Hopelessness

She almost could not sleep. Those terrifying thoughts kept coming back in intervals of maximmum ten minutes apart and then the waters would come closer and the dreams further apart. When she was finally able to, she had uneasy scenes that wouldn't classify as nightmares, but wouldn't allow her to rest either. She loved sleeping, and she loved even more dreaming, she felt proud of remembering them. They were fascinating, like a sort of creative warm-up she could do without trying.

But not this night, this night dreams wouldn't be a refuge to flee.

She used her phone as an alarm clock everymorning for the past three years, but for the last two weeks, she wanted to try a different method. It wasn't because her phone wasn't efficient, nor because there was a technical difficulty, rather she was trying to avoid unwanted news. Some of those texts sneaked into her sleep and woke her up a few times, and so the waters would once again come close and then she'd need to take three deep breaths to keep them apart and stop her lower quavering lip.

Then finally the alarm rang and so she stopped it with an urgency that sloth hadn't allowed many times before.

She went to the gym and ran like never before. She knew why, she was running away from something. She knew, rationally, the tredmill wouldn't let her move, but she also knew her legs were trying to run away. She ran for two hours, something she had never done before and didn't even know was capable of doing.

She got home dripping sweat. She imported her running results to her phone and threw it away as far as she could, as if throwing bad news too, and got in the shower. She loved taking showers, specially now with her new speaker that allowed her to listen to music while she was washing her hair. It was her fifteen minutes to escape and pretend nothing outside of that shower existed.

She got lost for half an hour between the steam, the music and the running water. She escaped momentarily because her mind would take her to that horrifying place and so the waters would take control, she didn't mind, with the water running over her face, she could let them loose here. It wouldn't change anything.

She got out of the shower and put music as loud as she could, she wanted to see if the noise would drown her thoughts. She got dressed as slowly as she could, with parsimonous gestures. If a neighbor had been spying her on that day, they would've assumed that to her, dressing up was almost a tea ceremony.

She had agreed to help out a friend that day. Her friend had asked her for six hours and she had denied arguing that she was too busy for that, that she could work for two. Her friend agreed stating that something was better than nothing.

But that day, she stayed for the whole six hours even though they had finished by the third. Yet she insisted, maybe with one more coat, maybe a different colour, maybe different screws, maybe they should start over. It was all an excuse to stay a little bit more, avoiding the unavoidable.

Her phone rang and she froze, but then she saw it wasn't destiny calling, it was her ex that wanted to talk. Had it been another day, she wouldn't have picked up her phone, but that day her ex's face looked like an excuse and so she said hello, that she also had things to say, that they should catch up, no I'm not busy, yes, let's meet right away.

Saved by an ex. Who would've known.

She decided then to turn off her phone's notifications.

They had one, two, three coffees, they talked, they laughed. She knew what she needed to do to survive, and today survival meant flirting. So they went to his place and in his bed, she escaped a little longer.

While she was dressing up again, her phone alerted her that it was time. It was five o'clock and she couldn't hide anymore. It was okay, she didn't know which one was worse, facing it, or not being able to. The idea of going there terrified her, but not going scared her even more. Besides, the waters were getting harder to control.

She got in a cab and started talking with the driver. She lied about everything: she gave a different name and a different career too. She said she was a lawyer coming out of a meeting and her boyfriend was waiting for her at home. She said she had been working in a bank for five years, she said she was happy, that she would do it all again. She invented a different family and a different group of friends. For the lenght of her ride, she genuinly smiled while she escaped to a reality in which escaping wasn't necessary.

She got home and decided to take another bath. She thought it would be rude to face reality smelling like sex. So she once again escaped between the steam, jazz and water and this time it was easier, because between the water she thought about banks and laws and a life in which she didn't take longer than ten minutes in the shower because she didn't want to escape.

She had one more hour to go, so she went to the park. Having her feet against the grass always made her feel better, besides, heaven must be full of dogs, she thought.

The breeze helped her (just for a little bit) and since her feet felt so good, she decided to lay on the grass and look for shaped in the clouds, but the plan backfired when the clouds started to look like what she was avoiding and so the waters came back. She closed her eyes, to escape into the darkness and to held the waters hostage.

Resigned, she got up. It would take her 25 minutes to get there walking, and so she did to avoid the speed of the cars.

She put on her earphones and got the volume up as loud as she could. But no noise was louder than her thoughts. She walked slowly, as if she didn't wanted to. And she indeed didn't wanted to. She wanted the opposite. She wanted to run in time to run a few years behind and hold it all still a little longer.

Each of her zombie steps got her closer to that place, so when there was only one block left, she got into a café, the only open place.

No coffee will ever taste as that refuge-flavoured coffee. She ordered the biggest one she could get, extra hot, so she was obliged to drink it extra slow, sip by sip. But as always, suddenly the coffee was all gone and the stain at the end of the glass looked like what she was trying to ignore.

She walked again, moving her feet the least she could, but she got there anyway. She looked up and saw that disgusting entrance of that horrible building. No more escaping.

She got into the elevator and felt her lips tremble. Sometimes waiting is the worst part.

When the doors opened, her family was there. Her real family, not the cab family that was happy and healthy, no. It was her real family looking at her with a look of sadness? no, depression? no, wait, it's a look of hopelesness. That look made it hard for her to swallow.

And so she got into the room and there it was. As much as she tried to avoid it and escaped it, there it was. No matter how many showers, cabs, works, closed eyes, nothing would change the fact that there it was.

Her old man. Letargic and in a clinic bed. In the biggest expression of weakness. What a horrible, unavoidable, cruel thing reality can be.

She finally cried. A lot. She laid besides him, touched him and cried some more.

She no longer wanted to run away, she wanted the opposite. She wished she could stop time and cage him here.

Unfortunately, he was more on the other side than here. Cadaverous and weighing only 36kilos, yellowish and almost not breathing.

He would wake up every once in a while and asked the questions a castaway would ask: where am I? Why am I here? Who brought me here? Who else is here? Why did they come to see me? And the worst one: What did you say to them that they thought they needed to come all the way here to see me?

Everybody would enter the room with the same wish as her, to see something better than what they were expecting. And all of them, without exception, left disappointed by reality. That cruel bitch that never lets us win.

Some argued it was better to have the chance to say goodbye than not having the chance to. But she insisted it was better to escape, there must be something we can do. Let's start over, I'll hug him harder this time, I'll laugh harder at his jokes this time, I'll go with him to every tedious thing. Just give me some more time...

Until she finally understood. Lying next to him, and in one of his short moments of clarity he confessed: I want to rest, my soul is too heavy. Sometimes dying is escaping.