AA shit, here we go again
It’s almost a year now — and I find myself on the same battlefield, only the battleground has changed its shape. I circle the ruins of a question: what happened, why it happened, how it came to be. There is no clear enemy to point a trembling finger at, no one to proclaim the aggrieved. The roles dissolve into fog. I am both accuser and accused, the playwright and the unwilling actor in a scene I keep replaying. I catch myself seeking refuge in stories — dressing my wounds in costumes of victimhood or villainy, as if fate were a script I could read aloud to justify the bruises. “A manchild,” she said once, and the words lodged in me like a splinter. I still do not know all the meaning of it, but somewhere in the echo of her voice I recognize a truth I have refused: that some suffering is self-inflicted, some kinds of pain chosen or cultivated. I promised much to her; perhaps she never believed those promises, but I am the one who carries their weight. Maybe karma has already begun its ...