I’ve been thinking a lot about arbitrariness and circumstances lately, how our likes, dislikes, and choices have little to do with the object itself and more to do with past memories and current self-absorbed needs. It would be interesting to dissect every reason, wouldn’t it? To know the reasons behind preferences, choices, passive adoration, unhealthy cycles, and concrete decisions to pursue things and people like a madman.

Ah, the range of emotions that can be brought about by this. Flattery, of course, would be the most desired outcome. After all, it can only come from being genuinely desired. But there’s also the possibility that you would see how you are admired as a reminder of something else. Or how you are a piece that happened to make sense in what you recognize as a transient phase in someone’s life. And you could choose to be wretched, I guess. Wail and bitch due to the fact that you are not the main character in this thing, but a stepping stone, a necessary chapter one has to go through to reach the glorified ending.

But you don’t get mad. You don’t because you know deep down that no one really sets out to use anyone, at least in this arena. Forgiveness for the unrecognized sin would creep in, and you wonder what was it about you that made you relevant in this transient chapter. Maybe your stoic readiness made you a spectacular audience as he practiced all the personas he could be. Your hair possibly reminds him of his long-dead dog, you smell like the expensive milk he can’t afford. Or his moments with you serve as a welcome escape from the damned life he considers himself to have. The possibilities of arbitrariness are endless. Maybe all those things played a role somehow, in those words, those hours, those unawkward silences both of you mistook as something else. You begin to understand, and you begin to recognize that your reasons are also less than noble. 

Whatever it is, you keep at it.  Maintain this relevance while it lasts, recognize it as another one of those steps that will probably help you recognize the real thing when it arrives, if it ever does. Meanwhile, you joke and co-exist. And you both cling of course. In the daylight, you feel in your bones that you are clinging to nothing. But at 4am, you cling with desperation and urgency that shuts out the rest of the world and convinces you, on occasion, that it has nothing to do with anything else. That is has everything to do with you.