablaze. I knew in that very instance that all I could do was watch as I would fall deeper and deeper into love. Looking back now, it was not love then, it was merely a child's crush that later developed into love, but without my naivete that dragged me to him, I would have never been trapped by the curse of love that has led to so much sorrow. 

In remembering that lightning strike of a word, my cries became so much more intense. After witnessing Ben betray his consciousness  and kill an innocent man, I wanted so deeply to hate him, but every time I would speak to myself, the only words I could say were always the same: "I hate that I love him. I hate that I love him." Indeed, I hated every square inch of love that wrapped itself around Ben, but I did not, could not hate Ben himself. I could not hate him because I knew who he was once. I had never met a kinder, gentler, more peaceful man. Knowing who he was, I could not bear to believe that what I had witnessed was who he had become. Instead of dwelling in this fateful present, I again went backwards. 

"Hi" he responded, slightly confused as to why I had greeted him. I told him that months earlier, he had provided me with a blanket. He laughed and told me that his father told him to do so. I was a little upset that it wasn't his decision to comfort me, but throughout my stay in this beautiful past, I remembered the many moments after that when he did choose to comfort me. I found myself thinking deeply about what it meant to be in love. I do not know now, and I don't believe that I ever did. I always thought that love was a choice, a decision that one makes everyday to choose someone to be in love with. How can that not be true? How can I not be the deciding factor in love? I chose that day that I greeted Ben that I wanted to know him, that I wanted to fall in love with him, but I still thought about how entrapping that fall felt. I had no choice past my first greeting. Perhaps I was thinking too deeply into what it means to be in love and what it means to love. I could always truly, wholeheartedly say that I was in love with Ben and that he was in love with me, but the odd thing is that I could not always say that I loved him, but until this very moment, I always knew Ben loved me. In this moment of thought, I became confused. I could not understand this paradoxical choice of love that Ben both fell, but also chose to be in love with me. I knew deep in my heart that Ben was still in love with me, but he made a dark choice today to kill a man. I cannot trust the evil choices of a murderer. But I still was in love, and in letting him kill a man without confrontation or consequence, I chose to love him. 

In this thought, I became angry that my brain even took me back to a good time if it wanted me to experience pain because of it. That blanket was not a choice, it was his father's. This thought creeped in. I cried once more. I felt the skies open along with the ground and I heard nothing but the sounds of Ben's evil, and the remaining good at war in my soul. I was a lost woman. I was a cursed woman. 

I stood. My eyes were red with pain like none other. My body trembled as if I was an earthquake. My face was solemn. I looked to Destiny. I wished to feel her innocence. I wished to be afraid of nothing like she was. In a way, Destiny was the bravest out of any of us. She did not understand fear, or right from wrong, or love from hate, or calm from chaos. She just lived. I had never felt such jealousy except for looking in her infant eyes and seeing purity. I wished she were dead even more than I wished I was dead, or Ben was dead. I wondered what the point of us surviving was. I wondered if she were the only hope for humanity and if "hope for humanity" just meant to continue an evil human race, to continue a cyclical spiral of jealousy and hatred and murder. I wondered if her name was a joke. In this, I realized that love is not a choice. There is no paradox or confusion because, even if this was so obvious of a choice to make that it's ridiculous to think of this as love, no matter how much I've wanted Destiny to die, I never had the ability to kill her. This seemed like it follows that choice, but it didn't because I could have killed her. I could have smashed her to bits with Ben's stupid shinbone, I could have stabbed her deeply in the chest and I have thought about it, but I don't make the choice not to, I simply cannot because I love her. I am cursed by love. 

I went to Ben a day after this happened and I found my lips kissing him. I wanted to stop, but I couldn't. I hated that I loved him. Still, I did not hate him. Oh how I wished to hate him. I grabbed his right cheek, I dragged it in closer, and I put my lips to his. I kissed him and I could not stop. He kissed me and then he stopped. Not because he wanted to, but because he saw the tears in my eyes of a woman who had lost everything. For only one moment, I saw his eyes. They were so lost, so angry, so broken, but beneath everything I saw him for the first time in so long. I saw him offering me a blanket and asking if I was okay. I saw him walking with me and laughing with me, and crying when my brother died. Beneath everything, I saw love. In the reflection of his eyes, I saw me. I hated it because I saw love too. I was taken back once more to that moment that he gave me that blanket. I lost it. I screamed a scream containing no words. I was broken because he was broken. I was lost because he was lost. Everything that I felt, I felt because he felt it first. I wondered then if that meant that he loved me first. I grabbed him once more and kissed him. This time he kissed back with that energy that I felt. We could not stop, but instead of the taste of beauty, and peace it tasted like blood and hatred and chaos. This was undoubtedly the worst kiss that I had received in my entire life, yet we couldn't stop. I felt my arm angrily drift down his body and his cross my chest. I hated every second of this, yet we couldn't stop. Or I couldn't stop. Love is not a choice. There is nothing confusing or paradoxical about it, but love is not always a gift. Love is not always happy, or beautiful, or peaceful. Sometimes love is pain, love is angry, love is broken. Love is a curse. 

I loved Ben. I hated that I loved Ben. But I was trapped. I was scared. There was nothing I could do except love Ben. "What is love" is not a question that I will ever see answered, but "how is love," "why is love," is something as simple as my tears bringing me back to a cold bunker and a blanket.