Immortals || H.S.

XXIII

Tina–

 

Droplets of rain fell from the sky and crashed upon my window’s sill, creating that comforting noise I always hear when it’s raining heavily. The sky was a deep shade of gray; the streets were composed of nothing but rashly moving people with their umbrellas or cars hurrying in their lanes in order for the drivers to get to their warm and cozy homes quickly. Shops were closed due to the storm, stray dogs or cats lied peacefully in a covered corner of the street to keep their fur dry, pools of water were formed all over the pavements and the benches were vacant. No one wished to escape the warmth of their homes and go out into the freezing outside-world; no one except me.

I sat on a chair in my lifeless and dark office, looking out the window at Manhattan’s vacant roads, drowning in my sea of misery, plunging in an ocean of everlasting grief and guilt. There was this black halo of sadness, depression and misery surrounding me, and it seemed like I would never escape it. As the normal people in the street wished to find themselves a warm place to hide in from the rain, I wished to escape my warm place and go out into the rain; I wished to get drenched by the water drops, for maybe I could rid of all my sins; all my sadness and pain. Maybe the rain could wash away this exterior halo surrounding me and allow me to escape such deathly feelings.

My involuntarily narrowed eyes scanned the outer world, and I found a tear rolling down my check subconsciously. I quickly wiped it away, but then another came rolling down, then the other, and another one, and soon enough a massive tear flow escaped form my eyes and landed on the bridge of my nose or upon my upper lips. Now I get drenched with my own tears instead of the tears of the sky.

It was as though the world has crossed me out of its ‘people-who’re-destined-to-live-happily’ list. Maybe the world decided that I would live a miserable life for the rest of what has been left of it for me. Maybe the world placed me in all these crucial circumstances to test my patience and determination to work hard and regain my happiness. And if the universe was doing the latter; testing me, then I would doubtlessly fail in the test for I would never be able to escape my depression and the blackness of misery.

It’s inevitable; I was hopelessly living for no purpose, and I hated it with my every bit.

Sniffling my nose, I heard the door to my office creak open, forcing me to bend my back to the forward and place my face on my knees, hiding it away so that whoever enters doesn’t see me crying massively. The sound of heels clicking on the tiles growing louder and louder indicated that whoever was inside the office was coming nearer and nearer towards me. I managed to stop crying, but knew that if I raised my head, they would be greeted with red eyes and flaming red nose with stains of tears smeared all over my cheeks, which would be equal to seeing me shed tears as it pretty much gives the same meaning; I was crying.

I felt the sofa dip beside me, meaning that whoever had sat by my side. I felt the need to shout at them to get out and away but knew better than. “Tina?” I instantly recognized the voice; it was Andrew’s. I let out a hum, signaling to him that I was listening. He sighed audibly, “Why are you lying on your knees face-down? Are you tired?” I nodded merely, but I doubted he’d notice. Fortunately and to my great surprise, he did, and said: “Headache?”

Do I have a headache?

If it’s okay to call feeling heartbroken ‘headache’, then I have it. If you consider internal pain a ‘headache’, feeling like you’re being set on fire a ‘headache’, feeling alone, abandoned, guilty, sad, scattered to millions of pieces, suffocating a ‘headache’, and if you define dying slowly as a ‘headache’, then I do have it; I suffer from a severe ‘headache’.