The Prize

I am a nihilist. With that I mean I view life as it is. From
the bleak terror of death, to the utter pain of personal offense, to the
blissful union of two person madly in love. I cannot maintain a blind eye to the harshness of reality nor can I
ignore the orgasmic pleasures of life. I have taken the path of living under
the guidance of cold sterile logic and indifferent reason.

However, as a human, I am also bound by the shackle of
emotions. As a nihilist, I must be honest as to acknowledge this part of me. To
do otherwise is to lie to myself which is in dire opposition to the principle I
hold to. I have my preferences but as a nihilist I should also realize the
truth that we cannot make reality conform to what we want.

Much as I hate to be overcome by emotions, I still am. To my
humanity I lay the blame.

“I will not come back here anymore”. Such an ordinary
statement, voiced out in an ordinary manner and yet causing nothing short of
ordinary to my stagnant emotions. If I can still gather them all, they are
sadness, concerned worry, pain characterized by heaviness in the chest,
loneliness, haplessness, and weakness. All these ingredients of emotional pain
brewed ominously in the pot of my emotional centers giving rise to a one single
painful feeling to rule them all.

 There are a couple of sacrifices that have to be made when
she stays home. Sometimes these sacrifices can get very bothersome that you
are actually counting the days until she leaves. These have been the norm for
the nth time already. She would come. Midway, her presence would sometimes get
on your nerves. Then she departs. 

Perhaps I never really wanted her to leave all along. Perhaps,
I just wanted to have my own room with her staying comfortably in the other
room. How I wish for her suffering to end. If there is a Devil, I would willingly
sell my soul just to end it. My death means nothing compare to the lifetime of happiness
that would befall on her. Bah! Irrational emotions…

When she leaves, the aforementioned pain is always present.
Though this has occurred a number of times already, my biological system never
became used to it. There seems to be no immunity to this pain which is triggered
whenever she moves away from home.

“I will not come back here anymore. I’ll stay in your grandfather’s
place for a few days before I leave the country,” my mother said nonchalantly.
I was then instructed to trick my three year old brother into going somewhere
so as to not realize that she is about to take her leave. A few minutes after
her absence, my brother kept looking for her and calling “mama” while crying.

I cannot do anything but endure the painful emotion, which
is further worsen by my brother’s cry which I am helpless to subside. “Fool!
You would still see her again.” My rational side tells me. “Fool! Those emotions
are clouding your mind from viewing things in the proper perspective”. And yet
the shouting and yelling of my rational, critical self is crippled in silence by
the screaming anguish of my painful emotions.

There are other people in this planet who are also missing people
they hold dear. Whether separated by geography, cut short by time, or simply longing
for them to be near. I count myself as one of them as we travel in this ark of
irrational emotions. I, the captain of this ship, understand the pain my fellow
pirates have to go through in this voyage of pain. I swear by my scimitar to
take care of these brave and yet emotionally panged men and women in this
stormy sea of yearning, as much as I possibly can.