Her Gift to Him

He couldn't sleep, sat up, and frowned.

There has been one question that has entered, stayed, and built a palace in his mind. A nice, large, wondrous palace, full of the smallest of intricacies and tiniest of twists and turns, complete with winding corridors, pruned bushes in courtyards, and an infinite amount of beautiful detours.

What was the question?

A simple, powerful question. It was nothing else but the question of love.

“What is love?” he wondered.

The first theory that came to mind was his parents; the arguments that they had on a weekly, and sometimes daily, occurrence.

If they didn’t care, they wouldn’t argue. He knew this firsthand. He also knew that love and hate were two sides of the same coin, and yet, arguing, to him, didn't seem like love.

Arguments probably stemmed from love, he thought; they weren't the flowers of which love bloomed with, but rather the roots, tangled in the soil, stuck underground. And so he continued on his little journey into the castle that was his mind, believing that he would find the exit soon.

Maybe, love was simply the act of spending time together.

That also definitely seemed like love, and yet, he has spent time with countless people, friends, and family, and even people he didn't even know. But he surely didn't love everyone. That was indeed one of his greatest dreams, to have an unyielding love for the ones in the West, the ones in the East, and so and so forth, and yet he still found himself unable to love everyone.

So his brain continued through the halls and corridors, looking for anything to satiate his hunger.

“What was love?” he softly repeated to himself.

Was it perhaps waiting? He could've waited forever for her, he thought. Oh yes, not a single second goes past without him thinking of her. As soon as this thought surfaced, it was quickly submerged by his subconscious. Flashing alerts and wailing sirens went off in his head, and the subconscious tried its best to bring up another idea, to patch the hole of which this thought had started, but it was too late; the floodgate had opened.

She left him.

Not of her own accord, but because he asked her to.

Yes, they were no more than friends, though the best of friends, but they were also slightly more than that.

There was nothing he could do more than love her, but he felt nothing but thirst, a dryness in his mouth. And her, there was nothing she could do but be drowned in his love, and yet, she couldn't quite love him back, to give him that of which he sought from her.

Then, he thought of her dog.

Surely her dog loved her, or maybe her dog only loved the food she provided it. The attention she gave it. The protection, the comfort, she gave it.

Then he thought, “Do dogs know of love?”

Then he thought, that maybe he was no more than just a dog.

He loved the attention she gave him, the compliments, the jokes she would make, the effortless flirtations she would make.

But still, he wanted more. More love. More of anything. Despite her giving him everything she had, he still wanted more. No, not the heartless, soulless love that the people of his generation were so obsessed with. He yearned for something more than that, something more timeless, more authentic, if he so could. Maybe she didn't give him everything she had. Maybe, she had only given him half of what she had, and kept the other half to herself, he thought.

Perhaps that was love, to keep some and to share some.

He remembered that, when he was a child, he split half his cookie with his sister. He knew, undeniably, that he loved his sister. That was surely love.

So why, when she gave him half of herself, could he not receive it? Why, when he gave her everything, did she not want more?

How come that when he had no more left to give, and was left starving, he couldn't wait any longer, and had no choice but to ask her to leave? Was that love then? Waiting? Didn’t he find this answer earlier? And yet, he couldn't wait any longer, and had to ask her to leave, so did he ever even truly love her?

Was there any meaning to the words that were spoken by them two, that was formed, letter by letter, sound by sound, through the complex brains of the ones before them? Was it nothing more than cheap, homemade drugs?

Was all that that happened, all that was said, all that was thought, all that was loved, between the two of them, truly love?

Is, was, and will there ever be any true love in this world?

The thought gnawed, tore, and troubled him until there was nothing else on his mind, and he was so intensely drawn by the question that he didn’t even recognize that he fell asleep.

The next morning, when he woke, he continued to wonder, and his mind continued to generate and build bridges for him to tread on. Anything but thoughts of her. But instead, he fell right through and plunged straight into the deeps and the depths of the waterfall that was his mind.

How could he ask her to leave when he loved her, and how could he hate her leaving when it was all he could do to keep loving her?

The next morning turned into the day, then the day turned into a week, then a week a month, then a month a year, then a year a decade.

He was now empty, hollow, on the border between life and death on the inside. He had indulged in the pleasures of which he once had no partaking; from the outside, he may have become one of the most beautiful of ravens, yes, but truly he was nothing but a mere crow, locked in a gilded cage. He had lived the rest of his life emptily; he had been the most strong he had ever been, and he had looked the best, the most handsome, as he had ever been, and he had become the wealthiest, as he had ever been, since that night. Yet all of it was fake, nothing more than a mere mirage of what he once was. As he returned from his fantasies in the day, he would lay out all of his feelings and more, and as such, he was rewarded with prizes and consolations and so much intangible and counterfeit pleasures, and yet all those were just a pebble in his eyes; the only prize, the only consolation, he would want would to mend the emptiness in his heart, to bring back to him the joys and the happiness of the world, and most of all, to bring her back to him. And yet, no consolation turned out so grand, so magnanimous, and he was left with a pile of pebbles that had no such worth to him. All of it was for her, thinking that with all his riches and fame, she should return, and now that she hadn’t, he no longer had anything left of him that was truly for himself. At the same time, no longer were there nights of mutilation, of chasing thoughts through the walls and corridors and courtyards of his palace; he drowned them in his worthless dreams of his wealth, of his luxuries, as his subconscious willed him asleep.

He was no more than a mere child throwing a tantrum, wishing that someone would pay him attention, and in the blink of an eye, after several more years and years of tantrums, he had long since forgotten about the question, for it had long since been submerged by his subconscious. But now, he was no longer the strongest, handsomest, or richest he had ever been; there were new ones that were stronger, more handsome, and richer than he was, and he was left to question all that he had. His once bright, dark brown hair, turned grey, whiskered, and weathered, was only but few on his head; there was no such semblance to his previous, youthful self, as he lay on his deathbed. His brows furrowed, his mind ached, and his forehead scrunched, and once more, for the last time, the question reappeared. He had forgotten about the question, and with the weak body of his, he chased the question side to side and left to right and over and under the castle walls that he once knew so well, for the last time. He remembered, now, that he still hadn’t found the answer. Now gray, monotone, and dull, he wondered if anyone would ever find the answer to his question, the one that had raced through his brain when he was once youthful and bright.

Did the soldier ants love the Queen? Were they born like that? Was he born like this?

What if love were nothing more than hormones and pheromones and chemicals? What if there was no true love in the world? he thought. A painful and miserable thought, and a painful and miserable such a world it would be, then, for no love to exist, and so, he knew there had to be true love somewhere in the little world. Yes, a painful and miserable place it was for him when he forgot about the question and about love, but it was not such a painful and miserable place when he was chasing the question; the question made life much more temperable and soft when he thought of the question.

It had been ages since he chased the question, and it had been a few months in the real world since he had started chasing the question once again; his physical body had long since left this earthly world, and now, only his rekindled passion to find the answer kept him alive. He had long since lost his sense of sight and smell and taste, yet his heart still pumped blood and his nostrils still inhaled oxygen. No, he did not know why or how he was still breathing, beating, and living, and no, that did not matter to him; only the question that was imprinted through his mind was of importance to him.

No, he didn't find anyone else to love, and no, there was no one else who came to love him. Not even the ones up there, if there were even ones up there.

He didn't believe in god or that there were gods. No, there was no one else but her who could change his world.

There was no one to answer his questions, his prayers, his wishes.

In his searchings, he had found that he had, in fact, amid his chaotic, fruitless life, come to find love, but in smaller things. Unbeknownst to him, this was love truly was: he came to love how the fish swam, so effortlessly and gracefully; he came to love how the waves ebbed and flowed, guided by the moon; he came to love how the clouds seemed to move so fast, and yet stay completely still; he came to love how the wind would brush past his hair, just perfectly enough to remind him of how the wind would push through her hair; he came to love how tall the trees grew, aged, yet strong; and most of all, he has came to love the night. The most peaceful time of the day, the best time of the day, the time of the day when his few, but present, worldly worries would fade, and he could contemplate and think about the question that burned through his mind.

There was one more thing, however, that he had come to love. One bright, beautiful, gracious thing, that was just almost quite as bright as her.

He has come to love hope.

Hope, for the future, for the better, for change. Hope that one day, he'll find the answer to the question of love. Hope that one day, he'll be able to love again. Not of inanimate objects; he has already come to love them, and continues to love them, and will love them. Rather, he holds onto hope that one day, he may see her again, find love in her again, and be with her again. A cruel world it was, for this wish was of the utmost unlikeliest of all to be granted.

But still, he held hope, even on his deathbed, for everything and anything he could do now was to have hope.

And yet, he still didn't quite know what love meant.

This was undoubtedly the biggest mountain of his life. He had never faced something so problematic, so troubling, that had plagued him for his life. This was his benediction, an unending and unyielding love, but for all he saw, it was his malediction. He had never shed this many tears, for which he shed enough to fill an ocean over her; he had never wished and hoped this much, for which he wished and prayed more than the monks and priests that she would come back; and he had never hurt so much before, for which he felt nails and thorns piercing through his heart each living second that he remembered her.

And through his last moments, he never, and will never, come to find the answer to the question of love.

But, as life would have it, he was left with one final blessing from the world itself: a realization that he did truly love her. He had learnt what it meant to love, without knowing what love was.

He loved her ungracious laugh, her mischievous smile, her eyes that sparkled; he loved everything about her. And yet, he knew that for all the he loved, and for that all that she loved, neither of them could truly love each other. It was often that he couldn't sleep, but she was the antidote. He would fall asleep to her breathing, her soft, warm breaths. He would listen to it, but since she had left, he had nothing to fall asleep to. Nothing to mesmerize and soothe his ears, his mind, as he was left spiraling down an unending stairwell. She was the reason he was able to love all the minuscule, irrelevant things in the world. He saw her in the fish, the clouds, the wind, the trees and the night; he saw her everywhere. She was the center of his world, the sun that his planets would revolve around. That was the only explanation. He could not have been so pained, so heartbroken, so destroyed, if he truly did not love her.

And so, as his story neared the end, he finally spoke. Not just to her, but to us, to the world. The distance between the storyteller and his story collapsed. He was no longer someone else.

“I can’t sleep.”

He was I, and I had been here all along.

In the entirety of my life, I could not have held her wholly; the sting that came hand in hand with her softness was more than I could bear, and my inability to love it all was my greatest fallacy, my truest regret, and yet it was also what kept the question alive, burning, growing in my chest.

With the question running through my mind once again, my heartbeat slowed and my breath grew steady. I let myself drift to the place I could never reach while awake. I closed my eyes once more, for the last time, and dreamt of a world where I would finally be able to truly love her, in all of her glory and flaws, and wondered and hoped and wished, that maybe the question was in reality her love for me, a riddle to keep me company until the end, and the best one at that, and a gift that, at long last, would let me sleep.