The Perfect Wor[l]d - 15
Town centre, Italian Restaurant, evening.
There has been a report of a breaking-up in the Italian Restaurant right in the centre of town. The couple was sitting and enjoying their dinner when she said that she wasn’t happy anymore.
There have been tears, albeit hidden and no strong words have been uttered nor valedictions hissed. She was having Ravioli and he a steak, rare and with Stilton sauce. There have been wine as in a couple of glasses of Malbec, and laughter, and reminiscing. Also, some planning and dates organised in the calendar regarding the upcoming holidays, already scheduled and paid for.
Regardless of those plans and words, she said again, that she wasn’t happy, making sure that she was heard. His reaction was as expected. Agreement, nodding, rationalisations and sarcasm. She could partially feel his pain and still, there was nothing she could have done, nor she wanted to do. She decided a couple of weeks ago that she would have done nothing, in the event of what really occurred last night. She felt as if a weight was lifted and substituted by an echoing void, clanging, striding and cold. A chamber, a vessel, completed with its disintegrating head. And she didn’t know what to do.
She would have liked him to understand what she was saying. No, not what she was saying, but what she was feeling. She would have wanted him to see the world with her eyes, just once. The wonder of snow in August, of the passion she felt, of his eyes that day she stopped the train for him, the tingling sensations she felt at the first kiss, and then at the second first kiss, and then at the third first kiss. Or that day he saw her on the other side of the street and he just turned and walked to her, for another one of those embraces which seemed never to end. For all those conversations in which they put the world right. But not their world. Somebody else’s world.
There will be reminiscing, memories, and then, as it started, so it will end; a joining in that emptiness of the unknown shared by the before and then the after, of the relationship.
Can you imagine, people are asking now, two people so well suited, two hearts who loved each other so well, and who are not walking side by side anymore?
Many people, the ones who were there and the ones who were not there last night, are still talking and questioning what really happened. What everyone understood is that love hasn’t ended. But she grew tired. She felt, I have been told, that she was carrying the weight of the relationship all on herself, while at the same time, dreaming the life she never stopped dreaming before meeting him.
It is difficult, I have been reported to, to know what he is really feeling. All we can say is that he is settled today and playing with his daughters. The sun is shining here, in Lancashire. We went outside her house, but she is not in; people said she left early this morning, so we cannot discuss with her the changes in circumstances.
Someone who was on the train with her and who wants to remain anonymous, told a colleague of mine that she looked sad and deflated, but at the same time, the sprint in her step was the same when she stepped down in Salford Crescent, as an indicator of that determination we all know her for. And you know what we mean because when she walks, some say you can hear violins and a humming choir in the background. A gazelle, she has been compared to.
The symbolic cancellation of friendship on social media and on the google shared location platform has already happened last night. From both sides. This, as a testimony of the determination in both of them to go separate ways.
A witness who came back here this morning told me that last night when she turned to leave and he called her my love, she walked around the building and then stop and hid to look at him while he was going away on his bike. And that she was crying in noticing how light-hearted he was.
You open the door, and they slam it right behind your back, she was heard saying when we first met her a couple of years ago.
Last night, the witness said she dreamed of him destroying two walls in his house and so creating a larger and empty open plan, and then blamed her for ruining his most important pen which has leaked ink on some of the paperwork. I am wondering now if there is any therapist who would like to explain this dream to us and what implications this might have on the end of their story. I am sure that our followers are interested in any development, if any, of this story!
For now, we believe it best to leave them alone and to think, knowing that if there is any desire for wonder and adventure and exploration, they both know what to do.
We only know that when her train got into Bolton this morning, her playlist on Spotify was playing James Horner’s Theme from Zorro. She lifted her eyes and Bolton looked a bit like El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles, the Queen of the Angels. How apt, knowing where she originally comes from. And for a short while, before she remembered, she smiled. And felt serene, knowing that her choice was the right one: to go, to leave, knowing that when we move, we shake. And she knows her dreams, her desire to go, leave. For the first time, she told us when we spoke to her last month, she told us that for the first time she found someone she was happy to come back to. She thought that he really understood her and accepted her. But then, the difference in their lives and dreams became so apparent. He confessed that they did not really share the same interests, that he could not really understand what she meant, and that being with her was hard. She challenged, pushed, shook him. Knowing when to leave, we believe now, was showing him that her ego did not want to get in the way of his life. She chose her freedom, paired with her own sense of discipline; her hands in a pocket, sat on them. The only way to keep her tongue out of the way of his happiness and security and comfort was to leave. She trusts that he is safe. He is where he wants to be, in the company of the people he loves the most. She knows that he will never forget her. He does not need any reminder for that.
“I just have to keep remembering that I chose it, that this isn’t something that happened to me. I made a choice.”
Why bother, if this is the pain she had to endure? Because her call, her sense of inner happiness has a meaning. And her following it, a reason, a teaching. An example. Because understanding her desire for this journey means the difference between surviving and living wholeheartedly. She is not sure of anything anymore, but that she had to leave. And if her determination was high on a Wednesday evening, and it collapsed on Thursday at lunchtime, it is not important. Wrong, or right, it was her choice. She knows she has learned so much: how not to count days anymore, how lo look forward to coming home, how to feel safe, and to feel free on a bike along the canal. He gave her a mean to leave. A sense of true heroism, satisfaction? Exhilaration. Not so scared of the dark anymore. The Source within her is also the source of her calling and she could not say no. It’s like if someone came on the deserted island where she was stranded and offered her a room, and a house, and a garden, and people, and a life. And she chose instead to stay on that island because she knew she had to stay there. She worked so hard and learned so much in the process of getting there that she could not leave, not now. Reason and instinct completely merged.
She has put a reminder in her phone, though. To check-in, every night, at 8.30. To make sure that she is ok, and that she made the right decision.
And we can see her going while humming an old song:
© mtomat 2019 - written on 12.07.19 - no reproduction without permission.
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