Untold Beneath the Smile

I remember she told me, I would never amount to anything nor will my name ever be uttered or
remembered when I am gone. I will be like the dust blown by the wind, without a trace it was ever there. I
remember he told me there is a jail cell with my name in it, and I would never make it to eighteen nor
finish matric. An abomination! A waste of breath, he said I was.
Words cut deeper than the sharpest razor or sword, the pain was inexplicable. I knew I was hurting,
wounded, but where? I knew not, I had not physical cuts but I was bleeding the wound ceases to heal; I
had no scars to wear as an armour, but a tethered heart. I did what I knew best, filled my heart with hate,
with anger, not only at God but at myself for being a disappointment.
Darkness consumed my heart; I was an anomaly nobody understood. I pushed everyone who has ever
cared, I deprived myself simple pleasures of being a teenager. Alone in the world, numb with no sense of
feeling or emotion but the fake and pretentious smile I always wear to hide my pain. Slowly it gnawed
away at me, the teenage boy inside of me was screaming out for help, but his voice was silenced by a
broken boy and pride wouldnt let me, then I contemplated suicide. A spectacular ending, I thought.
From a distance looking in, they saw a happy, blooming young boy, but was I really happy? Each day that
went by, the more I felt claustrophobic, I became a recluse, hounded by constant thoughts of suicide. I
shouted at my creator, what is it that you hated in so much that you would render me so? In my pain and
agony, a sound in the background played while I alone in my head, lost in my thoughts, door after door I
struggled, I lost. The sound of Linkin Park Numb, the song seem to resonate within me, soothing the
pain, it gave a voice to my thoughts, tears fell from my eyes uncontrollably, and I felt something so
austere nonetheless it was a feeling strange to me.
I found solace in music. When I was in Mid-High School, a peculiar teenager angry at the world with
nothing but the music I listened to, unfamiliar to me I felt the lips of another and in that split second all the
world was fine, emotions I couldnt yet fully comprehend filled my heart. Nothing made sense, everything
was just ambivalent, when I opened my eyes as I looked into his and quite strange enough, I found
myself, I felt safe. Lost in this feeling, we spent every waking hour together and time seemed to fly when
we were together. Feeling like a fraud, my mind went back to the woman I have been with and I
wondered, was it all a lie?
Years went by, and I found companionship in my friends eyes, he understood me, we would spend time
on and talking about anything that was everything, we were intellectually compatible, we challenged each
other every day and never did we ever agree much, but we had common ground, the bond that existed
between us, it was beyond the physical, words fall short to describe it, he was more a friend than a lover
in a platonic relationship.
Something was missing, the intimacy. As my body had undergone some changes and unsatisfied were
my sexual needs. I befriended a young lady in hopes to quench my thirst, as it were. Each day I spent
with her, the more I became estranged with my friend. She uttered the elusive and fleeting words I Love
You; immediately my thoughts ran to my friend, in that moment all I could see was him, in vain I tried to
deny her sentiments, because I was already utterly smitten by another, as I told her, tears ran down her
face. Ah Ephemeral was our relationship.
I took on the life of a monk, to find enlightenment, I began reading books about Philosophy, Science and
the mind, and I developed an insatiable thirst for knowledge. Sex and Love were nothing but a fleeting

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glimpse at eternity. My mind was hungry, the more I read the more inescapable and incontrovertible were
the facts before me of the phenomenon I was. Baffled how quickly my mind absorbed and processed the
information. Three years went by, I forgot the touch of another, lingering scent of another on my clothes,
and my life was dry as the pages of the books I dearly clung to. I became more familiar with the corridors
between bookshelves of a library than I was with people.
I would come in and go between lectures unnoticed, I lacked the simple etiquettes of a conversation, the
only thing I mastered was the dry, monotonous and long-winded greets my fellow students attempted to
share. I had mastered control, of myself and emotions. I remember while in the library, a sweet mellifluous
voice pardoned my attention, as I looked up; there she was, asking me if I could help her with debugging
her code. The more I spoke to her the more she enticed me with how she conceived her thoughts, her
understanding of Algorithms, Mathematics and the world in general. Soon we spent more time together, in
a heated moment, hormones high we lost ourselves in each other, succumbed to the lust of the flesh,
solidifying a bond beyond lust, I fell in love with her.
But life is always uncertain; you are never in the driving wheel of your emotions. Towards my final year of
University, I met a strange boy, who very much reminded me of myself when I was his age. He was
gentler as a feather than raw, soft spoken, and very humbled and most of all shy. In his presence my body
and emotions betraying me, when he stared at me it is as though he can see through my soul; yet
completely unaware of the power he had over me, he made me weak, with no sense of direction. I
couldnt understand, and the more I tried to full grasp what was unfolding, the less I seemed to know. One
thing became crystal clear, for the first time I wanted to cross the boundaries I have never to been to
before.
How do I get out of this mess? How do I even begin to voice these feelings to anyone? Would anyone
understand? With all these questions in my head, all the books I read seemed insignificant; none of them
could offer me the answers I needed. In a dark room that was my mind, in silence my thoughts became
louder as boom bust speakers, subliminally I had not anticipated these feelings for they laid dormant deep
in my mind and heart. Thrust into a battle between what is morally palatable in the eyes of society and the
unrelenting feelings I felt. Feeling so small in this vast sea of emotions and feeling, blown hither and
thither, I search for wisdom. As a devout Christian I knew that what I felt was a sin, then how do I be rid of
me such feelings? Wisdom failed me.
In a blink of an eye, days turned into weeks and weeks into months, perhaps this was my second chance,
redemptive love, I thought, a reprieve from the atrocities I had committed in life, this was the only chance
life offered me one, to be whole. Like a shadow in the night guilt crept in, what do I say to my lover? How
do I tell her that Im half the man she thought me to be?
[To Be Continued]

UNKNOWN

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