Love (English Language Assessment)

Love is an emotion. It is an emotion, a cocktail of feelings, bittersweet, hard, melancholic, and yet it is the best thing that ever happened to this world that we inhabit. Unfortunately, our world is love deprived.

Love is the only thing that is worth remembering. Of all the emotions that have been bestowed upon us, it is the one with the most impediments, the most boulders, blocking the road to achievement. It is one, and the only one, that teaches us to forgive, respect, be benevolent, and most of all, to live.

For it is by loving that we truly live.

There is nothing quite like love, for it imposes upon us periods of melancholy, and periods of paramount ecstasy, and at the end of it all, we learn, and we grow, from love.

But there is no end, when love is always beginning.

Love is the teacher. And love teaches us, by way of reality, that there is no limit imposed on goodness.

I fell in love. And every time I talk to her, I respect her all over again, more than I did before. There is a tidal wave of satisfaction, when you learn to respect. Love teaches you to gaze upon the incandescent light that is emitted from each one of us. It is through love that we see the invisible.

Love teaches us to be strong. It is the ultimate test of strength. Love comes in a very deadly disguise; love wears this disguise not seldom. Love puts on its veil, a veil that scorches the heart and soul. It is called unrequited love.

Unrequited love can kill. It is love that can not be returned. Thus, the irony of perfection. It is an equation that always sums up to pain, to agony, to desparity, to distress, to hope.

Love teaches us to hope.

And this is the greatest gift of love. It comes, free of any price, and puts a star in a blank sky. The stars in the sky are a guiding light. They symbolize hope.

They instil in you a longing, that maybe the heart's tortured song will be heard, and when it is, its love will be returned. It is then, in that person's eyes, that the stars shine brightest, an incandescent light, illuminating the path around the impediments, the stones, balancing the equations, destroying the depression, the sorrow, and filling the deepest, darkest gorges of the heart. For it is by loving that we truly live.

Unfortunately, in this world, the world that we inhabit, love died a long time ago.

However, love's greatest gift is hope. And I fell in love.

There is hope yet.

Faceless

I am an invisible man.

I have dreams, and hopes, and wishes, just like any other. But I am not ordinary, no; I am invisible. I can't see myself; the images I see are contorted and distorted and blurry and hoary. I awoke in a grave. I planted my own tombstone in the rich soil that would have been my bed. I awoke into a reality without reason, an existence without care. I am a blind, invisible man. I am mute, I am silent. No-one can see me, but I am there. I am the man with a bleeding heart. I am the man without a face.

I am the man without a face.

I am the blind, invisible man, but I am watching you. I can see you though I don't have eyes. I am right there. I am the wisp of smoke that you kick up when you walk. I am the wind that rustles your hair. Open your eyes, focus your sight, can't you see the invisible man? Can't you see me?

I am the fear that you feel at night, with the lights off, and the curtains closed. I am the incandescent light that shines through your window in the morning. Can you see me now? The man without a face? I'm watching you. Can you see me now? The man without a face? I'm watching you.

It is me who opens those creaking doors while you're asleep. I am the whistling in the wind. It is my breath that freezes your spine. I am the shadow that you think had moved. I am the footsteps in the quiet. I am the man without a face, without eyes. Can you see me now? I'm right beside you.

Oh, how I long to see, to breathe, to speak again! I wish I were you. No, I must be who I am, and yet I am nothing at all. I am no-one. I am fighting a war within myself. A civil war: Nightmares versus dreams. And the nightmares are winning. I do not know where I'm supposed to be. Am I supposed to go somewhere? There has to be some reason for my blindness. For my invisibility.

I was once ordinary, like you, a person, a person who could see more than just darkness. I used to go to the forest before, the trees were my refuge; I, the seeker. I can't find it anymore. Is it gone? Or am I gone?

The forest has to be there, somewhere. My memories still are, so it can't be gone, right? I remember the clearing; I used to sit there with you. In the stillness of the glade, under the pale reflection of the moonlight. Don't you remember? You said you loved me too.

Then, I was destroyed. In the forest. My forest. You were there. Don't you remember? Something made me this pallet of emptiness. Don't you remember? Come, come with me, to the forest. Help me find it. Please.

Hear me now. Look at me now. Can't you feel me? Can't you hear the whistling? Can't you see the dust from your feet? It's cold, isn't it? You can feel my icy fingertips, can't you? You can see the trees bowing down to me. My trees. I'm right behind you. Don't look around. I'm calling your name, though I'm not speaking. Can't you hear it in the wind?

Stop. Turn around. Look at me. You can see your shadow dancing, can't you? Come, follow me, I have found the forest. I can feel the leaves. I can feel the scent of the mud, so familiar. Don't you remember? Come, come to the clearing. I wish to show you something. Come, come. This is the spot we first met, remember? I was playing hide and seek and I got lost. Then, you found me. But this is not the thing I want to show you, no, no, come follow me.

Can't you hear the wind growing stronger? Can't you feel it getting colder? Can't you see the gathering dust? Can't you feel the icy fingers? Now, open your eyes, properly. Open them. Now.

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This is my home. Tell me what you see. Can't see? Better yet, I'll tell you. There are more of me. Look around, you can see, I can't. Look, there are thousands. I am not the only one. Didn't you feel it getting colder? There were more fingers holding on to you. Didn't you feel the wind getting louder? There were more calling out your name. Can you hear me now? Can you see me now? I know you can. For you have become just like me. We have played and lost. You and I have become the epitome of childhood fears. We have become the very thing we fought. You will soon know what it feels like to be me. We are ghosts.

Welcome, welcome, welcome. We are the invisible people. We cannot see, we cannot hear, we cannot speak.

We are faceless. This cadence is your disaster.

Chapter I

Illusions.

The smart man said that it is well-advised to begin a story at the start. The wise man said that it isn't foolish to begin a story at the end.

However, I am neither smart, nor am I wise (and between the two lies a great difference), so I will set off on my journey; it is a journey because I don't know where I am going, and I don't know what impediments are scattered on the path, what clouds shield the sun, what rain hampers the trek, I do not know them. So I will set off on my journey, from the middle.

The middle, as I would like to imagine, is not always the easiest part, neither is it the toughest, nor is it in between. In fact, I am only imagining the middle, for it has not yet begun. I do not know when it will begin, nor do I know when it will begin to end, but I do know that it will begin someday. I am not exactly looking forward to that day. But I am not looking forward to remain where I am.

Indeed, I am in a very sticky situation, and I don't even know where the right path is. It is a series of roads that loom before me, I can see each one of them so clearly, but when I look at all of them, I see a big mess. Some roads are snowed in, some roads are clear, some roads are uneven, some have a gentle slope. But all the roads are somehow tangled up, some lead into another, and those lead to a dead end. It is all very confusing, a very sticky situation. Such is the path of life.

There is a barrier in front of me. I have to pass it to walk onto the first road. I have already crossed a few roads, they are behind me now. But the memories of them are vivid in my memory, they are there, imprinted, just like great people leave their footsteps behind after they move on. Except this is vague. The memories are there, but I can't seem to draw them out. It's like a disfunctional well.

Let me tell you where I am. There is a barrier in front of me. Let me tell you what the barrier is. I don't know how it got there. But I can guess. I'm not so sure of what it is, either. But let me tell you what I think it is. It is an illusion. I swear I can see through it sometimes. I swear, but other times, it just blocks everything out. It makes insignificant things seem important. Things like what I should be doing and where I should be going. When I do those things, this illusion blocks out what really matters.

I do not know how to get past this barrier. This is my failure.

I made a choice. I used to have so many things and I let go of them, disregarding their true worth. I was too blind to see. I was blinded by illusions, different from these. And I made a choice. I would hold on to what mattered.

At the stage I am at, there is a barrier in front of me. It is no spectacle, it is a shameful thing. You see, there is something. And I want to hold on to it.

I want to hold on to it.

This illusion makes everything so slippery. It's like, I can't remember how I should be feeling, I can't remember what emotions should be drifting through me. I mean, I know what I should be feeling. But I don't know why, or how, but it's gone. I mean, it isn't gone, it's there. But I can't feel it. I mean, I can, but not as much as I should, not as often as I should, as I did.

You see, I am a man, and disaster struck when I was a boy.

I am breaking down this barrier. It will make everything much better. I will take the first road, I will take the second road. But first, I have to break down this barrier, this monstrous illusion.

For you see, disaster struck when I was a boy.

And I miss me.