aneliasthetic

[aneliasthetic]

Crowman: an essay on god knows what.

While packing for college, knowing that there was a possibility of me never having the opportunity to come back again, I prioritised only the most essential of my belongings. The last gift from my ageing grandparents. Every letter a loved one has written to me. A signed poetry book from my only maternal figure confessing, “I love you and I believe in you.”

And then there was Crowman.

Crowman is a 7 inch tall clay statue of a humanoid crow, draped in rust green and bowing with crossed feather-fingers behind his back. He was handmade by one of the best friends I have ever had in my life, H.

H is a force of nature never to be trifled with. She is most definitely the strongest person I know, and though not without flinching, she was the first person in my life to know me as I am. I loved H in ways that transcended platonic love or romance— to me, she was nothing short of blood. And in many ways, H saved me from myself throughout the 5 years that I had the absolute fortune of knowing her.

H is no longer in my life. This is my fault. And H’s. And others’. It depends on the story you ask for. It depends on the story you need.

H had cut me out of her life 6 months before I even touched a packing list. And yet here I was, wrapping her beloved child in the softest sheets I could find before carefully tucking him away into the side of my suitcase— before I had even sorted half of my luggage clothes. I remember turning him over and over in my hands, running my skin across the faux-smooth feel of the very surfaces H must have poured hours into moulding.

I remember feeling numb. Numb but with a distant instinct pleading, “Keep him. Keep him safe. Please.”

When I moved into my dorm, one of the first things I did was knock Crowman over and break his beak off. All I did in response was stare. It was kind of funny. The unfortunate part of attending a small high school was that even once you make the decision to cut someone out of your life entirely, you still have to see them 8 hours a day, 5 days a week— even more if you’re in your senior year and everyone is growing anxiously nostalgic for get-togethers and graduation events. So, before H left my life entirely, only my ability to speak to her did.

A month passed before I finally found an adhesive that would return Crowman’s beak to him.

It was the underside of a bandaid. A big bandage along the base of his beak.

But I suppose that’s also how we looked from afar. The raggedy crew of two, left behind by our older friends, clinging to what we could and destroying each other in the process.

H. The person who saved me more times than I can count, in more ways that I can fathom. H. The person who broke me so completely, who showed me depths of grief I wasn’t mature enough to comprehend.

A false dichotomy is the wrongful assumption that there are only two sides to one whole. In most cases, there exists a multiplicity. In some cases, there only exists the whole: paradoxical yet complete in itself. This is one of them. This is a story where every claim is true, all justification is wrong, and no crime is righted. This is the story I have been turning over and over in my hands, trying desperately to comprehend how she smoothed its creases.

A story begs to be told, and I have told it in a hundred ways. As the knight. As the princess. As the dragon. And as the timeless land itself. I have driven myself to the brink of collapse, to the point of near complete hospitalisation in my ravenous desire for some almighty truth. For a shred of understanding for why.

Why did it turn out this way?

Why did she do what she did?

Why did I commit the crimes brought against me?

But most importantly: Why did I have to lose her?

As children, we’re told stories to draw a mist over the brutality of realness— to help fragile minds begin to comprehend a senseless world. As adults, we unlearn these stories through lessons unsweetened. The story I have been trying to unlearn for far too long is the one of a hero and a dragon.

It’s a uniquely raw experience to face your shadow and find none other than an old dog. As of right now, my greatest flaws and weaknesses are also the very things that have kept me alive, kicking and screaming, for so long.

I think that when she left, my body reacted to what it perceived as a mortal threat in the only way familiar to us: telling a good story. And thus, the story began. Of me as the hero and her as the dragon.

It wasn’t long before the pages began to peel— to twist but not yet tear. I found myself strung between two roles, two equally compelling stories, two equally damning convictions. Was I the villain or the vilified?

The answer is a resounding yes. Yes, you are.

Here’s where the confession comes in: I am an immoral being consistently seeking judgement. I am a radical existentialist who still needs to justify his own existence. And I am not often doing a great job at it.

Guilt is my poison of choice. For every many times I have genuinely contemplated cutting my time short, it has been under the influence of guilt. It has been a coward’s solution to a seemingly overwhelming burden: to do good in the face of having been bad.

Because it’s easy to be a bad person who occasionally does good. Or at least, easier than it is to be a good person who occasionally does bad. One is a miracle, the other is a crime. So, I take the easy route and call myself a bad person because it gives me the best view of an emergency exit.

Is this too simplistic an explanation of how my (extremely unreliable) mind works? Does it negate to analyse all the ways in which my mental conditions influence my personhood and actions? Perhaps, but I am not here for comprehension. I am not even here for a stage. I think today, maybe just today, I’m here for my beak.

And this is what I need to say:

My name is Elias Lu. I am 18 years old, 5’8 with the receipts to prove it, and I am an audible, visible, exploding-like-teenagers-with-illegal-fireworks shitshow. I have a track record for loving most of all the very people who have hurt me or been hurt as a result. I am not a good person, nor will I ever be, but that does not make it any less my dream. On occasion, I am a bad person, and during these occasions, the best I can do is take responsibility for my actions, and I often fail to do even that.

But I have had the good fortune of being loved. I have had the fortune of both knowing and being known. And from this, I can say that the effort is worth making. Everything I do to find what people call “the good life” is because the ones in my life have shown a thousand times over that they are worth doing good by. And I think that’s the truest compass I can have: a drive based in the unconditional, timeless, boundless love I hold and have held with others.

My life is worth living because of the people in it. Even if I am directionless at the moment. Even if my body is trying to convince me otherwise. Even if those people are no longer by my side.

This is what Crowman is to me. The bow of a trickster; the earnestness of a criminal. A creature who has paid for his mouth; a promise beyond voice and decay. In other words, he is a reminder that my work here is not yet done, that even a liar can attempt valliance.

I am going to keep stumbling even as I map this path. But I am writing this now to remind myself of all the reasons why I keep going. Thank you for reading my work. Thank you for being a part of my life. You are part of all those reasons. I love you. Thank you for loving me. Don’t go where I can’t follow. And if you do, please consider sending a letter.