There she laid, next to him, clawing her fingers through his skin like it was soil about to be seeded. His cold stare pierced the roof as his back laid on the king-sized bed they had shared for several years. His back carried a great burden, not concerning life or death but about a crisis of identity.
She laid her head on his malnourished cold pale chest.
Her legs wound around his waist mimicking the likeness of a twine.
Her nails clawed further as she tried to get a reaction. At this point, any reaction would do. His body had shed its skin and grown walls instead. Walls as thick as his longing for a sense of identity.
In her eyes laid despair, he had dragged her into this sinking ship. One where he was the captain with a damaged compass and no sense of direction. He was lost, and her being with him meant she was also lost in this cold daunting sea. They were both lost on this ship. A ship on the verge of capsizing or rather a capsized ship hoping to become a submarine.
This night was no different from several others. The sense of heaviness overlaying the room, the air saturated with heavy concentrations of melancholy and desolation, the bed rigged with thorns that trapped him each time he visited, the constant disappointment she encountered as she attempts to rescue him. It took nothing other than true love to keep her coming back even when disappointment was the warmth she received as she clawed into his skin.
He understood her desire to get through the wall he had put up, a certain yearning for the simplest touch and acknowledgment. But this wall did not just keep her out, it also kept him in. He had become a prisoner in his own body.
“I met my partner back in high school. We attended different schools, in different states. We were friends who occasionally found intimacy in each other. I eventually left for business school in Budapest while she stayed back in Nigeria to attend a state university.
We seldom kept in touch, going about with our new-found lives. I decided to visit home two years later during the holidays and we got together for a movie. She had just graduated and I was still a student.
A few weeks later, we had become star-struck in love with each other. We essentially became one of those couples who made out in public despite previously despising PDAs. I had found my new addiction. What is love but an addiction to a person and personality.
With all this love, I couldn’t possibly see that it was doomed to fail. Not because we didn’t love each other but because love changes lovers, encouraging you to redefine certain aspects of yourself. While this might be a good thing, I assure you it is detrimental in certain aspects.
Coming into our relationship, I hadn’t defined myself. I hadn’t defined who I was or where I was headed. I became a reflection of myself in the eyes of my lover. Such conflicting egos fighting for dominance in one individual. Surely, the resulting effect leaves the individual devastated.
I had disregarded all the lessons on self-care. The most essential being “define yourself before defining the relationship”. I don’t think most relationships fail due to lack of love or affection. I think they fail because a large percentage of us do not define ourselves and after a couple of years or months, we become depressed about not being enough. Not being sufficient to fill the skin created by our lovers”
–Victor
The Odyssean Wave 