I was 23 and I had never suffered an absolute crisis for
words.
“Fuck! “ And “Shit!”
came to my rescue.
You say these two phrases in varying tones of voice and
you put everything you feel into them and believe me, they can be almost as good
as shouting or bawling out loud. The pain alleviates and you transcend from one
word to two words.
“Fuck you!”, “Oh fuck!”, “Oh shit!” and yours sincerely “Fucking
shit!!!” lend you a hand.
I keep talking because I know that at this moment staying
quiet can very realistically make me stroke or or send me into a comma or can
give me a cardiac arrest. I tell A, “I think I’m going to die.” A smiles,
staring into the dark road ahead of us .He asks me what would I like to drink.
I say I need pain killers.I was in something like pain and my mind was
logically offering solutions.
”We are not doping sweetheart, so tell me what you will
drink???”I tell him I don’t think I’m going to be able to drink, eat or sleep
for the rest of my life. He gets out of the car and is back with three cans of
beer.
I can feel the air entering my lungs struggling to make
me feel better, I realize my head is pounding, it is so loud, I wonder how the
city can sleep when my head is making sounds of these bloody proportions. The
pounding is becoming louder and threatens to explode my brains to tiny pieces.
I start talking again. This time it is a merciless hail of questions.
“How the hell??”, “Why is this happening to me???”, “How
did I get here?”, ”What the hell just happened??”,”What is this I’m feeling??”
“Is this ever going to go away???”, ”how could I have not seen this”, “how
could I have not known???”,”what the hell was I thinking???”
Questions, my brain reflexly answers by connecting the
dots so fast. The split second muted answers leave me exhausted and turn down
the volume of the pounding.
I can feel the confusion of my tear glands in the form of
a stretching pain in the corners of my dry eyes. I want to cry but my mind
tells me not to. The conditioning of years does not fail me, even though for
once, right then, right there I could have really used a good cry. Then come
the lucid conclusions.
“Dude, this is so wrong.”, “I am so screwed”, ”This is the worst ”
The ,”I should have never done this and I should have
done this” rant. Realizations. “This is why I did this and this is why I could
never do that” rant. Suddenly you have one of the clearest moments of your
life. It is like a whole new dimensional upgrade. Like someone giving you the
3D glasses in a movie theater and now everything that was hazy for reasons you could
never understand suddenly becomes magically beautiful and real beyond your imagination.
You stand on a line between who you were till that moment
and who are going to be beyond this moment. You look into the eyes of each other
and you understand each other perfectly. You exchange that look of the eye that
sworn enemies who have finally found their peace exchange with each other. You
promise that you’ll keep these secrets between you and you and no one shall
ever know the war you’ve seen, and the things you’ve been through.
“I’m going to be okay.”
A smiles.
I laugh. A tear finally escapes the corner of my right
eye.
“One tear, I guess that’s all this deserves.” I say.
A smiles.