Pygmalion, of Sorts
Ovid tells us of a statue turned to living flesh, out of the love the sculptor, Pygmalion, bore for his creation, Galatea. Pygmalion had created in her the perfect woman and, for want of her, wasted away, worshipping at her perfect marble feet until the gods took pity on him, and gave Galatea life.
Perhaps they ought to have turned Pygmalion into marble instead, as he lay, beseeching, at her feet, and taken the two together, as an allegory of love: Beauty and Pain.
Or perhaps they would be so merciful as to turn me into a statue instead.
I hardly think I shall be so lucky, but it is worth the thought in my jumbled brain to believe that such a lucky respite may yet be granted to me.
I feel cold as marble – as ice – as Death itself, and yet the tragedy is that I know this blow shall not kill me. I shall continue to exist, if you will call it existence, my pain amplified through eternity and into numb apathy.
Henceforth I know I have half a heart, half a mind, half a soul.
Rejection.
If I was cold, it was because I was wary of showing a full heart. If I was quiet, it was because I did not want my full mind known. If I was reserved, it was because a soul is too precious a thing to be worn upon one's sleeve.
Rejection has ripped these feeling things from me, left me bare and mechanical.
Elizabeth refused me because she thought me a cold, unfeeling man. The irony of rejection – I have become the man she feared to marry. I have become a statue.