Shreds of a life

The final night was a lot like the first one. The first one alone, I mean. My parents died suddenly in a car accident. I was 13 years old back then.

The first night after their death I lay on the kitchen floor, listening to my heartbeat and the ticking wall clock in the dark. The shadows grew longer as the hours passed by and the house was silent like a grave.  The next night I had a gun right next to me. Just a little pull of the trigger and it'd all be over. The lure was huge as I placed the gun against my temple, but didn't do anything. I just lay there and cried, and the day after I sold the gun away.

Since that I've been living alone in this ragged house. It's not like anyone cares over here, because there are thousands of homeless on the streets. I have a roof above my head, so people say I'm lucky.

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So, the final night was a lot like the first one. I didn't really sleep but stared at the ceiling, heard someone scream for help on the street. There was luggage near the sofa, near the door, everywhere around the room. The shreds of my life packed in old suitcases.

At the dawn the little particles of dust began their dance in the morning sun, hovering slowly in the air. I realized I hadn’t cleaned the house for ages, why bother since the dirt didn’t disturb me? I made some black coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. It was too silent around me. Way too silent. My passport was right in front of me on the table. Passport, flight tickets, wallet, mobile phone. What else was I going to take with me? Some clothes for sure, but not much more. And what was I going to leave here then? This moldy house with a bunch of horrible memories, I guess. Really not much more.

If there’s something that’s kept me alive these years, it’s theatre. The beauty of acting like you’re someone else and forgetting who you really are. The beauty of lying to yourself. We’d rehearse all day long in the humid heat, hardly having breaks to eat. Maybe we were all escaping reality. There was something painful and dark behind all those smiles, but nonetheless, we had real fun.

And there was a girl, Vivian, who was like my other half. She never spoke of herself and never complained. We became best friends. She was a coward, I knew it, she didn’t want to face her troubles. But she was me and I was her, I felt almost entire whenever she was around.

But she was engaged to another guy, a very problematic guy. She had saved him from taking an overdose of antidepressive medicine. She knew she belonged to him. The pieces of my heart were bleeding, but I never stopped loving her. She kept her fiancé alive with her right hand, and with the left one she kept me from falling. We never really talked about my past but her presence gave me strength to keep going.

You often hear people say things like “this is too much” or “I can’t take this anymore.” But in the end it’s unbelievable how much pain and fear a human being is able to carry. There are scars all over my body, scars that form her name. Vivian, Vivian, Vivian. It’s like some damned mantra on my lips.

But now, at the kitchen table, I realized it was finally over: I’d leave that day. I nearly saw some beauty even in the ragged house, now that I knew I’d never see it again. Everything was ready….I only needed to see Vivian for the very last time.

She didn't live too far away, and  her house was a lot like mine; some dirty launce hanging on the clothesline in the yard and a few  windows appeared to be broken, too. I watched the place and the toys lying on the ground, she lived there with her mom and an elder sister who already had a little child. Suddenly she emerged from behind the house, and the sun lit up her face and her tick black hair. At that moment, there was only one thing I could think of: she was beautiful.

                                                                   3 HOURS LATER

The sky had turned into a purple sea as I walked through the airport terminal with my luggage. All the noise around me seemed to be somewhere far away, my own world was peaceful and I smiled. I never really told goodbye to the one I loved the most. What I said had been some sort of “see you”, even though I knew that we never would.