Imaginary

Paper Flowers

//Imaginary by Evanescence\\

You don't know what it is not to feel. What it's like. How it feels.

It is a mental pain. Inescapable. The total consumption of the mind in its entirety. When you have no physical agony to distract, your thoughts pull you inward to a place you didn't think existed within you. Medical books call it dissociation, but that's something that humans experience. A coping mechanism to tolerate trauma. It's just a temporary block of pain, much like zoning out during an especially boring conversation, meant to be there and end just as quickly when the problem removes itself.

But, you see, the pain is my mind...so how can I escape?

I feel nothing. I smell nothing, taste nothing. What am I? I constantly cling to brother, feeding off his emotion, silently begging him to teach me how to be human - because what human lacks their human traits? The meaning of human is love, in all its forms.

To quote psychology, contact comfort. A small child not quite old enough to differentiate between physical and emotional pain is scared by the unknown, and in feeling its mother's touch, an instant sense of calm rushes through them, dousing the flames of fear until the child is docile and safe.

I've done all of the above. It's been just about useless. Thus, I conclude that I am not a child. I conclude that I am not a human entity. I also conclude - and this is the most painful and conflicting - that because I cannot feel, I can't love.

Yet that can't be true, it just can't. Not after realising that my sole purpose is to live for someone else. (You know who, must I speak his name?) Every step I take is for him. Every day I refuse to wipe away the seal that binds me to this world is for him. Every kind word I speak is for him, though nobody else would know that. Instead they mistake it for genuine kindness born of a soul so pure that nothing could taint its optimism. No...I simply imagine his face and my words soften involuntarily.

Oh, how I love him. Even without feeling. Yes, it's quite contradictory. I don't know how it makes any sense at all (it doesn't). All I know, is that it exists, shining even through this unbreakable steel.

I am a hollow shell that shouldn't exist, but I do, and I love him.

It hurts to love him, and it hurts that the thought of loving me back would never even cross his one track mind. But as something I've already accepted as fact, I can handle that. What causes me mortal agony the likes of which you can't fathom - no, not at all, not to undermine your pain whatsoever; merely, mine is permanent, and you can't understand because you're human - is knowing in all practicality I can't love him.

If only I was flesh and blood, I would worship him like the god he is, the god he must be to wrangle even the barest echo of emotion out of me. He'd wake up in the early morning hours to be greeted with breakfast in bed, and a smile. His clothes, freshly ironed and still warm, would be laid out. Maybe a hug as he walked out the door, and a hug to send him to bed. My love would not want for anything. I'd devote my whole life to making sure his every need was satisfied. Of course he would not want me in that sick way, but I'd make sure Winry and he were on the up and up.

In that sick way....that I want him.

But never mind that, listen to me, rambling on like - like - like a lovesick puppy or something. Completely desperate and totally alone.

Hey, Truth? It's me, Alphonse. I must ask, is this.. Is this normal? For one being to consider their life so insignificant that they forgo their own pain in lieu of another's happiness? To feel nothing but a well-rounded love that slowly morphs into a sort of cruel wanting? But also, why me? Why was I the one chosen to be doomed from the start? Why hast thou forsaken me?

And maybe i 'm delusional, but I could have sworn it told me that this was a blessing in disguise. Because the only thing keeping me from overstepping my boundaries and hurting him beyond repair by betrayal, is my armor. Armor that blocks wounds.

What do I do? It's quite impossible to devote myself to him. Without physical distractions, my thoughts are drawn inward, to a place I would never have known existed within myself had it not been for my predicament. I watch - more like ogle - brother slip into a pair of cotton pajamas, watch him as he nestles into bed - longing to tuck him in but refusing myself that sinful pleasure - watch the peace radiating from his sleeping form. I walk away before the jealousy can eat me alive.

I stand in the doorway to my room, empty and desolate like me, until the self-doubt begins to rise, then I enter. I sit on the carpet floor because it's nothing special - it just exists, like me. And I let my mind retract from the outside world that holds nothing but 50 shades of pain, to a place where the wind will whisper softly to me, where glassy raindrops as they're falling tell a story. I lie inside myself, motionless and silent, for eight hours. I should be dead - but maybe I am coping. If anyone asks where I am...

Until the day I get my body back, I'll be in my field of paper flowers, watching a violet sky fly over me.