Client [Undecided] - Session 1

(Beep. Music fades in.)

Words have immense power over us. They were the creation of human minds. We gave them their meanings, but now, they hold meaning over us. Some more than others, right? There are some words we react to more strongly than we do others. There are words that stand to represent huge swatches of our lives. Our current states, as it were. There are words that could practically stand in for our names. 

And your word is… Well, it’s complicated, now isn’t it?.

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“Wouldn’t it be ‘love?’” you want to ask, but you will also be quick to admit that it doesn’t seem right, exactly. 

You are in love. You feel love. You feel that hot burn in your chest roasting you from the inside out. The poets never mention how painful it is, you almost joke, but no, they talk about that. Everyone talks about it. Maybe we talk about it too much. Maybe we’ve romanticized the strife that can come with love. At first, perhaps, we were honest, and we said love was not easy. Which it was not. Love does not work as a mediator to the sort of disputes that are just inevitable when two people are in close proximity for a length of time, and their edges find where they do not match or fall into each other effortlessly. Love does not calm our tempers. Love does not always soothe. Love will not end the battle. And we may get hurt when fighting it. 

That is the truth. But then we took it farther. We glamorized the battle. We glamorized the struggle by exulting the ends. We pointed to the prize and pointed out how wonderful the end will be. But then the glory bled, as it too often does. And the struggle itself became appealing. Or we were told it was. 

From that, the picture’s distortion began. And now the line between love and misery is blurred. You can’t see the difference, can you? 

You have love for someone. It has made you miserable. She has not made you miserable, you would be quick to clarify. She has done nothing wrong. She doesn’t even know, does she? Rhetorical question. I know she doesn’t know. That is the source of your misery, right? Your love for this woman has yielded that. 

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“So would it be ‘misery?’” you want to ask. “It would make sense,” you want to add. It’s how you feel right now. And how you’ve felt for a while. 

You felt it before her, you want to point out, but you find it hard to compose the words. Because while you’ve known heartbreak before, this is different. This is worse. So much worse. 

You shut your eyes when I said that. It’s what you always do when you say it to yourself. You don’t know why you do it. It doesn’t really do you any good. It doesn’t pull you out of your hurt but deeper into it. When you can’t see the outside world, you can’t move towards you, and you fall deeper into despair. 

But I think you’re putting the cart before the horse, really. You’re falling deeper into your misery and that leads you to close your eyes, not the other way around. You find yourself…. Well, it’s not an uncontrollable situation. Your controls are just limited. You have some, but you refuse to use them. 

You’re afraid of what happens when you do. That’s the truth. Or that’s part of it. You don’t want to say that part, either. But whatever you were going to say to me is not. You want to hide behind a cloak of nobility and noble intentions. And while it’s true that you are deeply concerned with her welfare, that’s not the end of it.

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“Would it be ‘despair?’” you want to ask. 

It was a sudden thought, you think, but then again, that feeling has never really gone away, has it? It’s there beneath the surface of everything you do and every thought you have. Unless she’s around, of course. Then you’re in awe of her beauty and nothing else. Her light drowns out the darkness in you. And you love her for that. It’s one of the reasons you love her. The list is long. You want to share it. But you can’t. You know you can’t. 

Or you say that you know. You have another list for that: the list of reasons why you can’t. Reasons you came up with carefully and methodically not hastily. Or so you say. And you alternate between the two. You move between them effortlessly: joy and sorrow, ecstasy and turmoil. You just won’t let things be easy for yourself, will you? You just won’t let yourself have peace. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

“Would it be ‘regret?’” you want to ask. 

You worry that it is. You worry that in some roundabout way, you have proven your mother right. You would regret coming out, regret declaring that you are anything but a straight woman, she warned. You had a chance, she said. There was a chance you would fall in love with a man and be completely content with it, she said. That was even within your identity, she explained. Play your odds, she begged.  But she didn’t understand. No one understands. You needed to live authentically. You needed to live in your truth. You needed love. And now we’re right back to where we started, aren’t we? Do I need to repeat myself?

I don’t think anything I’ve said is unfair, but there is a lesson here to leave you. Will you, by chance, be willing to hear it?

(Music fades out. Beep.)

The Oracle of Dusk is a production of Miscellany Media Studios with music licensed from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. It was written, edited, produced, and performed by MJ Bailey. And if you like the show, tell friends about it or the quasi-friends that are still on your social media feeds because social norms evolved before words did, am I right?