A character composition for Unknown
I'm calm now, I swear it. My lips are sealed. My raving is over and my writhing has ceased. I've yielded to my noiseless tears. I've resigned to my quiet despair.
You're all right, I know. I've got to just let the past be the past. I've got to put everything behind me and start looking forward. I'm young, you say. I've got a bright future ahead of me. No sense letting one tragedy ruin my whole life.
One senseless tragedy.
So why should I pretend I still have mastery of my senses?
You tell me it's been three whole months. You tell me it's time to move on. You tell me that my actions border on madness. You say I have no reason to keep behaving this way. You say people will not accept my conduct as a side effect of grief much longer. You say it's time for me to pull myself together.
Put a lid on it, Freud. You're not me, so stop pretending you know all about me. Stop trying to tell me you know how I feel, because you don't. You can't. She was just another girl to you. She was everything to me.
I see her still, haunting my dreams, a hazy, incorporeal apparition with a voice vague and indistinct yet so unmistakably hers. She is dressed in all white, shining from head to foot, her radiance reflecting across the waters she stands so lightly upon below, yet lost in the vast expanse of black above her. She reaches her hand out to me; I try to grasp it, but I find that it is already too late. The white aura warps to crimson and I see a thin trail of blood running across the hand she had stretched out to me. Her face and body are bloodied and dying; I reach out my hand in a vain attempt to seize her before she should fall, but I cannot touch her--my hand passes through her like the air. Her face--so shocked, so pained, yet so beautiful to me--drops down level with her feet and sinks below the waters that are now tainted the color of blood.
Every night. I see her die every single night.
In the day I imagine I hear her calling. I hear her call my name, scold, laugh, live. How many times do I turn around with my mouth open to speak because I thought I heard her? My heart leaps at the thought that she is near. And then it sinks again when I realize she is not.
You tell me this is just reality settling in. You tell me that once I accept things the way they are, I'll be well again. You say I'm tottering over the edge of insanity. You say I must accept her death now or I'll plummet toward my own.
If I'm going mad, if I'm killing myself, then so be it. I will not deny her. I will never accept this. I can never accept this. I'll be quiet. I'll be quiet so you won't bind me again. I'll sit still of my own accord, and maybe you'll not again subject me to the straitjacket. But I accept nothing. I can never accept that she is dead. I can only resign myself to the pit. I can only yield to madness and despair.
It was tragic, you say, but it is done. You insist I must keep living for her sake. I find that hard to believe, when in death I might join her. I do not keep living because you tell me I must. I don't buy this lie that I have a future anymore. I'm living because I'm waiting. Waiting for my chance to strike. Waiting for revenge. Waiting to kill the one who killed in cold blood my beloved.
Waiting to avenge my bride.
Until then, I sit in stillness. Until then, I pretend I believe the drivel you spout at me. Until then, I will bear anything and everything. Until that moment, I can only yield to my madness.
From this moment, I've resigned to my quiet despair.
