The Words I Never Said // A Collection of Essays

Letter #2 // Look! There's a living corpse in the river

Dear Friend,

This time words paralyze the muscles and melt the nerves in my fingers, yet I still feel I must write to you. In moments such as this one, I realize I still remain an untamed gazelle, a barely smoothened block of stone. Sometimes, just after thinking the stormy waters have finally surrendered to my persistent directing, I see harmony losing its path again and I return to square one.

Oh, my dear Friend, as you're reading this, you're probably just smiling with pity. And I myself see how hopeless my aim for control is, and how it so obviously is yet another proof that I still have things to learn. Even the fact that I never stop craving to pull myself together shows I oppose acceptance and peace. But I simply want to catch the current of life and let it flow through my bloodstream, hence I force myself to choke on the river water until everything I see starts to flicker. I begin to understand that is not the right way. Fear is creaking in my bones: what if the river water is a deadly poison, never meant to enter my body naturally? I slow down. I then notice everything passing through me, sliding between my arms and fingers, I'm not moving, I'm standing still, or, caught by inertia, flying in the opposite direction. I fight with the force of the current and the feeling it evokes in me. I'm getting weaker. Suddenly, panic engulfs me, as I see time abandoning me, time, which I'm so heartily terrified of losing, so I dunk my head underwater and begin choking again. Will I ever even manage to align with the flow of the river?

Friend, I have a book recommendation for you. A couple of days ago I took upon an intimidatingly grand, somewhat cosmic in its content epic by Marcel Proust called "In Search of Lost Time". Finishing all seven volumes was one of my goals this summer, but I'm not going to limit myself with a deadline, I'll instead try to enjoy the journey and not be afraid to stop, deeply inhale every sentence and paragraph into my lungs. It's far from a novel that would concentrate on a plot, yet it provides an ineffable pleasure to those who value words, dramatically dynamic literary expression, and melancholic sentimentality. At least that was the impression I got after fifty pages of reading (it's day three and I've only read this much?! As you can see, it's not a swift read, however, for me personally, a pleasant one).

And I spoke of it for a reason. As my eyes devoured those gigantic paragraphs, subtly and with nostalgia uncovering the childhood memories of the protagonist/narrator, I felt a deep, difficult-to-describe sense of longing. With my entire body, I experienced the title of the book being made sense of in each and every one of my neurons. I began feeling sorry for the lost time I never had. Inside the novel my subconscious managed to perceive its own reflections, and it was gripped by pain.

No, I almost never miss the past moments of this life. It just pains me. It pains me they have passed. It pains me that I know I won't ever have enough time, not in the future or ever. The bitter realization of my constant acts of drowning myself and opposing reality only made me fall into despair. I mean, the real time is the flow of the river. And in this moment I feel as if I've never experienced it and never will. And not because it's impossible, but because a harmonious agreement with myself appears too difficult of a task for my stiff body and soul.

At some point in my life, I destroyed myself. I just can't retrace when, where, and how it happened. On the other hand, I doubt knowing the circumstances of that fatal choice would change anything. Most likely the regret for lost time would then be accompanied by regret for a specific decision, and I'd become a true expert on this emotion, even though up until now I saw the romanticization of living in the past as a type of neurosis, completely foreign to me. But in that one and only moment, when I flicked the switch in my feeble, earthly mind, without even realizing I was actually programming myself for a tragic self-destruction, I planted a very specific belief, then sprouted, watered, and fertilized it, took care of it, let it spread until its roots reached so deep into my existence that now pulling it out would mean death to my own identity. And yet that belief is a bloodsucking parasite that exhausts my life in every step of our being. I don't know how I could live without it, but the pain torments me nonetheless.

However, dear Friend, this is not a cry for help. I'm not asking you to climb into the abyss after me or risk your life by extending your helping hand to me. Although partly the thought of being saved tempts me, no one can do that apart from me, since the main and only danger in this excruciating torture is me. The growth that is branching out in my soul is a part of me. If anyone could ever dry it out, it can only be the inner heat of my determination and faith. I'm writing this letter not begging to be pulled out from the water, but craving to be heard. Of all the souls in this Universe, you, my dear Friend, deserved to know about the existence of this chaos. For you, my soul will always be ready to open itself up, therefore it's important you know the pivotal dangers before stepping inside.

That's it for today. I hope you're well and your hands are holding a satisfactory amount of time, perhaps even satisfactory enough for a drop of it - or, more precisely, a big, rich drop of it - to give to the legendary Proust. But, of course, this is not a demand, just a genuine recommendation, in case you'd care to suffer a bit with some kilometer-long sentences, charmingly unpredictable adjectives, and stingingly realistic metaphors.

I wish you health.

- Your Friend.

(June 14th, 2020)