Looking Into Her Eyes
A life of shared values, shared hopes and shared dreams. Companionship to fill the silence, envelopes bearing romance, a love reigning supreme. Two bodies interwoven, two souls eternally enlaced, coalescing into one being in a divine state of grace. A couple standing in defiance before the gale force winds of life. A relationship of mutual reliance where insensitivity was a crime. Undying love, unifying trust, conversations always rhymed. Being always gentle, always kind to my one and only future wife. These were all my expectations for a shared dream of a shared life, all destined to succumb before the vicissitudes of time. All I believed true finally proven to be a lie. I only saw what I wanted to see, when I first looked into her eyes: a reflection of cherished dreams, all solely mine.
Nothing was what it seemed. She was so uncaringly blind to all I most esteemed, when I first looked into her eyes. Our dreams were not the same; our values did not align. True companionship lacked a name when hardship marked the time. To love in times of plenty may be only human, but to love in times of hardship is divine. Only those having spiritual acumen learn to value what should truly shine. The sensitivity so longed for, a true emotional embrace, only I alone ever pined for, much to my disgrace. Her imagination was consumed by consumption, dreams all sold at a price, while I had the moral gumption to ask why love alone did not suffice. But my pleas went unheard, unable to break her emotional ice, a disposition that only spurred her to disregard all heartfelt advice. In her eyes I had fallen... from a great heavenly height, an Archangel who once solved every problem was now a mortal man, defenseless before an ignominious plight.
The destitution brought by unemployment was a penury affecting my very enjoyment of life, infecting my very being from the inside, emaciating and eviscerating my mortally wounded pride. Having lost my sense of direction, I looked at her for much needed advice, but heartfelt affection was now in her eyes a mortal vice. My strengths now seen as weaknesses, servile abjection the asking price for the continuance of a relationship that her desire no longer enticed. The respect I once commanded, entirely vanished before her eyes, making me feel emotionally stranded on a desert island amid silent cries. When she faced her hour of darkness, I remained always by her side, trying to harness her self-confidence, minimizing the downside of a prior failed relationship for which she incessantly cried.
But in my hour of darkness, when my self-confidence could no longer guide, she was gelidly heartless when I finally lost my stride. You only really know someone in times of desperation; always plentiful is superficial friendship in times of bountiful elation. The companionship so longed for since my childhood years became the solitude experienced when all my pleas fell on deaf ears. The penalty for loving a woman so vain was abandoning my self only to inherit her pain, having everything to lose and nothing to gain by allowing the whims of another over my life to reign.
When my hour of need finally arrived, though she was physically by my side, of a true loving company I was woefully deprived, assailed by bitter comments, all unforgivingly snide. Unable to contain her disappointment at the vagaries of life, our protracted relationship was seen as pointless, if she could no longer be the dreamt wife. She became coldly distant, even when she was near, persistent abandonment a close reality, not a distant fear. The heartless silence of faithless love speaks louder than any stranger's offense hurled from above. Whether respect once lost can ever be regained is a mystery unsolved, never to myself explained. The supernova glow seen in her eyes at the beginning of our relationship turned into a black hole that absolutely engulfed any true companionship.
To believe that all guileless sacrifices were made for someone so minutely selfish, showed me how far I strayed from the righteous path once so dearly cherished. To abandon all my plans for the company of another was to nullify all sacrifices made by my own mother. Golden years spent on an Ivy League education now devalued and squandered by a third world nation, unwilling to accept my academic credentials in wanton disregard for all my potential. When a man leaves a beloved nation for his lover, he may very well discover that his love lost in translation, despite his arrival at the final destination. But sometimes life forces a man to relearn what it means to be a child, so that he may remember the real reasons for which an adult should smile. All that truly matters, which should never be disowned, is learned as a child when the only blissful innocence known, never does bitter malice ever derisively condone.
Lonesome were the times spent on distant lands. Despite insistent pleadings and persistent reprimands, she repeatedly declined to accompany me as planned. Even when close, we remained continents apart. When I needed her most, she refused to countenance the welfare of a desperate heart. Though deemed by others as precociously wise, she derisively dismissed my best qualities as self-serving lies, as my stature suddenly diminished before her eyes. Only in a dreamworld did I reap all I had sown, only in a dreamworld was mutual understanding ever known. In times of trying desperation, when every road seemed stark and bleak, my pain was the source of her frustration: life having rendered her prospective monarch so defenselessly weak.
When an indomitable warrior felt vulnerable for the first time, a mountain of self-doubt he alone had to climb, battling his personal fallibility, expanding the limits of his humility, defining the true provenance of his character´s nobility. Having a loving woman by his side, all setbacks would have been taken in stride, raising his moral to great heights, setting all surrounding darkness alight. But when daggers were plunged deep on his back by the very lover he would never attack, the tragedy of Samson became a cautionary tale of shameful prurient betrayal: a man who entrusts his life to a selfish love can expect certain punishment from above.
If we managed to stay together for ten long years, despite being assailed by so many insecurities and fears, it was only by finding in my own love a divine form of expression that silenced life's most unrelenting moments of oppression. But if companionship means relying solely on yourself, one might as well bid love farewell. Solitude does all false pretenses inevitably denude, in the absence of compassion no lover remains quiescently prude. True companionship means always being by a lover's side for who they are, what they stand for and how they treat you, regardless of how near or far, regardless of how life may roar, always marching as an army of two, albeit one sharing the same existential view. Supporting each other through the most trying times, having benighted insensitivity as an unconscionable crime.
Blessed are the most trying times, only amid hardship can a couple find if their values truly rhyme, and if their friendship is divine. But despite my incessant pleadings for sensitivity, she curtly dismissed me as being overly sensitive, holding me in emotional captivity while being obdurately insensitive. When a relationship becomes a prison from which one longs to escape, companionship can only be had outside its gates. Unless heartfelt mutual understanding releases the couple imprisoned, love remains but a illusory vision, as insensitivity ignored remains a sin unforgiven.
Whether she cheated on me I shall never know, though the account of someone close renders this a credible woe. Many other reasons have I to suspect that my unwavering fidelity she chose to reject, exchanging a bright future for a dark past. But when true emotional betrayal one experiences, all that follows does not make much of a difference, such is the seismic magnitude of the emotional abandonment originally experienced. When I most needed the warm embrace of her love, the only saving grace came from above. My beliefs were all my own; she was too scared to share, unless one breathes life into another´s love, a couple never breathes the same fresh air. There were limits to what I could do for her, regardless of how much I cared. With my misgivings she would never concur, even when my heart lay bare.
My concept of love was heavenly eternal; her eternity was bound by infernal time. A pathological insensitivity afflicted her, having a previous relationship as the paradigm. The emotional damage she sustained I valiantly sought to repair, but no heart is made whole again by succumbing to despair. Some choices were hers alone, the consequences of which could not be shared, my feelings were well known: she knew how much I cared. I was never the one to say goodbye, always believing in a lifelong relationship lasting until the day I died, an everlasting companionship that all survived, if only my eyes had never so deceitfully lied.
When first looking into her eyes, I only saw what I wanted to see: a shared dream of a shared life, one never meant to be. When last looking into her eyes, I saw all there was to see: the regret for a lost time, the regret for a dying dream. When she finally realized all that she had lost, no price could ever be paid for what never had a cost. The greatest crime in life is abandoning a love to yourself always true, in betraying your true love, you only betray yourself too.