There once was a girl who, sometimes, was overly concerned with things and people surrounding her; partly from self imposed notions of what she thought she should be and partly because of what she saw around her- or what she thought she saw anyway. She was, sometimes, easily confused or coerced into believing things. The thing with this girl though, was that on the one hand she didn’t really care what others thought she was supposed to be, but sometimes it seemed she let herself be possessed by outside forces that told her to follow certain paths, whether they be a certain dress code or a certain number on the weight scale she let herself be fooled into believing them. And fooled she felt when she regained her consciousness, because foolish is what she had allowed herself to be. Determined one day to be her own person she vowed to not cave in to these “outside” pressures.
She was healthy. She was happy for the most part, and she liked Life for it had a lot to offer- perhaps even more she dared hope for at times. She lived in-between worlds most of the time and it was rather difficult to concentrate at work of late. The work got done, the deals closed but the interest- the genuine interest she would have liked to have had for the job- wasn’t there and it was becoming more and more difficult to find reasons to stay.
There were reasons enough though, everybody needs a paycheck, ‘cause everyone needs a roof and a stove and a bed and clothes and stupid t-shirts that had seemed funny on the internet. Everyone needs peanut butter in his or her fridge for the dog and uneaten melons and browning bananas hanging on the wall. Everyone needs a TV with no cable or satellite connection, books thrice read, body creams never opened, foot lotions once used, too small underwear that had never been comfortable. Everyone needs see-thru curtains to let the light in and the breeze billow thru, feather filled comforters that leave nothing but piles of useless feathers, feathers leaking like infectious liquids oozing from a wound filling every orifice in the room. Everyone needs useless and ridiculously tall shoes, ‘cause everyone needs corns and deformed feet in old age.
So the job had to stay because of all the needs and leaving wasn’t an option -there were truly many other problems to consider in addition to the onvious ones anyway. So she stayed and worked and tried to exceed expectations but always with the questions hanging dangerously close by:
"Is there more?"
"Is this really it?"
And people told her the questions came to her because she was getting older, but she knew that wasn’t true. These questions, in one form or another, had always been her companions, her mentors, her nannies of sorts. And even when she fancied them answered still they lingered in the shadows; bidding their time to resurface in complete triumph once more. Was love going to be enough to finally squash them? She wondered. What if love wasn’t enough? What then? Clearly then, the solution was never to love for then she would not have to find out the awful truth she knew was hidden in plain light. But could it be? Surely love could overcome it all. Love could defeat it all, especially if you did the things for love that you would not do for anything else. Isn’t that what that song said? But she figured it couldn’t be that simple- nothing ever was. Questions about life were simply not answered thru a single song- it was just not possible.
But stopping life was not an option either; as it was not an option to sit still and let her visions roll on by. It was difficult enough to let her imagined lives roll thru without wanting to join in somehow. Sometimes in the early waking moments, in those moments between vivid dreaming and faint glimpses of her now familiar bedroom, she lived entire lives: from meeting him and living side by side with him and birthing their own offspring and showing them there was indeed more to life, to dying and leaving behind new things to dream of, new traditions to enjoy- newness like a soft green leaf in May. And into those faint glimpses of what really wasn’t there she tried to tunnel into. But the red numbers on her bedside clock kept too close a watch and beckoned her out of the idyllic farce that was the dream and warned her that the job was waiting as was the boss and all the things that came with the paycheck she collected twice a month. So up she had to get and wash she had to the sleep from every hair, wash she had to the thought of him out of her erratic heart, lose she had to in the water coming down in streams, the notion that he had ever cared, for it was clear that the days spent by his side must have somehow leaked out of her mind into what she had believed to be a real thing, real days, filled with the real him.
He couldn’t have been there, because if he had he would certainly still be there. Or wasn’t that what he had earnestly whispered into the phone line she had closely held to ear and heart? Perhaps these too, these words she thought she’d heard him speak had been simply uttered in between worlds and couldn’t be expected to hold substance or meaning or weight or hope of any kind. Perhaps the mounting years were tricking her into letting the faint glimpses of the nothingness that wasn’t there to pose as real in her life.
And what is real in the end? The whispered words between two lovers? A mother’s tenderness towards her children? A father’s care for those he loves? What exactly stands the test of time, the test of realness, fakeness, emptiness and more?
She painted herself pathetic sometimes and realized the ugliness the word possessed; still pathetic she felt when she thought she'd almost languish at the thought of losing him. Then she heard other accounts from friends who told their battles with pathetic and with sucker too and she found comfort in the fact that numbness hadn't claimed enough of her heart to make it just the mechanical device she feared in her chest.
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