Hopeless

V

"The hope you feel when you are in love is not necessarily for anything in particular. Love brings something inside you to life. Perhaps it is just the full dimensionality of your own capacity to feel that returns." – Susan Griffin

Life is unpredictable and that makes it so thrilling, supposedly. You never know what will happen, who will come to your life unexpectedly, who will leave from your life without a warning. And you just have to learn how to go with it. Some people can handle it, others can't. Nova, couldn't. As strong as she showed to be, I knew there was a part inside of her that broke every time someone left her.

But she never showed it directly and she didn't unwind until it was too late for me to do something about it.

By the time October rolled in, Nova knew every scrawny detail of my life before New York. It was on my mother's birthday; I was at my weakest point and Nova managed to see right through me. It only took her to ask me a question as simple as 'Are you okay?' to get me spilling all of the scarring moments that made my past. After opening up that way to her, Nova and I were so intimate with each other I thought there wasn't any other level of closeness we could reach. We took care of one another as if we were made out of glass.

For her, it was a bit different. It happened on a chilly Saturday morning; the sky was covered in light grey clouds, the atmosphere was heavy. Nova took us to a strange place far away from the suffocating busyness of the city. She drove for a good hour, maybe even more, before we arrived at our destination. She parked the car and, without a word, got out of it.

She had been silent for however long it took us to get to that cliff. I tried sparking up a conversation but all I got were low hums. It was awkward and uncomfortable. I wasn't used to her being so...empty.

We sat near the end of the cliff, dangling our feet on the air like we were not afraid to jump, ending our story there. It felt sort of liberating and scary at the same time; to realize how much power you have over yourself and that, at any given moment, you can end things quicker than you can think about it. But we did not.

'My mother called me today.' Nova's voice ripped the silence in two. I am not going to hide the fact that her lack of communication had awoken an unfamiliar, sharp feeling that I couldn't shake off. Bitterness in all its glory became more and more intense for every second she kept her mouth closed.

But then I realized what she had said.

Her mother called her.

And I knew nothing about that woman. Or anything about her father. Or any potential siblings. Basically, I knew nothing. And as I became more aware about it, it stung even more.

'And?' I asked sweetly.

'That's it.' Dry. Cold. Distant. I guessed that her mother was the reason behind Nova's new behavior. 'She just asked what I was doing. I said I'm doing fine and then we hung up.'

Zero emotion displayed on her face. It was like a blank canvas. Empty.

I stared at her for a few moments, waiting to see if she's going to speak more about it, but she didn't. She didn't even look at me, only the view that laid in front of us. My heart ached and I couldn't make that horrible feeling of seeing her like this go away. I wanted to suck off every ounce of sadness or misery that Nova stored in her heart, break every piece of despair that wrapped around her throat and clouded her mind, preventing her from talking to me.

I wanted her to talk to me.

And she did. Though I was not ready to listen.

We were hanging out at my aunt's place, the movie had just finished and Nova was washing the dishes because she felt like she had to. I just watched her do it.