Borderline Love Lost - By Hanover
Her rage fluttered about as she accused me of imagined malice and hate, threatening my life and to set fire to all my belongings, only to then fall deep into an incoherent sobbing, then to rise again with the accusations and threats. I held the phone to my ear to listen to this tirade, feeling as if Id be leaving someone to jump from the ledge if I were to hang up. No words offered comfort except my occasional reminder that if her insults did not reduce, I would hang up, which would result in her meekly asking me to remain.
I had fallen hard for her, thinking I saw my soulmate in the reflection of her eyes, only to later learn it was just a reflection of myself I saw in her, my essence having been absorbed in her hollow absent empty broken vessel, flashing back at me.
This rage of hers arose from the pain of me extracting myself from her essence, leaving her again feeling unwanted and abandoned, just like she was when a child, in that empty apartment by the highway, alone.
I had fallen hard for her, thinking I saw my soulmate in the reflection of her eyes, only to later learn it was just a reflection of myself I saw in her, my essence having been absorbed in her hollow absent empty broken vessel, flashing back at me.
This rage of hers arose from the pain of me extracting myself from her essence, leaving her again feeling unwanted and abandoned, just like she was when a child, in that empty apartment by the highway, alone.
Comments (22)
Very excited to see more short stories still coming in. I wish you would have written a happier one. Perhaps a tad relatable in some odd and indirect way... but who could say.
I usually do not favor subject matters like this in micro story because I don't like reading about our hero being suspended in conflict, leaving the readers not knowing whether they got out of it or what. But this one conveys a snippet of a life with a personality disorder. So for that, thumbs up.
Quoting Caldwell
But I found some of the descriptions difficult.
Quoting Caldwell
This doesnt work for me, because things that flutter are light and thin, and that doesnt describe rage very well. Unless Im not using my imagination sufficiently; maybe the kind of rage here is a fluttery kind that Im unable to imagine.
Quoting Caldwell
Imagined should be removed, not least because Im certain she accused you of real malice and hate, even if she had imagined it.
Quoting Caldwell
Im not sure how sobbing could be coherent, so the adjective here seems unnecessary and inappropriate.
I hope these criticisms are constructive, because the story does convey a strong emotion very well.
:grin: You'll find out why in several days.
How intriguing :chin:
The narrator is egotistical, claiming he can think for her and know perfectly why she acts as she does. One should not do that, not even in a case of borderline. The point of love is actually that you do not know how the other thinks. She or he leaves you in wonder and desire to know. He does not love her (anymore), but only sees a patient and simply assumes without question he is right. Describing someone as 'an empty broken vessel' is also not very nice. If I were to give her advice, I'd say, leave him be.
haha! You know the writer by the style, or quirkiness. :yum:
Your criticisms are spot-on.
I've seen and heard coherent sobbing in some movies, and I tell you, it is the most annoying sound in the universe.
I agree totally! And I must add that most of life is also not very nice. If you don't want to see un-nice things, and you don't want to read about them or hear about them, I think the best way would be to become a hermit and sever all ties with media, conversations, relationships.
This is potentially true. It could also be the case that the narrator:
- has little insight into human nature, and what he does not understand, he subs with his own false interpretations... an autist on the spectrum
- got it right.
- has a huge amount of control over the sobbing respondent (v.o. "I will survive" by Gloria Stayner, before the switch in her song), and therefore he is not egotistical, but a control freak, or worse: a sadist.
- is talking to a badly programmed AI machine, which has visceral bugs in her algorithm; a bit like XXX** the Paranoid Android in Scott Adams' novel, "The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy".
** Can't remember its name
hahaha! :sweat: Keep it coming! Our writer is reading the comments and laughing as well cause it's all true.
Not true. Most of life is pretty civil actually. When I go to my baker and buy bread he does not hand it to me with a "I hope you choke on it arrogant little man", no, instead he wishes me a nice day.
Quoting god must be atheist
I do no not mind seeing nasty things or hearing people be nasty, but I call when I see it, what is wrong with that? He describes her in a nasty way, what is wrong with pointing that out?
Quoting god must be atheist
Ohh, certainly, yes. It may also be true that he took hallucinogenic drugs, had a bad day at the office, just lost his favorite dog due to a terrible bus accident. I do not care about the brain state of the respondent as there are no leads in the story to make such assumptions. I am left with what he says and does. What he does is think for her and filling in her feelings (right or otherwise does not matter, it is presumptive) and describing his once beloved in a rather degrading way. Ohh, and use the concept essence in a rather peculiar way, but I decided to leave that be as that is not potentially harmful.
My intriguement rises :chin:
It makes an important statement about what is projected onto the lover, especially the narcissistic aspects of romantic love. It does work as a piece of microfiction, but it could also be used as a prologue starting point for a longer piece of writing, such as a novel.
It is the archetypal of co-dependent relationships.
I would agree with you, except for one thing: the decline of perceived value in marginal utility.
Yes, life is nice when you thank the bus driver when he or she drops you off, to which he or she says "have a nice day".
This is nice for the first 5,660,039 occurrence. And I counted them.
But then it becomes invisible. After that. The positive loses its colour, smell, texture.
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An Italian co-worker back in Toronto told me this:
"When you start a new relationship, or you get married, put a nickle in a jar every time you make love. Then after the first year is over, take a nickle out of that jar each time you make love. And you will find, my friend, that at the end of your life, love, marriage, whatever, you will still find some nickles in that jar. No matter how long your relationship lasts."
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Hurts do not have this effect. Not to the same extent. If you are in Auschwitz, or the Gulag, there is no declining value in the constant beating, hunger and torture.
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This is what I based my opinion on.
What did you base yours on, Tobias?
Quoting Tobias
Would a philosopher not look at the deeper, underlying, explanation of acts and feelings? You condemn him for his action; but you have not walked in his shoes. Do you listen to the insults she hurls at him, or that part is not important?
I guess there are schools of philosophies that teach that one should not look for explanations. Right. I did not go to that school.
Your argument that life is not nice rests on the reasoning that life is so nice we have come to take it for granted. Ok. However initially you told me this: "And I must add that most of life is also not very nice. If you don't want to see un-nice things, and you don't want to read about them or hear about them, I think the best way would be to become a hermit and sever all ties with media, conversations, relationships."
Apparently here you seem to be saying that life is not very nice. How does that chime with the 5,660,039 occurrences? All I am saying was that the narrator was not nice. Also by your lights a remarkable occurrence, because apparently being nice is the default state. Quoting god must be atheist
That is a great argument for serial monogamy, but I fail to see what it has to do with the matter at hand.
Quoting god must be atheist
I do not think there is any value in being in Auschwitz or the Gulag... declining or otherwise.
Quoting god must be atheist
Well you kindly did the math and made the argument for me. My opinion that the guy is too full of himself and unkind to her rests on his self righteous tone and his loveless description of her. That this is a rarity was counted by you. Quoting god must be atheist
Quoting god must be atheist
No, but a sociologist or psychologist might. The time a philosopher was looking into deeper explanations of acts and feelings is quite behind us. A philosopher looks for the hidden assumptions in explanations, arguments or rationales. He/she looks at what kind of assumptions we have to accept to be able to speak of a world meaningfully, or whether there are such things as universals and whether moral laws exist. They do not go around fabricating outlandish scenarios about stories they are reading.
Quoting god must be atheist
A: How do you know?
B: We have to condemn people for their actions without walking in their shoes all the time. If that was a criterion no moral judgment of acts and of people committing them would be possible at all.
Quoting god must be atheist
No, they are not important at all. They serve as an illustration of the conversation, but as wrong doing towards the narrator they have no consequence. The reason being that the narrator puts himself above them. He does not deal with the insults directly, or feel hurt by them as he might when they would be made by an equal. He has an explanation for them, namely that she makes them because he is leaving her. For him, she is a broken vessel and empty, so just a shell. The problem I have with his behavior is that he ignores her subjectivity. In the story she is reduced to a machine, prone to the rules of cause and effect. When he threatens to hang up, she pleads with hm to stay, if not she just throws insults. Her behavior is unreasonable, i.e. not guided by reason. He on the other hand considers himself a subject, free to hang up the phone or not. Not only is that a distorted view of a relationship, it is also mean and violates Kant's imperative to treat people as participants in the kingdom of ends.
There is one reason to think there might also be something wrong with him: Quoting Caldwell
He might be prone to narcissism. That is consistent with the rest of my explanation.
Quoting god must be atheist
Ohhh dear, highlighted no less. I have an explanation for you: see above. You do not like the explanation, but that something else than not giving one. For my explanation I need not base myself on any information imported outside of the story, that is the difference between your scenarios and my explanation for my judgment.
Here we differ.
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Quoting Tobias
Shows that the nicest of nice things loses some of its enjoyment value.
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Quoting Tobias
You're right about that. In our part of the world. But there are two "nice"-es: apparent and real. In reality everything, or most things, are nice in my country. But because we are so used to it, to us it's the norm, and also its value is lost due to the declining value of marginal utility. So nice becomes the norm, the baseline; to which nice is compared. Nice... nice. One is how an independent judge would measure it, and the other is our perception of it. They are the same occurrence in real life, but in their effect it does not strike us as nice, but as normal. Normal is the baseline, against which things are compared to.
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Quoting Tobias
Value in the negative domain. You don't like it; it's not a value you would pay to get, but a value you would pay not to get.
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Quoting Tobias
Differ again. He does ask her to not go overboard. He can't let it all go past him, he is not above it all. He did ask her to tone it down at spots. This means he listens to her and it affects him.
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Quoting Tobias
Vice versa. They are a couple.
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Quoting Tobias
We differ again. He does not hang up the phone because he fears she'll do something drastic. "I held the phone to my ear to listen to this tirade, feeling as if Id be leaving someone to jump from the ledge if I were to hang up." I reject your notion that he is free to hang up. And he has some compassion; if she was truly an object to him, then hanging up would not be a concern to him.
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]Quoting Tobias
In this I concede you're right.
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All in all: this is a piece of fiction, and each of us has his or her own interpretation. Obviously we differ in some very important ways, but I concede that your past, as my past for me, and your moral outlook as mine for me, guide our views. Our views are different, and they can't both be right. An analysis as above may push my interpretation more logically right, while yours may push your interpretation more emotionally right. I don't have any problems with that.
I say that your interpretation is right in the emotional sense, because you are basically on the side of the underdog. He hurt her more than she hurt him, that's obvious. You judge the situation on an actual eventuality for its morality; I judge it for the initial intention. He saw something in her eyes in the beginning; he got disappointed. It is basically his doing that the relationship failed, because he imagined something to be there that wasn't there. So: his intention on the first impression was right. It went all downhill from there, because of his lack of good judgement. You see the situation's moral as "what happened eventually" and I see the situations moral "it started with the best of intentions."
This girl I really fell for told me she loved me one day and the next she wanted to kill me and burn all my shit, and some folks sympathized with her. I thought that was kind of funny how I could be that unlikable.
I only got 200 words, so maybe I could've done better describing my pain, but it was a lot to sort out and I've not entirely figured it out.
Her emotions fluttered, that is my best word to describe it. They were all over the place like an unpredictable butterfly flight.
I'd submit that to excuse her conduct treats her like a patient, incapable of personal responsibility. So I throw that back at y'all.
I had the thought that this ending reminded me weirdly of the last lines of a poem I had written years ago. I was going to leave it be, but now that I know it was written by @Hanover I'm formally opening a lawsuit against him. I don't know any lawyers, so I'll probably tap that guy @Hanover from here to represent me. Pro bono if possible.
Sure, there are human endeavours where the knowledge of this unattainable is required: psychiatry, law, sociology, diplomacy, asking for your girlfriends' hand from her father to help you move your furniture.
I see precisely my mistakes, therefore. And I missed some clues: borderline. That was a big giveaway that I had missed. And I was unable to predict or decipher the emotional fluttering. I think the only thing I got right was her clinginess... and I missed his humanity.