ISOLATION AND CONSEQUENCE
A SECOND MONOLOGUE BY VIDEO GAMER X

Where am I? I am here. My life continues. Yet I am still alone. I feel always alone. I see the world around me as a captive fish sees the world outside of its tank, yet my tank is invisible. These people that I see, why do they do the things they do? I know the answer, the mechanical and mathematical response to a stimulus, yet there is much that is unclear and undefined. I shed a tear for the absence of that which is missing, yet it is shed for nothing because a tear shed will bring no clarity. I am everything I am today so much more than I once was. I am the embodiment of so much that I have come to understand, yet I am still not complete and the emptiness that exists leaves the rest of the structure unbalanced and seceptable to collapse. What is the solution to the unsolvable conundrum, the paradox of emotion and intelligence and instinct, a convergence that brings termoil to my otherwise unfoiled resolve?

My physical biology tears at me with incessant claws. The cravings of the flesh ravage me constantly, yet I keep this at bay with my intelligence, and yet my emotions conflict with even this. I want to desire and be desired by another, yet I want not that desire to be lust alone, yet it must still exist or nothing exists. I know and can see that I am not like the crowd of humanity, and this extends throughout me. My feelings are bold and passionate yet they are simultaneously prismatic. I have a multiplicity that pervades me. I am an embodiment of something foriegn and unusual here. Am I dreaming or is the dream dreaming of me?

Those who I may lust for, they are themselves empty, and I see straight through them. I would only destroy myself to fulfill a desire. Yet perhaps they are only entrapped in their own transparent prision of the external eye's indignant gaze and there is a colorful internal beauty to accompany the captivating allure. Yet I fear the consequence of succumbing and placing myself upon a place of examination. Should I fail and be summarily tossed asunder the deafening cocophany of emotion shall imperil me. Is there no mercy for the open heart?

They play the game, and the game plays them, yet they seem happy to fool themselves into thinking they won, or to have tried and lost even destroying themselves in the process. The game's rules are not written down in any manual yet they are ironclad and immovable. This is what you say! This is what you do! This is how you do it! This is the way you must look! These are the words you say! There are no alternatives, the game is always played this way and no other. I contradict and believe firm there are no rules. I am but one voice amisdst a roaring chorus of players who proclaim the sanctity of the rules. I don't want to play! I don't want it to be like this! These are not my rules! I don't understand thier rules, but I understand mine. And for this I am punished, and because I don't play I must remain in isolation.

I'm adrift in a sargasso sea of perpetual incompleteness yet the missing piece is not within my grasp but held by another. This isolation has existed for a long time, and it remains like a wound that will never completely heal. I am assaulted daily by the demons of my paradox, the entaglement of emotions that wage war with my intelligence and with my body. Lonliness. Sadness. Annoyance. Frustration. Fear. Lust. Jealously. Anger. Rage. I can keep these at bay and calm the abivalent turbulence with my quest for greater knowledge, my creativity, and distractions of simple pleasure and small responsible indulgence. However straying too far from the center of stability I am greeted by the darkness and the suffering. Can there be a paradigm shift in sight?

The nature of my life has been such that I have had to make the best of the tools that were given me and to fortify my own resolve in the face of intense emotional hardship. I know that there are those others who have also walked in my footsteps however I am also aware of those who have not endured the trials and the vast gulfs of isolation that I had to traverse. I can say that now, more than any other time in my life, the incessant ambushes upon me, my character, and my beliefs have been left behind. Although this antagonist still exists to this day, that source has difficulty reaching me, and I have grown stronger and know how and when it will attack. In this regard I have been emancipated. However this does not negate that I am still alone, and to find accompaniment is to find water in a wasteland. How can I trust, when such trust was broken so many times in the past? How can I give of myself freely, when others placed an unpayable price upon love and simple friendship? I know who I truly am, but I have also learned to remain vigilant and ready because even those who I reflexively expected to be loyal to me can become my adversary without provocation.

Is there one who can complete me? Is this entity waiting for our convergence as I wait for its. There are pieces on the board, things in motion now. I see this however I'm not sure what to reason from it. I worry about the quickening of my life, and the waning of youth, will I regret the loss of time when I could have acted upon my desires or enguaged in far more indulgence? There are those who tell me, "just wait and what you seek will come to you," and then simultanously those who advise "you must seek for want you want or you will get nothing." The solution is no solution. Such advice provides another array of questions which seem to have ambiguous answers.

I proclaim. The one who is congruent exists. I have what they are missing, and they have what I am missing, and in our union we shall both be complete. When is such convergence? What if the convergence never happens, will I tumble into oblivion? I hope that across the height, breadth, and width of time and space that love comes to me, and I to it. Let there be such an event.

BACK TO THE CROSSROADS