Simplistic Beauty

* DISCLAIMER: All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. *


So I'm off on a search to rescue her. She has been snatched by a horrible and evil monster. This probably happened because I made a mistake. Not just one. I made many mistakes during the time we spent together, all those years ago. Memories of our relationship have become muddled, replaced wholesale, but one remains clear: her turning sharply away, her braid lashing at me with contempt. I know she tried to be forgiving, but who can just shrug away a guilty lie, a stab in the back? Such a mistake will change a relationship irreversibly, even if we have learned from the mistake and would never repeat it. Her eyes grew narrower. She became more distant. Our world, with its rules of causality, has trained us to be miserly with forgiveness. By forgiving them too readily, we can be badly hurt. But if we've learned from a mistake and became better for it, shouldn't we be rewarded for the learning, rather than punished for the mistake? What if our world worked differently? Suppose I could tell her: 'I didn't mean what I just said,' and she would say: 'It's okay, I understand,' and she would not turn away, and life would really proceed as though we had never said that thing? We could remove the damage but still be wiser for the experience. Me and her, we lounge in our castle garden, laughing together, giving names to the colorful birds. Our mistakes are hidden from each other, tucked away between the folds of time, safe.

For a long time, I thought we had been cultivating the perfect relationship. I had been fiercely protective, reversing all my mistakes so they would not touch her. Likewise, keeping a tight rein on her own mistakes, she always pleased me. But to be fully couched within the comfort of a friend is a mode of existence with severe implications. To please you perfectly, she must understand you perfectly. Thus you cannot defy her expectations or escape her reach. Her benevolence has circumscribed you, and your life's achievements will not reach beyond the map she has drawn. I needed to be non-manipulable. I needed a hope of transcendence. I needed, sometimes, to be immune to the Princess's caring touch. Off in the distance, I saw a castle where the flags flutter even when the wind has expired, and the bread in the kitchen is always warm. A little bit of magic.

Visiting my home for a holiday meal, I felt as though I had regressed to those long-ago years when I lived under my parents' roof, oppressed by their insistence on upholding strange values which, to me, were meaningless. Back then, bickering would erupt over drops of gravy spilt onto the tablecloth. Escaping, I walked in the cool air toward the university I'd attended after moving out of my parent's home. As I distanced myself from that troubling house, I felt the embarrassment of childhood fading into the past. But now I stepped into all the insecurities I'd felt at the university, all the panic of walking a social tightrope. I only felt relieved after the whole visit was over, sitting back home in the present, steeped in contrast I saw how I'd improved so much from those old days. This improvement, day by day, takes me ever-closer to finding her. If she exists - she must! - she will transform me, and everyone. I felt on my trip that every place stirs up an emotion, and every emotion invokes a memory: a time and location. So couldn't I find her now, tonight, just by wandering from place to place and noticing how I feel? A trail of feelings, of awe and inspiration, should lead me to that castle in the future, her arms enclosing me, her scent fills me with excitement, creates a moment so strong I can remember it in the past. Immediately I walked out my door, the next morning, toward whatever the new day held. I felt something like optimism.

She never understood the impulses that drove me, never quite felt the intensity that, over time, chiseled lines into my face. She never quite felt close enough to me - but I held her as though she were, whispered into her ear words that only a soul mate should receive. Over the remnants of dinner, we both knew the time had come. I would have said: 'I have to go find her,' but I didn't need to. Giving a final kiss, hoisting a travel bag to my shoulder, I walked out the door. Through all the nights that followed, she still loved me as though I had stayed, to comfort her and protect her.

Perhaps in a perfect world, the ring would be a symbol of happiness. It's a sign of ceaselessness devotion: even if I will never find her, I will always be trying. I still will wear the ring. But the thing makes its presence known. It shines out to others like a beacon of warning. It makes people slow to approach. Suspicion, distrust. Interactions are torpedoed before I can open my mouth. In time I learn to deal with others carefully. I match their hesitant pace, tracing a soft path through their defenses. But this exhausts me, and it only works to a limited degree. It doesn't get me what I need. I begin to hide the ring in my pocket. But I can hardly bear it - too long tucked away, that part of me might suffocate.

- A slightly modified excerpt from Braid