PASSING FOR NORMAL

La Pedrera

One more letter.
One more letter is all she can read.
One more letter before she resigned to a world of uncertainty. Before she leaves her planned days and planned fate to unravel the thick crust of life.

She will read and by the end of the lines she will forget him for good. She will leave her grief behind. This overwhelming feeling of sadness that became her accompanying emotion and her comfort. Today her physical pain leaves no room for sorrow. Today she chooses to be angry. She chooses herself and she chooses to blame the world for her troubles.

This was a letter she wrote for him,

“ My beloved,
As he becomes weaker before me every day, I cannot help but think about the futility of this path we call life. As the reason of my turmoil turns helpless, I cannot but question myself. I have to question my courage and my commitment to myself and to you. I have to question the reason I remain by his side. I long for you my love and I am in constant pain. My memory betrays me more so every day and it feels cruel when the memory of your face is all I have left. I ponder upon life around me. I look at the trees and the flowers and the dry leaves dancing in the wind and I wonder. I wish I could transcend my soul into a more simplistic form. Into a leaf hugged by its mother branch, into a fading ray warmed by the curb, into a dancing star hiding in the sky. I wish I could be a murmur, a lover’s whisper, a twinkle in a child’s eye. I wish I could be a tune that will once die. I wish I could be happy. I wish I could melt away like a sand grain under a foaming wave, like the memory of my life, like my skin under your touch. I wish I could love you once more. He screams my name in the long feverish nights. Long nights my love. Nights made bearable only by my watering eyes meeting the early morning rays. Long nights of sickness and of stillness in my heart. Tears are a wonderful thing. These rivers of my melting soul spilling away. These rivers of washed hesitations and washed sins and washed regrets. Regrets mean nothing when we do not have a choice. We cry to comfort ourselves and not to show regret. Tears are personal. These involuntary inevitable bursts of moaning hurting muscles oozing in drilling fluids, drilling into my face, drilling the lines on my skin. This kindness of nature. This natural right of our body to revolt and to react to the strength of our deep disappointment and confusion and distortion. Distortion. A distorted life is what we all live. A distortion of reality is what I am. A left shade of what I was prepared to be.”

She pauses and looks into the glass.

It is fall and the world has given up.

This habitual feeling of loss and of hurting. She collects her face in her fingers and tries to cry in vain. She cannot be sad anymore. She does not have the luxury of giving up in a storm of emotions. She chose anger instead. She was angry at the world. Loss was not of her making. Loss was the cold hand of fate that took her child away. Loss was inevitable and death was a reality. People die but children were not supposed to die. She suddenly remembered Emma. There was another. Her baby. Her baby that would be a piece of him. That would have his face. The empty cradle. A sudden emptiness. A sudden pain in her stomach. The crimson center piece on her desk. The smell of torture. The smell of blood in the wash room. The face of her mother. The darkness that was now her life and outside her window. A dim light coming from the house across the street. That trivial house that enclosed a trivial life and a silly family. That frozen woman who lived by the rules. Those plastic flowers. Those plastic lives. Those lives lived without her. Life will not cease without her. Or without him.

Who knew
Who knew that a moment stolen in life,
Is life?
Who knew that the beginning of one’s happiness
Never happens …
Who knew that the chilling morning breeze
Might remain one’s reason to live
That the days carry happiness only before they achieve
That there is nothing to unravel
That life is the act of unraveling.
That constant betterment leads to perpetual unsatisfaction
Who knew
Who knew that to choose not to wrestle with demons is to live blissfully
Who knew life’s anesthetic routine is not to be questioned
Who knew that jolts of joy are gifts to the youngsters
And that love visits only once?
Who knew?

“Some people cannot just be. Some people have to make a mess of it all and some women seem to need the reassurement of a lifetime every day. Life faces me every day. I do not know anymore if I am the reason of his survival or that of his pain as I do not remember if you were my cure or the reason for my ailment. The baby is growing inside me.”