Hamartia

by Scarlett Drake

But from the outside looking in, it’s also a study in those flaws we find within ourselves, the ones that threaten to destroy us, when faced with an all-consuming, life-altering kind of love.

Me falling in love with a guy? Ha, probably, you know. I’m sure the second he was born he was meant for me.

But him…well, he was my inevitability. He was when it started. When everything else ended. Everything I was before. He was the moon and the stars and everything in-between and all I wanted to do was worship at his feet. The band, my girlfriend, my dad, everything that I thought was important to me, just ceased to exist the moment I first saw him. I’m not proud of that. But it’s what it was. There was before him and after him, two sides, and I am two completely separate people on each.

He’d given me a look. A look that shifted something inside me in a way that all those separate parts that made up the whole changed imperceptibly. So that they didn’t fit back the way they were supposed to. Like I no longer fit inside myself. That’s how I’d come to describe it. That was the power of that shift. The power of him. I was like a stranger to my own fucking soul.

It’s rooted in some fruitless pursuit of masculinity. And that kind of masculinity is the destruction of everything else. Kindness, empathy, femininity, romance. Men like them will never really understand the hypocrisy behind it.

Loneliness haunts me most days, a looming grey specter that knows all of my thoughts. A chilly understanding that no matter what I achieve—how much success we have—there will always be that part of me left wanting something else. Needing something more.

“I do not want to be your friend, Raphael. I do not want to watch sunrises and think of you. I do not want to close my eyes to go to sleep and see the image of your mouth when you smile. I do not want to spend a five-hour flight daydreaming about your eyes or the sound of your voice or the way you say my name. I do not want it. And yet… all of these things I have done just today.”

“I want you. I don’t know what this is but I haven’t been able to think in a straight line since I saw you and it’s driving me insane. I want…to touch you, breathe you in, kiss you, taste you, and I don’t know what any of it means. It’s…it’s like I’m fucking obsessed. I feel obsessed. Have you ever been obsessed with anything? Ever wanted something so much it makes every breath you have to take without it, pointless?”

Another one I read and ignore, but which sits heavy in my back pocket as a reminder that my life is waiting for me on the other side of whatever this is. Whatever he is.

“I told you, I’m here because I want you. Because if I don’t get to have you at least once I’m gonna lose my fucking mind.” Maybe I could have gone with something more poetic, something like I’m here because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you for two and a half years. Because I’ve never wanted to touch and be touched by another person as much as I want to touch and be touched by you. Because just looking at you feels like I’m drowning, and I like that feeling more than I should.

Not like a garden in summer, like the ocean at midnight.

Why am I fully prepared to move to another continent and learn a language that may as well be spoken with a different body part. It’s ridiculous. We hadn’t even fucked. A blowjob and a hand job and I’m ready to change citizenship.

that he’s perfectly comfortable with silences, even when they’re slightly uncomfortable. He just owns them. Lingers in them. Happy in the quiet.

I want to be the only one you ever have from now on. I’m so fucked.

but I see the insecurity on his face. It’s so completely unexpected. This perfect fucking force of a human being…vulnerable about anything.

“Dangsin-eun na-ege neomu keun sangcheoleul jul geos-ibnida. an geulae?”

Any choice in which he’s an option, I’ll always choose him.

“Home can be anywhere, I think.”

The thought of it doesn’t terrify me nearly as much as I assumed it would. It excites me. It feels like some final, loud realization. A door closing behind me. Another opening in front.

I wasn’t even sure what this was because it’s big, you know? It’s really fucking big, mom. Maybe even blow-my-entire-life-up big and I’m not quite ready to do that yet. I’m scared, I guess. But he makes me feel like maybe the aftermath wouldn’t be bad at all. That what we’d be left with after the dust settled would be all I‘d need. Perfect, actually. I don’t think I’d need that much if I had him. He’s kind of everything…he’s enough. And I’d be enough too, you know?”

Even if this flickers out and dies, as all things that burn as brightly as this do, he deserves that.

“I feel like when I’m with you it’s like being lost somewhere. Somewhere new, somewhere that’s beautiful and different and smells great.” I sniff under his jaw again and he laughs, ticklish. “And I really fucking like it here, Jae.”

“As long as it takes, I’ll wait for you.”

Please let me have this again. Please don’t let this be the last time.

I’m not breathing as I stand there, between life and death, waiting on him to fucking say something. Call ceasefire on this. Put me out of my misery.

My heart feels too battered and bruised to deal with it now. A limping, war-ravaged thing.

Green tea reminds me of you.

For you to think I was worth it. For you not to walk away. For you to fucking choose me.

It takes all of my control not to shout it at him, to rein in the hurt and pain burning a path through my insides, familial and familiar. I’ve no right to blame him. He warned me over and over and over again about all the reasons this couldn’t work. He never said he loved me either. Never said he was ready to do this with me. He never really promised me anything. Still, I would have taken the scraps. Pathetic as that is. Likely Finn’s fault again because he’d left a hole so big it made me that desperate for Jae’s love now. A desperation that really I shouldn’t be afflicted with because my mom had always loved me enough.

“Love cannot bloom hidden away in the shadows, Raphael. Eventually it will wither and die. It would not be fair to offer you a love like that, one that is half in the dark and dying from the start. You deserve something better than what I can give you.”

“And what about what you deserve? You deserve to be fucking loved too. And I would do that, I would love you enough for fucking both of us, okay? Just…let me…” Keep doing it. I can’t force the rest of the words past the thickness in my throat.

“I love you too,” I whisper to no one. “In another life I would have chosen you.”

What do you fucking want, Jaehyun? “You.” I whisper to no one. “I want you, Raphael.”