The piece below is written from the perspective of a woman left behind for another.  It shows that strongest of those can be completely broken and it reflects on the ideas of obsession, sanity, longing, and abandonment.  The inspiration of this piece was drawn from the song ‘Back to Black’ by Amy Winehouse, a song about finding comfort in the darkness within ones heart.

 

I know what I want to be.  I wanted to be sensational, so adored that the satisfaction of having others would be greater than the satisfaction of having him. I want to open his mind without opening my….legs.

(I want to occupy. To conquer, to go back to black.)

I know what I want to be. I want to be unchained.  Away from the pitiful sorries and the distasteful looks down.  Away from the rooms in my head, the voices that constantly protest within me.

(The worries that I am abnormal. That Im psychotic. That Im not special.)

I know what I want to be.  I want to stop seeking for your approval. To be able to detach from my story, my life, my morals and just possibly exist.  I want to be able to wrap my fingers around your throat.  To press my lips on your neck.

(Your lips.  Your cheeks.  Your everything. I don’t want to have to ask to touch you.)

The heaviness under my eyes are not felt or seen by those enclosed under the glass of fortune, the constant edge of tears will look beautiful under the right light.  People see me and they do not realize how hurt Ive been. The curves of my feelings dipping down and moving like a snake looking at prey.  The frequency, the slow rolls, and turmoils of my sadness smouldering as if it were a sultry feminine fatale walking over to her next victim. Her hips moving.

Slow.

Thick.

She moves how chocolate melts.  Her lips full with the venom of a thousand kisses.  She makes eye contact with her victim at this point.  Ready to fire that gun.

I know what I want to be. I want to be just like my despair. Something so dark, something so tangent, something so surreal. I want people to double over when they see me; noticing the smallest of details.

Her eyes fluttered.

She gradually smiled.

The tips of her fingers touched her lips.

Her lips full.  Full of a thousand whispers and secrets.

I know what I want to be.  I want to have a thousand secrets.  Secrets that people long to know, spend their nights whispering my name. Wondering as to why God would leave someone so unpainted that all the colours go through her.

I know what I want to be. I want to cause sleepless nights. Restlessness. My presence makes knees weak.

Smiles appear.

My presence is a burden on ones heart. Something so heart wrenching that it makes him…want to rip his heart out.

I know what I want to be. I want to be melted chocolate. Something liquid. Something that takes up space.  Someone who takes up space. Someone who makes others long for the sun to set.

For the sun to not exist.

To kill us all.

I know what I want to be. I want to have a voice so rich that you are drawn to it.  My coffee rich chuckles and grins that even God had ached for .

I know who I want to be.  I want to be her. I want you to feel as I did, heart wrenched, out of breath, asking for sweet and bitter darkness. I want you to have the metallic taste of envy in your mouth as I did.

(My existence was erased the moment  you saw her.)

When you chose her.

Yearned for her.

When you asked for her. And maybe it was watching you fall for another. Maybe it was obsession. But at the end of it-

I wanted her as well.

 

The first time I had heard this song, I didn’t know if it was the words or the desperation in her voice that had me completely hypnotized. Here was a woman completely left behind for another by someone that claimed to have loved her.  Though I have never experienced heartbreak in this sense, I always think about how one must feel.  How painful it is to be shattered and betrayed when one ones heart is crumbled into dust.  The one thing I kept on drawing from the song was how she would always bring back the “I go back to…us”, almost as if she denied what had happened. How a goodbye in words never registered with her; she had to visually see the betrayal. I tried to show the slow waves of desperation yet confidence she had throughout the piece.  How she was so focused on her potential to become the girl of her dreams that by overthinking it, she had started to confuse it with the other woman. In her head, the other woman was already the girl of her dreams. But in a sense I had gotten a different feeling about this song.

She had sung it almost as if she wasn’t mad.  I remember my cousin telling me that a heart break is forgiveness.  Forgiving yourself for falling in love. Learning that you alone are enough. Not that you don’t need anyone else, that the longing for another is more of a want. Because hate is not the opposite of love; if you truly love someone and they fall another, you couldn’t hate them for it. I couldn’t hate that person for feeling what I am feeling.  If someone says goodbye to you and moves on to another, personally, I would be half glad they had ended things  and weren’t being fake.  But this song continuously talked about going back to black.

As I see it, black is a symbol of greed, jealousy, and envy.  It brings out the darkness in others; the unspeakable thoughts and actions. It twists in your stomach and leaves a bitterness in your mouth.  The woman I have described above is someone who channels her fire and bittersweet darkness into something much bigger.  I’ve seen family and friends throughout my life turn vicious when the topic of their heart comes up.  People who reject happiness as a body would reject a donated organ.  This song showed me that people who normally feel lifted and alive can very well revel in their sadness.  Black can be the ashes from a fire, where instead of one being reborn they just become worse; where they mistake themselves to be better, to be a phoenix. Revelling as if sadness were a drug, as if nothing else mattered.  So what I have learned through writing this piece and through listening to this song is that to not know how you feel is better than knowing.  That by staying confused about your feelings saves you a lot of time and effort that you would have otherwise put into a relationship.  Yes, it is painful, but ignorance can truly be a bliss.