"So far as Emma was concerned she did not ask herself whether she was in love. Love, she thought, was something that must come suddenly, with a great display of thunder and lightning, descending on one's life like a tempest from above, turning it topsy-turvy, whirling away one's resolutions like leaves and bearing one onward, heart and soul, towards the abyss. She never bethought herself how on the terrace of a house the rain forms itself into little lakes when the gutters are choked, and she was going on quite unaware of her peril, when all of a sudden she discovered--a crack in the wall!"
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Chapter 1 - digits
March, 2019
I'm dreaming of another place, any other place than this one. I'm dreaming of something I don't even know. How do you dream the nothingness? If I'm dreaming of darkness, I dream of black. The color that suppresses all of the others and turns them into what my eyes see when I'm asleep, Is black everything? Light, however, mixes all of these crazy nuances into a single one. This is the fragility of colors. Now I'm asleep, but I feel a fly touching the tiny hairs on my left arm. My feet tangle the bed sheet and my back arches as I try to peel the shirt off my wet skin. I'm still asleep and so awake, I can't open my eyes. This is my tunnel, the place where all my dreams happen, trapped between reality and fiction. At the end of the tunnel, a soft buzz arises and comes towards me, closer and closer and closer... I open my eyes. The phone is ringing. My vision is blurry and all I can notice is the string of digits. Unknown and almost threatening. I put the phone to my ear.
- Are you coming?
- Sorry?
- To the interview...
I'm pulled from my tunnel into someone's mistake call.
- Sorry, I think...I think you have the wrong person.
- Oh, I'm sorry...
All silence. I can't help but wonder what's her name. I fall in love with strangers on the metro, I'm always trying to take meaning out of their frugal stares. That girl's chin is trembling, is her father dying? That little boy has a dark patch on his trousers, he must have fallen on his knees while playing. The old lady tapping her finger on the square envelope in her lap. She must be sick, her eyes are restless. This is my stop. I have my own morning routine. I circle my very first five thoughts and try to understand how to sweep them away, into the big shelf hidden in the back of my head. What's bothering me today? Is it the fact that my relationship is going to shit, or that my house smells like cat shit all the time? Today, shit bothers me. It's a natural ejection of matter, but today, it means so much more. Work is shit, my relationship is shit, my house is full of shit. Stinky, funny, shit.
Chapter 1 - part 2 - mistakes
I'm in my tunnel again, I think I've seen this one before. Today, that call came later. There's my morning ritual again. I'm on the subway, going to work. Thirteen horrible stops 'til I arrive to a job that I hate. Off and on again, restless and anxious. A.'s left hand grips onto the collar of my coat. I avoid her blue stare, while she insists to pull me closer. The subway's full. Today I can't fall in love with any stranger. Today, shit is still stinky. And I can't stand A., anymore. It's bitter and fucked up, what we've gotten ourselves into. I met her by growing to hate her. How fluctuating is the human emotion? I hated her, then I grew fond of her, then here I am, again, hating her. I'm sleeping on the couch, in the living room, where our black cat has its litter box. Who the fuck keeps a litter box in the living room? There we go again. It all is shit. But the most stinky part is the truth that I'd rather sleep in a room that smells like my cat's shit, than in the same room with her. Why are we even here? I ask her and myself that all the time. This is our miserable routine, the habit of seeing each other daily, after work. The tension is almost palpable, I can almost touch it. But we shrug it off and try again, we'll do this again tomorrow. Watch a movie, play something together, cook, do anything possible to avoid the uncomfortable truth. We're both miserable and lost, together in the same house.
