The cold burned her heart

Perfectioning ourselves

It was after Amara's 23rd birthday, in that January, that I put the bottle down for good, and I promised myself to become the old me again. What I didn't stop was writing journals. Unending pages of how my days went during that period are now at the bottom of my drawer because I never thought I'd ever want to read about those interminable boring days again. 

But of course, now I'm looking for details that I had missed while living them.

For months, I would wake up, drive Amara to the University, go to the office, do my work for the day, go home, eat, go to the gym, learn guitar (because I felt like I needed to do something to take her back) and then go to philosophy courses, because yes, for her as well, I felt like I needed something deeper in my life.

I think it was March when an unearthy nostagia hit my brain like a train. I missed my mom, and my home and my city. But Amara had exams and we talked, and I decided to let her alone to study hard for a week, while I'd go to Stockholm to see mom. 

I saw Amara maybe a hour or two in the evening, and we'd sit and talk if she wasn't busy studying. So I was thinking that after her exams it would be better. That she'd have time for me. Only that she had time for me. I simply wasn't there for her.

At that same time I managed to note a conversation between the two of us in March of that year, but with no exact date:

''It's a paradox, Pelle. The gods had been wiped away, the myths are now in the trash bin, man has finally managed to detach from the prejudice that has cahined him for all time; and yet the absolute anxiety, that should have disappeared, is now bigger than ever.''

''It's an intriguing thought, Amara, but were actually the gods and the prejudice that brought the world absolute anxiety for all time? I'd rather say it's the human kind itself.''

''But why?'' she asked, shifting in the sheets. She was now on her belly, with her tiny head on my white chest. ''Is it really human nature that starves for chaos? Or is it rather the boredom that makes us starve?''

''I'd rather say it's the need for different. The human mind is never happy, my love. Make a man rich and he'll want a simple life. Make him poor and he'll want a palace. The unloved crave attention, but those who have it crave silence.''

''Do you? Crave silence?''

But that question had a strange answer. No. And I wondered if that was because I felt unloved.

''Do you?''

''Oh, Pelle, I don't crave anything more than silence,'' she laughed, and mounted me. ''Be silent,'' she whispered, welcoming me in her soul underneath the white sheets.

I made a small pathetic sound, since I was caught off guard. She laughed and I turned her over  so I could see her long curls flowing on my pillow.

''There's also the desire of having something of your own, that's absolute,'' I managed to gasp, moving as slowly as possible, because I knew that was keeping her on edge. 

''There's a thing or two you never want to change in life, because you are too busy fighting to gain them. For some is money, for some is a home, for me,'' I laughed, as I let her turn me over so she would press her tiny palms on my chest, ''is you.''

Here's a thing about 90% of all women: deny them something, or even worse, make them ache for something, and they will either take it by force or make you believe you want to give it to them undeniably.

But there's one more thing about women. If all their attempts to make you give them what they need fail, they will have it from somewhere else.

And I never thought, that march, that the world was that cruel.