Escaping The Loop

IV

As we drank our coffee, we exchanged news about each other's family, talked about the economy, the country's situation, the weather (most used subject these days), then I asked, "Cecilia are you happy?" the last time I asked a person that question he was certain of his answer, this time, this person, gave a different response. She stared at her cup, and seemed distant. Minutes went by as I sipped my cup and ordered another. Then she began, "it's funny really how we imagine happiness, the last time a person asked me that question I was happily married and had a job, of course at the time my answer was 'why wouldn't I be?' yet somehow the concept of happiness differed. The picture I had framed and nailed to the corner of my head concerning happiness broke. One day I came home, and saw his bags beside the door obstructing the entrance. When I walked in I saw him sitting there, staring off into the distance, I called his name a couple of times before he answered the last call, 'Cecilia I'm leaving', the first thing I would assume since I too was a lawyer was that he was leaving for a business trip, a case probably. As I announced my assumption he simply retorted 'no I'm leaving this marriage' and took another sip of his 1982 Merlo that I got for our anniversary the following evening. I asked why, how, and when he decided that. He didn't say anything for about 10 minutes, then he finished his glass of wine and told me 'apparently you don't need me'. The next thing I know is I'm served papers for a divorce I don't even want. He said he will give it all up, the house, the car, and also his car. I repeatedly questioned his intentions and pleaded with him to drop the divorce case. He always answered 'I don't want to'. I always thought he understood me. Evidently I was wrong. Confidence and self-reliance had become my vices." She paused and took a sip from her now cold cup of coffee, "a week after our divorce he married my pregnant secretary. I never asked her if she was married or not, how I never saw the father around the office or picking her from work, actually her baby daddy was with me. Sleeping in our bed while he'thinking of someone else. You begin to wonder why someone who absolutely didn't want kids, and deprived you from the joy of being mother to his children, would impregnate someone else. Least to say I was devastated, and one day during a crucial trial for my firm, I collapsed. The case was about a multimillion dollar lawsuit concerning an infraction in a prenuptial agreement. The wife was cheating. I was her attorney. I ended up being against her instead of defending her, and ended up crumpling in the middle of the court room. I was fired, yet as I was collecting my items and signing my resignation form they kept on saying 'I was being relieved not fired'. Well how can I be relieved knowing I just lost the job I worked so hard to get?

As children they always tell us to be strong and independent, but they do not specify the caliber of strength, so we end up being too strong for our husbands. So after a failed marriage you become the element of destruction. Gullible and naïve, that's what she was like, a damsel in distress and not wonder woman. Men tend to have this need of continuously being the providers, the heroes, and never accepting help. They are always the pilot that never saw the use of having a co-pilot"

"And what did you do? Are you going back to Russia?" I asked.

"No. I had nothing there anymore. The husband I loved stopped loving me. The job I had was taken away from me. Tell me, after having the very reasons that kept me in a foreign country for about 12 years robbed from me, why would I stay? I sold the house, the cars, bought a ticket, put the rest in my account, and left that damn cold country. Never liked it anyway." She ended with a look of disgust on her face emphasizing her dislike for the country.

I observed her, the dark rims under her eyes, the paleness of her face, the obvious loss of weight based on the slight sagginess of her tight jeans. After hearing her story, it's quite obvious. Losing everything you tried so hard to attain, to accomplish tumble, crash, and burn around you will have that effect on you. The pills she bought that day were prescribed for cases of depression and insomnia. Maybe I always had that fear. When it came to Zen I had this subconscious fear of him leaving me for someone better. Maybe one of the reasons I ended our engagement was the fear of being deserted later on.

We just sat there and stared at the people passing by, both of us lost in our own respective worlds. At first one might think my current state of mind should be relevant to an incident equivalent to Cecilia's, but one neglects to remember that every person has his/her own struggles, and each person has a distinct way of handling certain situations. There never is an exact reason to be disheartened, it just happens. One day you are indescribably happy, the next you've given up on the world and worst of all given up on yourself.

"What about you? What was your poison?" Cecilia asked suddenly.

"It was never a poison, it was a repetitive state I am living. Ever wonder what happens when we grow up? I asked myself countless times that question, and never had an answer. Growing up seems such a wondrous phenomenon when you are young, yet as we grow older we discover the truth: we lose. Lose." I continued, "I kept on living the same day over and over again, with no progression, still and repeating, never moving forward. What kind of life is that? Who would want to stay still for an indefinite time?"

Cecilia continued starting aimlessly ahead. Then she grinned and said: "I would."

I looked at her bewildered by her answer, she then looked at me and continued "I wish I was stuck in that point in my life when I was happy. Waking up to my husband, go to work, come back home ignorant of his cheating ways, and cook us dinner. I would do anything to just click pause, rewind to that point, and stay there forever. I didn't want to leave that country. I lie to myself every day, telling myself I hate that country, I hate him, I didn't even like my job. When facing loss you are tricked into denial. I love him, I still do, I sometimes wish for some divine accident to strip me from my memory just to forget. I wish he loved me like he did before. I wish he stayed. I wish I didn't even hire my secretary. I had my home, my job that I loved, my husband, even a coffee shop I went to regularly that knew my 'usual'. Wishing, wishing, and wishing. Yet I'm still at my parents' house, mourning the life I had. I gave up everything I had remaining from my previous life, and left. Now, I really don't know where to go. I'm lost" she ended. She gazed at her now empty cup of coffee, going back to her own world.

The last words resounded in my ear. I looked at her and saw myself.

"What did it feel like? Leaving that part of your life behind?"

"It left me, I left the rest behind. Things that didn't matter anymore."

Materials really don't matter. They are items we purchase and use, and when the time comes, they are eliminated for no further use. Cecilia believed that what were left of her life were only materials that she had no further use for.