The Perfect Boy

Never Enough

Days passed and my obsession with Osaka was steadily growing.   I could not satisfy myself with him as the case with anything else in my life.  Nothing was ever enough.

"Never Enough". Those words were well ingrained in my soul and had become the portrait of me whenever I looked at myself in the mirror. I felt I had to do something more. I felt I had to be someone better. I felt I had to pursue more achievements. I felt I had to gain more approvals. I felt I had to win more of people's hearts. So, when they looked at me, they surely looked up because I was ready to present the best of me and they always saw that person, even though he was in a charade. But when I looked at me, I always looked down.

And the loneliness to be up there pretending was unbearable. I had smile to show, kindness to give, love to portray, assurance to deliver, comfort to administer, laughter to entertain, personal comfort to sacrifice, encouragement to transmit, empathy to convey, sympathy to confer. So, I had nothing left in me, but loneliness.

Being lonely was intolerable. I could deal with anything else. I could deal people giving me fake friendships. I could accept their attempt at trying to draw my attention to them. I could make do with the pretense that I had to express when I was with others. I could compromise with people's hidden motives. But in the midst of it all, when I was surrounded by all the commotion, all the cheering, all the elation, I felt so lonely and that feeling was bexoming more and more unbearable.

The feeling of loneliness was like a ball of snow rolling down the hill within you. It started with just a small feeling of being disconnected to the outside world, but as time passed, it grew bigger and stronger. It absorbed everything else that you possessed within in you – joy, happiness, hope, peace and whatever else - and swallowed them all whole. All that remained was the feeling of being detached from everybody else in this world.  As close they all were physically, they were but strangers.   That was what I was feeling.  So, even as I was surrounded by many people, I was feeling totally separated, unable to voice the inner me that wanted to cry out loud. I felt like I was shouting to the walls within me that I had built myself.

That was what I felt when I first noticed Osaka. And then he approached me. I did not know what to do, what to make of it. Was I to get my head out of the ground, so I could experience what it meant to be happy? How was I to respond to him? I had built the walls to keep others from myself that even I could not bring it down with all my might. I felt a strong pull toward Osaka and yet I knew there was an invisible thin separation harder than the hardest of materials existed in the world.

Twenty one days had passed and he kept knocking and knocking. I did not know what materials he used, because somehow being behind the walls, I felt the quake, I felt the awakening, I felt the rising of some unknown feeling, I felt the welling of a tide within me.  I wanted my mind, my emotions to stop, but I could not.  Pretended as I did, I could not cease him from hammering down the walls with simple things that he was and he did. His presence, his smile, his jovial attempt to comfort, his ways of nursing me out of fake relief I was feeling for my efforts. These 21 days of knowing him, inviting him to sup with him in the most private corners of my life, relishing in his presence of simply being him, craving more of him - his jokes, his text messages, his pat on my back, his small hugs as I slowly succumbed to his constant barrage into my life – all that he was, were purely breathtaking.

Yes, it was him that took my breaths away.  He was simply that to me.  And still, it was not enough for me.