That Wretched Word

From intoxicating exhilaration to piercing pain, and from overwhelming ecstasy to crushing hurt, the journey of experiencing that eruption of intense feelings that that special someone triggered within was simultaneously enriching and devastating. Every single inch of my existence stirred with the pleasure and ache of unifying with another soul. I was consumed in a whirlpool of unrelenting madness, so magical and shattering. The space between the highs and lows could accommodate an eternity.

I spread my arms wide and closed my eyes gently. I inclined toward the heavens and inhaled the elation. And then I danced the dance of joy. I floated above the ground, and walked on air in the companionship of angels. I drowned in the riches of affection and soared to the summit of bliss… glorious places where I felt a nearness of Him.

Surely this was His handiwork? How else does one comprehend the veiled rushes? Or the forces that made the light winds hum our favourite song and the drifting clouds form odes of bittersweet longing? Or the spell that breathed life into the stone I laboured with, through the years of my being before this birth? And the way it melted, only to brim over as tears and manifest a great healing?

Yes, the tears were the most persuading symptom. Everything else studied in isolation could have been somehow attributed to my general quirkiness. But their concurrence, especially in conjunction with the tears signified this was no ordinary happening. The strange episode was validating the words of countless poets and writers through the ages. Words I greatly appreciated but seldom truly understood. My fondness grew for all those songs that spoke of things that were not just imagination, after all.

But often in the same breath, passage or stanza, those very artists and intellectuals have described, just as eloquently, the complementary torment and anguish. And hell, that wasn’t just imagination either.

The subsequent tears bore contrasting characteristics. They first flowed in yearning and then in despair. The arms this time were employed in consolation around my whimpering body. Wrapping it just as tightly as an ardent lover once did. The heavens were, this time, summoned for mercy. But the angels had curiously gone into hiding. And I was reduced to a forlorn figure, staring into nothingness, reminiscing the past and fruitlessly dissecting how it faded into the present darkness.

Ghosts of the union haunt me in my solitude, reminding me of how lonely we truly are. Stumbling inadvertently upon a relic transports me, ever so briefly, to those glorious places again.

A note of that mystical tune.

A shadow of that sensation.

A whiff of the intimacy.

All spoils of an extraordinary unification.

My eyes close gently once more, and shed a wistful tear. Nothing compares to the sheer passion and misery of it… That wretched word.