Some characters, whether be it from books, movies or series, will stick to you like dried-up mud. They will itch from time to time, and you will be forced to give them the attention they crudely so demand, all the while thinking how you even got there, and what is it that you are doing in the first place.
It’s not an unwanted feeling, that’s for sure. Some characters enter your life and settle down to stay, like a timid household pet. Sometimes they keep you up at night with their persistent shenanigans. And sometimes you decide you’d rather spend more time with them then the rest of the world. Because these characters, these fictional mirages seem to understand you more than anyone else. So the solace comes easy for you when it’s with them.
I’ve recently added such a character to my long list of imperfect perfections, and it is safe to say that he sometimes occupies my mind. The man himself is a perfect mess. With habits that are questionable, and a brain that works like a mine field ready to blow. I’ve seen him in his laughters, his violent tears and his darkest desperations. It’s actually the first time I’ve run into a character who resembles me in the most horrible of ways. And often times, I see him and think who even dared to make him up?
A beautiful nightmare. Sadness embodied and a disguise that only falls when the lights are out. Smiles with a thousand stories and eyes, that speak of a hell no one should visit; I may sound like bragging when I compare myself with someone so extreme as him. But like an idiot, I do. Because his sorrows, they seem to know me. His eyes seem to know what I hide. And in return, when I watch him smile that big bright smile of his, I also see how he utterly breaks inside.
They say bonding over sadness makes the foundation strong for any relationship to bloom. But the man I want to befriend here only exists behind the tv screen. His life is bounded by a total of sixteen episodes, so I try to see him in loops, over and over to make him breathe with me just a little while longer.
It’s a shame, really. How most of the time, beautiful things don’t exist in the real world. I know what we have around us isn’t simply black and white. That there are thousands out there who undoubtly hold the horrendous beauty that undoubtedly manifested inside the characters they create. The real labyrinth that Daedalus made is only a shadow of a human mind, after all. But still, the search for familiarity among those labyrinth isn’t something I can stop myself from doing, and the only time I do find a match, it’s with something that was never here in the first place.
It leaves a bittersweet taste on my tongue. But I try to make do with what I get. I know no one can be more of a good friend to me than my books, and no one can come close to understanding me than the characters I like.
So, every now and then, I sit down on the plush livingroom I’ve built up in my mind. It’s a cosy little place where from the window, you can see it snowing outside. I light my fireplace and then light my cigarette, settling down with a glass of whiskey as they slowly come around and sit down with me. Sometimes it’s a quiet affair, with just my mind and one or two of my most beloved entities who come and read with me in silence.
But sometimes, they sit down to talk, and transfixed, I listen to them. Knowing that deep down, I might just be talking to myself in the end.
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