It
was a big fat junky night. We were sitting on the sandy beach, where we
always go to pipe. It was more crowded than usual. Youngens sitting nearby were
drinking beers and goofing on the hoary who fish on the shore. If I wasn't in
the mood for feeling nothing, I would have certainly enjoyed their noise but it
was bigger than me: emptiness.
Across
the fire, Bruce was laying on his back, eyes fixed on the indigo sky, his mind
who knows where, breathing steadily. Nonetheless, I liked his new mustache. He
looked like one of those 17th century English aristocrats who has
nothing to do but to pose in fancy colorful breeches and an old fashioned
standing ruff. It was easy to imagine him in such a garb; his thighs were
roadworthy. Yet we were not on the stage, nor living in the Elizabethan era. In
any case, he never existed but in my head, claim others.
I
had hard time sleeping since we got here. The amount of caffeine in my blood
surely doesn’t help but it’s a vicious circle. The more I can’t sleep, the more
I search refuge in the odor of my childhood memories. I grew up in this town,
with its cold-hearted sun and turquoise waters. Despite the fact that I long
for the couple of weeks that I will return to her motherly arms every summer,
once I get here I lose my balance, by all means. I guess it’s because I heavily
cursed it for the narrow-heartedness of its habitants. Seems like you become
what you hate the most.
By
the time, freedom appeared like the most rational way of being on earth. Who
the hell wants to be born at first place, right? There were two options for
getting out of this sticky, petty and necessarily social life: either I was going
to put an end to my bodily functions -which required an enormous amount of courage
which I didn’t have the slightest load- or I was going to learn to love
suffering -which turned into a quite handy capacity. So, I started practicing
on my wrists with shiny razors of middle-school sharpeners. Every rose has its
thorn. When my mother saw the scars that I was genially hiding under my numerous
bracelets while I was helping her doing the dishes, she made me sit down in
front of her on the armchair and asked me for the first time if I had any
mental troubles. I was merciless and frozen in the inside. I looked at her as if
she was asking if I watered the lily plant this morning and said yes. There,
was the beginning of a long silence, too long to even imagine the possibility
of the existence of its term, and in which, to this day, I remain simply, myself.
Thankfully,
I was smart enough to understand the rules of the game of success that the town
appreciated the most: answer the questions correctly to obtain the highest
results and get the fuck out of here. So did I. After the single séance of
discussion that I had with the therapist, she assured my mother that I was a
rebellious but perfectly sane and brilliant young lady who was questioning the meaning
of life as do her fellows of the same age. At first, I was crazy mad at her for
underestimating the devastating force of the voices that speak in my head. Now
I am grateful to either of the facts that she was incapable of understanding or
too smart for covering up my craving to get away from the 30 million town with a
single tiny bookshop. It was the best for the family to know me that way.
So,
I run and introduced myself to each circle of people in a different way. I
learned to let my selves speak up for me. All
the world is a stage, and I was eager to play the roles that were given to
me. I watched the rebel subordinate to the hazard of encounters, witnessed the
dissolution of the rigid and experienced the serenity of the explosion of the need
for mental security. Anyway, every one of us is a little twisted. The right
question to ask, which was not taught in schools, was how to ask the right
questions to balance the madness. So, I started writing.
It
was risky, words were already used and meanings were never clear, not even in
my head. But the pit was deep, dark and magnetizing, and I needed them to carve
my way down. The only problem that I couldn’t see at the moment was how lonely I
had become while I was discovering the tasty boldness. I never trusted anyone
nor that I let someone count on me. Not because I was paranoiac or misjudging
the value of my friends but for the simple reason that I was afraid of losing the possibility of leaving everything behind in case of an impulsive and
extroverted breakdown.
But
there I was, sleepless, sitting with my cowboy hat in front of the self-consuming
fire and the restless sea, wondering about how I ended up in this hazy
loneliness. In another time, I would have appreciated the reality of this
chosen solitude and the warm familiarity of the summer breeze and in another time,
I surely will. But for the moment, I was trying not to fight against my long-lost
heart who was trying to show me what it is to feel like a human. If the
emptiness was not bigger than me, I would have certainly joined the youngens, laughed
at their jokes and played the role that was given to me in this chronicle. But
it was a big fat junky night and I wanted to find the right question to ask to
lead myself let my feelings into my life.
