There are pains and pains out there. All of us had hefty shares. But somewhere deep in our minds, there lurks ONE pain, which is intolerable.
7 Years ago, I was part of a team responsible for localizing the MacOS, working for the local Apple distributor in Athens.
Working there was pretty much the culmination of my life's dreams, of finally becoming a respected programmer. When I was hired, in September of 1995, I screamed with delight at the hopeful prospects that were awaiting in my future. I couldn't have been happier, despite the abyss that was to follow, later on.
What happened there, during the subsequent years, marked me so badly that in retrospect, now, I would rather have lost an eye than going through with the entire conundrum of having worked for this particular company.
Part of our time was spent sharing interesting articles in the LAN. Of course, being young and brave (and stupid) I decided to contribute a couple of articles, not unlike the ones contributed in t.b., that dealt with various current (at the time) issues.
I _was_ of course aware of the fact that many of the employees were pretty much doing the same in their free time, mostly reading other people's articles. As a result I became slightly popular inside the company, as the next bright company's hopeful.
One day I receive an anonymous instant message from one of the company's employees, who seemed to be interested in finding more about me. I had no clue as to even whether "he" was a male or female, but being a stupendously trusty person, I started exchanging instant messages with "him".
The interested party was smart enough to conceal its name, otherwise things would not have developed the way they did. In fact, retrospectively, that party was several orders of IQ smarter than I am, (and still is) and knew well that if I had known its identity, I would have discarded the party's "manifestation" as either a hoax or, at least, as severely questionable, since I myself was aware of what I was or was not capable of doing at the time.
I was in fact independently aware of who this "employee" was, as a person, and knew, from moment one, that "he" was a soul-scavenger, however I didn't at the time make a connection.
As the story usually has it in such cases, sheep are naturally lead to their slaughter one way or another, so according to Murphy's Law, I was being slowly led to my own slaughter-house. The funny part, was that the employee who was about to do this, actually derived infinite pleasure from the tortuous prospect.
To make a long story short, I gradually became accustomed to communicating daily with this anonymous "friend", and I eagerly anticipated those instant messages.
The soul-scavenger was naturally proficient in many areas where I "thought" I was good at, and made for an interesting conversation partner. There were plenty of clues for me that this person was beyond my abilities to handle, however I was at the time stupid and asleep enough to not have detected the danger in advance.
I was a butterfly for the party and was travelling fast towards a blacklight UV source, with a surface temperature of 10,000 degrees Kelvin.
Gradually, after hundreds of instant messages and after I was convinced that the party was tremendously interesting, whether it was male or female, "he" one day decides to reveal its identity to me.
She was a creature of unspeakable beauty at the time: Excellent and powerful posture, perfect skin, perfect body, eyes like sapphire. Overall, the type of woman men instantly fall in love with and stay in love forever. She was the sort of person men commit suicide over or go insane, if they find out she's slept with somebody else.
At the time of course I became severely disillusioned that I could win her and what's worse, I was actually happy about the whole thing. She was the woman of my dreams. Smart, proficient in anything she could ever lay her hands on, having read perhaps 80% of most written works out there and what was better, she was "interested" in me. Or so I thought.
During the weeks that followed, I actually tried to approach her further: I unwound the boundaries of my natural shyness, I pushed my "high-ego" plug to the highest extent possible, and geared-up, ready for battle. This woman was worthy of me trying. And I was determined to try until I either succeeded or until I died trying.
I asked her for a date and she initially accepted. We went out a couple of times and I tried to really impress her. I mean _really_ now. This was a one in a lifetime experience and a small voice in my mind kept telling me: "Give it all you've got man, this is one case where you _have_ to win. Losing amounts to slow, gradual and painful death".
I can't recall _anything_ I actually haven't tried to do, in order to impress her: I showed her my paintings, some of which were incomplete at the time. I tried to give her a sense for what my background in math and music was. I talked metaphysics with her in my apartment, till we both became blue-eyed from the depth of the arguments. I played the entire chromatic Fantasy and Fugue for her on my harpsipiano. We went out and ate pizza like there was no tomorrow, talking our heads off discussing Lovecraftian landscapes and imagining trips to the unknown Kaddath. I tried to explain some of the inner programmatic workings of the Mac.
I was fucking dreaming. The entire process of me "trying", forced me to plunge into a state of numbness, the likes of which were completely out of this world. At one point, I was in the habit of going to her office daily, after 4:30pm and to chat with her while she was still working. I was so obsessed with her, that I could care less if I was fired or not. The company president himself, entered her office on several occasions, to ask her for certain chores, and I was just sitting on the chair next to her desk, cross-legged, smoking and totally oblivious. I could have cared less if the person who walked in was the company's president or God himself.
Eventually the ugliness that usually follows the virtual "happiness" that always comes first, raised its ugly head. She started refusing my subsequent requests for further dating, claiming some sort of "excuse" the likes of which were left unexplained for better or for worse.
Later on, and after several months in agony and pain, which by now had become as strong as the actual pain from ripping somebody's soul out slowly using a duct the size of the Chicago underground sewer-ducts, and with excruciating patience and surgical determination, I find out that she was dating someone else at the same time she pulled the entire conundrum on me.
After perhaps 1 year of continuous agony, pain, unfulfilled desire, sexual lust and other relevant emotions which linger on the boundaries of insanity, I learn that she went off and married that someone.
I then slowly accepted my fate, day by day, night by night, and started the process of accepting defeat. Subsequently I became so numb and disinterested even in my own job, the job that I loved so much, that I offered the president my resignation. My time there had been completed. What was supposed to have happened, happened.
The realization of defeat came slowly. It came in exactly the same way death approaches us in our actual lifetimes. In fact, it is still coming. It keeps coming, day by day, night by night, stronger and stronger, until all traces of hope are lit in the great fireplace of the Big Lie.
The really interesting part is the morbid sensation that circulates over and over, forever and ever inside my mind. The sensation of awaken, unfulfilled and ultimately destroyed emotional and sexual desire. Heh, _what_ sexual desire? I didn't even have a chance to imagine that, let alone experience it.
This woman did not want my body. She never did. She wanted my soul. Retrospecting now, after 7 entire years of being in constant pain and agony, over a female of all things, the entire process of her approaching me in the foretold manner, shows only signs of predetermined and well orchestrated intent for malignancy and attack.
Oh, yeah. I have experienced pain. Everybody does. I was lurking in the hospital basements for surgical operations, starting when I was only 6. There have been experiences in this life, whose pain is so severe, that many people would gladly stick a screwdriver in their temples than prospecting their subsequent pain.
All past pain can be handled. I am still handling it, quite effectively. I have been battling my own mind for 10 years now. Every day, I have to straitjacket my own brain. Because if it goes astray, the consequences will be grave.
I've endured all that. Successfully. Even Lucifer himself cannot defeat me. I can battle him to the ground and I swear, I will first cut his balls off, and forcefully feed them to him until he farts red and blue pellets, before he takes me to Hell.
But the pain from loving that woman is what I consider to be the supremum of all pains. I cannot defeat the pain, I cannot forget her, I cannot stop loving her, I cannot stop hating her, I cannot battle her, I cannot even use an appropriate fucking painkiller. The pain comes back, reinforced, as if having gone through a hellish refinery that makes its impact more and more intense.
By now, in my mind, along with all the rest of the Demons, there stands the one, supreme Demon of them all: The mental image of a woman. It is the prototype, which I good-heartedly built, like a fervent, devoted and loving engineer, while I was trying to win her over.
I never won over that woman. What's more serious however, is the mental prototype of this woman in my mind pounding every single night on my skull and reminding me of my deficiencies as a human being.
She had and still has the power to remind me. She always reminds me. She will always remind me in the future, unless some compassionate God out there, digs in my brain using a small time-machine and surgical needles and effectively deletes the relevant neurons.
Insanity can be handled. Physical pain can be handled. But the pain from not having the woman of your dreams, who seeked YOU out, not the other way around, cannot. This woman killed an entire universe. I don't know how much more damage one can do to a fellow human being.
(Here is a QuickTime movie (41.5MB) made on the above subject by Jean Detheux).