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Expectations

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

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An experimental piece of short fiction.

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Expectations, expectations, expectations. Oh, where do I begin? There was so much with you, an expectation of what music I would listen to, what films I would watch, who I would talk to and what I would say. I had to have the right friends and, well, they were always and only your friends: no one else would do. There was an expectation, at all times, that I would do the right thing, that I would change myself to fit the mould (ever changing, of course) that you set out for me. Don't just try, you said, just do it. It's easy. So, do it. You don't love me if you don't.

What a charming thing to say.

Expectations came and went but they lingered in a list that I had to keep of all the improvements that I had to make, as if I was a project, a work in progress that still had so very much work left to come. And it was me, of course, that would undertake that work with sleepless nights and tears and frets and worries as the goal posts for success were forever moved. You expected me to allow you to do everything and anything and therein lies the trouble for neither the expectation nor the allowing should ever have been present in a relationship where there was no two-way conversation, a give and take of ideas and life and, ultimately, love.

But that's not what you remember at all, is it, manipulating your own history to match your fantasy? You had such high expectations of me and none for yourself, the world around you more important than you in so very much the wrong way. It must be nice to live in that world - but just for you. No one else. It's hell for everyone else.

In your reality, you are the king. You have the feast and, by your eyes, you've earned it. You can take everything and anything and, wow, it's all been given to you! How lucky is that? Everyone adores you and falls at your feet, your charm rising forth to pave the way for you. It's something that's always made your life easier, particularly when you turn on people, and gets you what you want. So, why would you ever stop doing it?

Dig your own hole, darling. You'll eventually bury yourself in it.

People aren't for connections and people aren't for relationships: to you, they are just there to be used. Use and abuse and cast aside - hook back when it suits your needs but, otherwise, forget they even exist. It's easy in a digital world.

So, what are your expectations? Am I a goddess or am I a whore? It depends on the way you look at me, the stories you hear and the stories you tell, the lies that are twisted so far that, maybe, just maybe, they can become truths. Anything is a truth if it is told enough times and that's all there is to it in the eyes of so many.

If you say it is so, it must be true. Mustn't it?

Cheer up, you say, as I'm a fair weather partner. You don't like me when I'm sad. You don't like me when I'm a sad little emo.

It was okay for you to say that.

It_wasn't_ okay for you to say that.

But, you know, your word was law, so who was I to judge something like that? You weren't to be judged, honey-dearest, you were above it all. But the saccharine sweetness comes with the regurgitation of your venom too, spitting up in my words all that you did your very best to feed into my soul. It has no place here, so out it comes and out it comes, comes, comes.

Expectations. Oh, if only you'd put a few more on yourself, maybe you wouldn't be in this mess now. The coils and wrappings of your sordid life will drag you down and down and down into the pit, though no one but you will ever know the horrors that lie at the bottom of it. Pain lancing through, the searing loneliness. We're a smarter age now, one that talks and goes between one another. It's harder to isolate people now. How will you completely isolate your next victim?

Maybe you will. Maybe you won't. Either way, they'll climb their way out too, just like me, battered and bruised, bleeding but not broken, snarling at the world with freshly opened eyes. You may place your expectations on them but the truth of it all is that they fail all in the end, which is one of the reasons that they find the will to escape the monster, the curse you laid on them. Your expectations never held any true power, regardless of what you said, what you did, and it gave light to expectations that we, as individuals, could take back for our own all over again.

And, so, you shall fall. You won't be pushed. No one cares about you that much, not after all that. We just know, ultimately, that our expectation of you is that you, the one who sought to ruin so many lives, will burn.

It's okay. I can wait. But I won't be there to see you fall.

No. No, I'll be out there living my own life and no one will bear witness to your terror, your screams, your plaintive cries. Oh, please, oh, please, you'll beg. Won't someone rescue me? Help, help... Help, help, help. You can cry and you can whine, stomp your little feet and wave your little fists, have a tantrum fit for a toddler - you were well-versed in those - but it's not going to do you any good. You're all alone and you will forever be alone, regardless of those that you tie to you. They won't be there either when you fall.

Maybe, if you'd had fewer expectations of people, there'd be someone left there to save you. Now, as your throat closes up and the light of the day slips from your eyes, there will only be the darkness seeping through you, poisoning your heart and your soul, feeding back all your expectations of everyone else in the world back to you, back where it originated from. It's fitting, in a way, but we're not going to have a hand in it.

For once in your life, at the end of your time, you're going to do it all for yourself. And, as I say, for what I say matters now, there's never going to be anyone there to grab you, to pull you back up, to help you back to something that could, with the right people around you, be the right path. We can but try. But the world will be done trying for you, those souls you abused, sank your teeth into, gnawed and chewed until you were bored with the bones. They're long gone now. They turned away and never looked back, though their stories become fresh fodder for you to place more expectations on others, seeking out ways to use where you failed as a way in which to place new expectations on others. They can be better than you, if only they try hard enough. It'd be clever, really, if it wasn't so sad.

They're long gone.

They expect more from themselves.

And your expectations failed to take a lasting hold.