They say the desert is where God takes the proud man when he wants to show him who he is. Well, it’s summer in the desert. It’s the time of year when the devil goes on holiday because the sun ravages and ravishes everything in sight. But that isn’t the sun around which this story orbits. There’s a boy too. And where there is a boy, there is always a girl.
The boy and the girl met at opposite ends of a crosswalk. They were both at an inflection point, but those were her words. She was talking about herself. He said she stole the words out of his mouth. She was blissfully unaware of the significance of what he said, but it doesn’t matter. This isn’t a love story.
Boy meets girl. Girl meets boy. Boy likes girl. Boy thinks girl likes him. In his defense, he thinks all girls like him, but that’s neither here nor there. And for some reason, things don’t work out. Things fall apart faster than anyone can see coming. Things get realer than anyone can anticipate feeling. On the surface, everything looked like fun and games, but beneath the surface, it was psychological warfare. At least that’s how he saw it. And he failed. He fucked it up. He lost the decisive battle. At least that’s what he believed. Until now.
That’s just who he is though. He was born with broad shoulders to carry the weight of the world, because he really thinks it’s his world we’re all living in. He romanticizes himself and his suffering, because he knows no other way to carry it. And he’s addicted to the way he feels every damn second of every damn day and doesn’t know who he’d be without it.
So the boy does what he's learned to do. What he’s trained himself to do. He pursues what he thinks is the path to victory with little to no awareness that the prize he seeks is not the prize he is truly in pursuit of.
He chases reluctantly, not out of restraint but out of vanity. He doesn’t chase his coffee or his whiskey, so why the hell would he ever chase her. It is beneath him. So he never chases her. He just runs laps in his head replaying every past exchange and rehearsing every future interaction.
He performs casually. He plants his magnum opus in her vicinity then manufactures a meeting to see if she read it and to hear how much she loved it. But she doesn’t read it. He doesn’t get the payoff he predicted. So a week later, he puts on a show for a room full of people but an audience of one.
And he invests desperately, because he makes her everything but a person. His fatal error: he makes her the prize – the proof that he has finally changed. And like the coward he is, he sends the text. She says no. So he spent the next 6 weeks chasing and performing in utter ignorance of the power a single message had to shatter his fantasy.
And through it all, he never stopped to think about her once. He did tell her to humble him though. He just didn’t see this coming.
His life has been a movie made for the silver screen. He watches it compulsively. How could he resist when he is the star. It’s always been this way. This is how he sleeps at night. But he’s awake now, as he sits on his laptop brooding, ruminating, not in shame or self-consciousness, but in awe of the fool he made of himself. As he stares at the screen, writing a story about a boy, because a boy is easier to face than a man who lets his shit get this messy. And now I have no one to blame but myself.
I told you this wasn’t a love story. This isn’t about her.
They say within every man is a boy who just wants to feel like he’s enough. I realize there is no knowledge to gain, no skill to learn, and no high to chase that will ever make the boy feel like he’s enough. There is no prize that can tell me I’m a man. That I’ve grown up. That I’ve changed. There is only one path left to traverse – the path that runs inward towards the questions I’ve been asking myself and my God for my entire life but was never prepared to answer: who am I, how did I become who I am, and where the hell do I go from here?
Three moments come to mind as I wrestle with these questions. The first is with my father on the day I was supposed to be graduating from Columbia but really wasn't. I hadn’t crossed the finish line. Everyone knew this was meant to be the culmination of my redemption arc. But only he knew the truth. He's a man of few words. He’s also the man who said the moment I was born was the day he finally felt like a man. Yet when the time came for the valedictorian to take the stage, all he said was: that should've been you. It’s been 7 years, and this shit still stings. This is who I am.
The second is with my mother on the day before I left for Dubai. This was also a year out from my hospital discharge. On my first day home, 10 days out of a 6-hour procedure, all I wanted was her care and attention. What I got instead: why aren’t you a millionaire yet. I erupted. Then I crumbled. Story of my life. So I did the one thing I knew how to do. I withdrew. But a year later, in the conversation I went 16 years without, I finally found the words that evaded me: you only love me when I’m the golden boy. This is how I became who I am.
The third is with my younger sister last month while she was on her way to the airport. I’ll never forget how we got to India with our mother and a childhood stuffed into a handful of suitcases. The only place we wanted to be was with our father, but that was the one thing I couldn't let anyone see. She felt the same. That shit leaks. Only now do I realize I did to her what our mother did to me. Only now do I see how terrifying a brother who punches your walls, windows, and mirrors could really be. I thought strength hid fear. I thought it would get respect. But 16 years later, I got the text: if anyone can do it, it’s you. I asked: do what. She said: great things. This is where I go from here.
It has always been easier for me to say than to do, for me to become than to be. The boy could stay eternal in the fantasy. It could remain his if it was always a dream. But I could never sit still. Peace came with fear. So I chose isolation over solitude. I performed self-possession. I invested in everything but the one thing that was mine. And I never respected my inner world, so I never valued anyone else's. Including hers.
The past few months have been a collision with reality. The past few weeks turned the clock further back than I was prepared for. But life started to move different once I loosened my grip.
The boy's still in the car. I should never have tried to kill him. I just needed him out of the driver's seat. I had to take responsibility for the wheel. The car is the only place I need to be. Still, I must learn to contain myself. And I can't do that for anyone until I do it for myself. Only a man who can contain himself can love without needing anything in return. This is the broad shoulders shit.
The devil never went on holiday. He simply stopped screaming. And I can hear the music.
But I know what this looks like: vulnerability staged as confession, the next maneuver towards absolution. I can’t prove this isn’t that. I can only tell you I didn’t write this for her. I did it for myself, so for the first time, it actually could be for her – whoever she already is or whoever she turns out to be.
There is no pain like the pain of realizing you're not the man she needs. There is no blessing like the blessing of realizing you're not yet the man she needs.