The Torture Never Stops

The idea of a lover (a small hesitancy rises in my throat), of being loved, raises for me a space that feels comfortable, unchallenged, like “home” . . . a little infantile, vulnerable, at the same time safe.

But Allison, she was a woman who professed no love but the Platonic where I was concerned. So then, how may I—how can I—account for the undeniable fact that she remains a touchstone for me? Her very inaccessibility, her many complications, on a subconscious, even perhaps an unconscious level—something in her speaks to my own ineffable self-ebulliences, speaks not so much to the things I “do” in the world as much as to my own unjustifiable presence in the world as it is.

I do not—have never—fit.

Allison, her irresistible symmetries (I can hear her protests), raise in me feelings that speak to my own inscribed sense of unworthiness. I feel her to be “something” (there may reside my "fatal flaw") unattainable. I live in unceasing pain. I’d have it no other way. I beg for the powerful denial of Her. I am happily tortured, prefer nothing else at all. When I repeat the cliche, “I am madly in love,” I’m nearly certain that I am more mad than in love. Nearly.