Enantiosis

Enantiosis (e-nan-ti-o’-sis): Using opposing or contrary descriptions together, typically in a somewhat paradoxical manner.

The beginning is the end, the end is the beginning. I started my relationship with Shelly, but it’s started ending when it began. I am not a vegetarian. I am not a kick boxer, I am not a Republican gun nut. Shelly is all three of those things. After a month, I had to sneak out for meat. I hated kickboxing: to fight is not right, and total hell, I hated shooting at empty beer cans every day. But, good lord, sleeping together cancelled all the bad stuff out. Then I thought, why should that one thing form the foundation of our relationship when everything else is crap? That’s when the beginning was the end, start was stop, right was wrong, in was out: there was no middle ground, there were just perspectives. For example, guns are good from one perspective and bad from another—it doesn’t mean that either of the competing perspectives is right. That’s where it gets complicated—the conflicted concepts of the ‘good’ grounding opposed judgments of the same thing as good or bad float on the ether of opinion.

I broke up with Shelly. It was bad and good: we were through: bad and good. I have new girlfriend, Janine. She likes meat. She likes to kick dance, and is in favor of gun control. She only likes sex twice a week, but that’s never going to be a deal breaker. Anyway, I think we are in love and I didn’t need to sacrifice my self to get there. I just needed to sacrifice Shelly. It was messy, but it set me free. It was the right thing to do.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)

Buy a print edition of The Daily Trope! The print edition is entitled The Book of Tropes and is available on Amazon for $9.99. There is also a Kindle edition available for $5.99.