A Sociopath's Lesson in Greed

}The first thing I noticed upon looking at him were his sympathetic eyes and the soft creases of his smile. They told me a story, but also whispered the narrative as a secret. It did not take me to long to become calm within myself in the relief of knowing him well, and in that ease, came with him knowing me. What started out as seconds slowly moved into days and then years. I eventually started losing track of time.

He was inquisitive, as was I. We spent most of our time together on a journey of exploration, discovering the veiled spaces and dark corners of each other's souls. There was never a dull moment, in fact we were on a constant high for a lengthy spell. We were hooked on the relationship, flourishing on the drug that was our love.

The thing about being an addict is the lingering taste of the crash. When we crumbled, we collapsed instantaneously, tearing down walls and destroying all that we had spent years to build. The exposed skeleton of our relationship was horrific, deformed and altered. I could not stand the sight of it. So, I walked the city blind, sometimes with him but most times without. These were the days when I felt that I did not and could not possibly know him well at all.

He lived in a dichotomy of ultimate passion and the complete lack of. I do not know how he could manage having both feet planted firmly on opposite sides of the ground, but perhaps that is why he could not move. I loved him fiercely, but there were many times I felt that it was a choice between salvaging myself, or saving what I believed to be that we were meant to be. He ate pieces of me, and I let him.
What struck me the most was the fact that he rarely felt remorse. That he had to be coaxed into an apology, as though it was a thing to be earned and not a thing meant to appease the person that you love. I always needed to beg and plead before he would even bat an eyelash, pushing myself to the edge in terms of what I was willing to say and hoping that he would finally tell me what I needed to hear. At times, this meant I had to ask explicitly, other times it would be after I had lost my own voice to the wind of the argument. Each time, his words managed to cool the flames. But each time, I wore myself out from the struggle. I aged rapidly, and unknowingly.

Was it meant to be this difficult? Most days I failed to convince myself that it was, some days I turned to him to prove that it was not. He had a way of possessing me completely, I submitted wholeheartedly to his ideals although I pretended not to. He dragged me around like a puppeteer would with the strings around my neck, my heart and my mind. It was because he had could conjure magic in the smallest moments, create meaning out of thin air and give life to the things once dead. I saw the world differently, with a forced clarity that I would never be willing to give up. Giving him up would be giving up a part of me that had grown through his nurturing, my existence was now tied to his being. To lose him would be to mourn a personal death.

We fell in and out of love constantly, but the day he taught me about greed was the day he stopped loving me forever.


I sat across him, running my fingers through my hair to rid myself of this excess energy and agitation. The truth was that I had to stop myself from pulling my hair out. I had a twitch and was fidgeting nervously.

He sat in quietness, barely catching my gaze, tapping his feet in an odd rhythm. I heard the clock ticking at times, but mostly I heard the blood rushing to my ears.

'When?' I managed to say. He looked up, stared at me blankly, and said nothing at all.

I was asking a hypothetical question. I knew exactly when he started to have feelings for her, but I tiptoed around the monster as that was what it was. Not some elephant in the room but a giant and scary monster. I stayed on the fringes, prancing around in a desperate dance while he fell deeper and deeper into the core of loving someone else. But for some reason, I needed to ask. Humans prides itself on its common sense but does very little with it - here I was asking a question to an answer I already had and more importantly, one I knew that I would loathe.

'When?' I asked again, choking on my tears. Perhaps if I was aggressively sad, he would feel some fear.

'For some time,' his voice was low, as though he was trying to bury the sentence under the floors that we stood on. I suddenly felt light-headed and looked around as the room started to spin around me picking up the pace as it went.

It was immeasurably painful. I could feel my soul ripping apart slowly from his, each piece of skin that connected us stretched in the most agonizing way. In my mind, I was dashing around the room.

'Why?' I had a million thoughts, but they were materializing themselves in uncommunicative words.

He took a long breath, and mumbled. He began to tell me what our relationship had lacked, how it was hollow and how he had faded away from it over time. That the act of desiring me belonged to the ghost that he once was, and now no longer.

That he craved something beyond what we could offer.

That he fell deeply and passionately for her.

That he was reborn.

I sat in disbelief. How could he possibly gather that this is what I had wanted to hear when I asked him 'Why?' He had stopped speaking, god knows how long his speech went on for. But his words echoed through the room, ringing, harmonizing.

I imagined him feeling intoxicated with his new love, yet lying next to me to sleep at nights. In my visions, she craved him from a distance, looking down on me like the small creature that I had come to be. I could see his kind eyes and smile lines as he spoke to her, an expression that he no longer had with me. I must have sat in silence for a long time as I wept. After a while, he stood up suddenly.

'What are you doing?' I reacted, jumping to my feet. The sudden motion made me even more light headed. 'What are you doing?'

'I should go,' he motioned for me to step aside.

'What are you doing?'

'Stop it okay?'

Stop what?

'No,' I whispered.

'I'm leaving, I should pack -'

'No,' I had found my voice, but my mind still could not string sentences. 'No, no... no, no -'

'Stop it,' he headed towards the bed room, I followed close behind.

'What are you doing?'

'Will you stop asking? What did you expect would happen? I should leave. I- I need to leave.'

Need to?

'NO!' I pushed him against the wall. He stumbled, but he skirted around me. I was the monster in the room now.

'Please don't -' I said. But he had started yelling.

He loved her, he would not stay here. He needed to leave, he could not stay. It was insane, I was being insane. He hated everything about my insanity, he always had. It was all too much, he could not do this any longer. He needed to be away, he needed to be with her.

I could not believe it. He had stopped loving me for good. I could no longer reach into him, and pull out the part of myself that belonged to him. He had scorched it all, set ablaze all that I held dear and close to my heart. I could not have him.

Couldn't I?

My world continued spinning, thrashing about constantly. I did not know which parts of me belonged to me. Everything was on fire. I dashed out of the room, and returned before he realized that I had left. He was almost done packing.

I must keep him. He would always keep me, so I must keep him too. It was only fair, right? I wanted to be the puppeteer now.

I plunged the knife into his heart. He gasped, but made no other sound. He looked at me, terrified, as I wept. I apologized over and over as he buckled towards the ground. I pulled out the knife, and stabbed him three more times till he was silent.

I held him as he died and wept uncontrollably. My tears trickled into the pool of blood he and I both created, and we merged as one for the last time. He had stopped loving me, but he would be mine, and only mine, to keep.