I bury my grief in your embrace

You skip my heart like I skip that song

1.Paris twilight

“Hey girl! How's my favorite widow doin’?”

“Amy, I'm the only widow you know, and I'm fine, really.”

“Whatcha been doin’ lately? Feeling better?”, her smile seemed warm and benevolent.

“Mm, nothing special. I still miss him, obviously… but I am trying to enjoy going out alone. I remember how good my life used to be before he came in.”, I pondered, raising my gaze to the ceiling wistfully.

“You can't really chase a feeling that belongs only to your 18 years old self.”, Lana cut through with her sharp insight.

“I know, I'm trying. I promise you; I have been feeling truly great since this morning. I am grateful for all of you, being here together tonight.”

Amy is nice, perhaps even a bit too nice; she is asking a bit much, but that’s okay, I don’t blame her. Their smiles help me to slowly erase, one day after another, that deep-seated uneasiness in the middle of my chest. I sat down and looked at Lana. She is right, this needs to be a new beginning. Nothing but my lonely self, in this awesome city. Blinding neon lights, a crowded bar, two best friends and me. My head was terribly empty at the time, so I stood up and walked nonchalantly to the counter.

“I’m gonna get myself another cup,” I said to my friends. It wasn’t long before my mind suddenly started to wander to his face, golden and angelic… Blue eyes, blond hair; he was my sun, I was his star. At least this was what I thought of it; this relationship… all in all, nothing but a knife planted in the middle of my chest. “I don’t miss him,” I murmured to myself, between two acid sips; “I am tormented by him, this stupid cult leader”. “He should miss me, but he’s lucky he doesn’t have to.”

“Hey, Lana, do you know what a pain it is to miss someone?” my alcoholic voice cracked.

“Oh dear, yes, I know very well, I went through terrible, terrible things; you know this, don’t you? And it’s your first time, I know how you’re feeling! First love, first grief; life hasn’t treated you nicely. Oh God, come here.”

I fell into Lana’s arms, with acid tears of drunkenness, pondering about how this man (--child) should truly feel. But he couldn’t feel at the place he was in right now; I didn’t know whether it was something to weep about or to be relieved about. A minute later, I chose the latter option as I got off Lana’s lap. I could only be honest about my feelings. Now, the temptation to show it was too big, so I waved goodbye despite protests as I tried my best to sober up. Soon I was out in the dark. A summer night in Paris isn’t hot, but it isn’t cold either. There was nothing to worry about, my next destination was the train and its comfortable seats to sit my thighs on. For whichever reason I love the train; I love long rides, whatever the hour is. The later the hour is, the more romantic I feel, provided I am wearing a dress or skirt of my liking. Thus, I would be entering an intimate dialogue with the slumbering world around me. The haunting nightscape would caress me like no man has ever, magically sending muses to me like no day has ever. I could be as slow as I wanted, move as fancily as imaginable, get into my feelings a thousand times then realize the doors had just opened at my station and ordered my rush, all this because no one had been waiting for me at home. In truth, now I had no home anymore, I could no longer call Paris “mine”, for our home there had become the ghostly place of a dead man, abandoned to the conclusion of a tragedy.

An hour later, I arrived in Versailles. It wasn’t my home, but my parents’, although the only place in here that could feel like one was my dainty bedroom, full of everything I love except for the man. Now, I had to get used to this place, to my parents’ presence, to the tense atmosphere, yet perhaps also to the long train journeys which I had nothing to complain about.

“Hello Dahlia, it’s so late my dear! Quick, dinner’s been ready for so long already!”, my mom seemed hurried as usual.

I had always been so different from her, always in my mind if not in my dreamland. Never hurried, always chill, so people generally liked me. They didn’t know me, but they enjoyed my presence; for my part, I didn’t like people, except for my few close friends, so I never opened up to those noisy folks. It felt like I have some impenetrable walls drawn on my face that no one dares to cross.

Him though. Despite his childishness, I loved him. His death was brutal, heartbreaking, perhaps one of the reasons why my heart had suddenly become as cold as ice. Our last souvenir of being together is a wrinkled paper ticket to this popular jazz band’s concert in a Parisian jazz club. My last memory of him is vivid in my eyes, dancing to the lonely flame of that begrimed vanilla candle dying on the cupboard.

“Oh really?” I laughed loudly, childishly, as if nobody was watching. In this moment, nobody existed anyway. “Huh, you’re so stupid,” he smirked. Then, he approached his lips to my ear: “I love you” were his last words, flying through the breeze of his breath. It was like a flying kiss, but sexier. Thus, I felt hotter, so awesomely hot that during the tiny lapse of his departure I could feel my blood vessels becoming larger and redness growing on my cheek as well as a form of second-hand embarrassment from the abrupt end of our alchemy. We were supposed to be dancing, but I was awesomely bewildered by him. Just him, standing there in the limelight, in the yellow and sweet atmosphere of the club, was enough to paralyze my body. Because in that moment, nothing existed but him. It is cliché, but when you’re terribly, terribly in love, it is a true, indescribable experience.

Also: Madonna. True Blue. It was our song. Only for us two. We used to blast it in his living room, on his old inherited vinyl player, while we danced, either glued to each other in an almost mawkish loving way, or like the most innocent kids in the world. Today, his home was no longer tender and welcoming to me (his sole hobby). Instead, it was dim and dusky, so I’d rather be here at my parents’ –in my room with its musky scent and print-flowered bedding. Problem: how could I ever pour myself a glass of rosé now? I’m like a bat in a house of golden retrievers, confronting my eccentricity to their healthiness. No alcohol, no friend nearby, no luxury; at least I had my wall art to contemplate and food ready at any time. I had my darling dear headphones with me, so I could still watch burlesque shows and porn and feel every bit of shiver running across my body, in total impunity (while being a little scared of the narrow possibility of a parent suddenly coming in). My career goals couldn’t seem further from my present me. At one a.m. I got on my large bed with my body in a star shape, then pondered and pondered… What the hell will I do next, now? I have many creative projects on the plate, experiments to conduct and a destiny to trace. I know this and I will get to them. But oh dear, I am alone! A girl alone, is it truly enough to be a girl? I am so independent and busy and unbothered; despite all that, one lucky man to root and support me with some big hairy hands… what a great idea this is! I flipped my phone and held it high above my face, swiped some profiles on Hinge, then flipped my body to the left side (my arms were tired): nothing interesting… As usual, the best thing left for me to do would be to get back to the single girl career-and-healing grind. Perhaps this is my duty, commanded by God, delivered through a muse to me. I couldn’t deny its importance; I couldn’t let my hands touch any other thing than books that night. Not Lolita, but Patternmaking for Fashion Design. Exquisite; boring. I opened Patternmaking, leafed through it, stopped at a big chunk of words. I’d never liked people who leaf through books with actual text, or worse: through literary works. It is like an application of the capitalist culture of productivism onto the venerable activity of reading. Nevertheless, the big chunks of words nursed me asleep after only three A4 pages.

A Chinese proverb says: “Books are food for the mind”. I couldn’t agree more. If there wasn’t literature to tame greedy creatures in schools and homes, humanity would be doomed to a law of the strongest in terms of money (power). Rousseau had once written that this would be humans’ fate as soon as propriety was created (probably in a bygone prehistoric age). I had wanted to guess that before that, it was law of the strongest just like in the animal kingdom; but according to Rousseau, as “humans are superior animals”, before propriety humans used to live ruled by their “amour propre” –(interestingly)“self-love”-- concerned only about their own survival, naturally putting themselves above others in terms of importance, but always willing to lend a warm hand to a struggling neighbour. The best kind of society in his opinion; in mine too, and in the hippies’ one, in the artists’, the romantics’, the poets’… Idealistic, perhaps; yet even nowadays, many rural tribes all around the world lived roughly this way, in harmony with Nature. Ruled by their inner compass of values and morals… In the ghastly twenty-first century, how could I conceive doing so myself, when I know about my friends’ friends’ pitiful lifestyles, when I’m conscious about the disgusting nature of most medias.

Regardless, I thought to myself, literature is salvation for the mind. That is why I could only trust people who read. Thankfully we had Orwell and Huxley to educate and prevent us from late capitalism, although some people were currently tiptoeing at its gold-studded door. Is it similar to the doors of heaven? Only a non-existent tomorrow could ever give me the answer. But this tomorrow… I will wake up as usual, right? Obviously, I couldn’t sleep for an hour or so.

The next few days, I woke up late and hazy. I dressed up to draw and paint, undressed myself to write. I lost sight of my future as I couldn’t help but still cling onto the past. His supplies, his cardboard, were all I could see in the lonesome room. Multiple times, I even thought I had seen the shadow of his figure, surely his saintly ghost lurking somewhere, waiting to be reborn or for my own death so as to “talk things out”. But the light was dim at midnight, and that is when I was finally able to uncover who I truly am. I enjoyed admiring the antique pink peony print on the curtains, rearranging my books that I never read on my shelf that I always see. I basked in the lavish gleam of my silk pillowcase and silk nuisette dresses and “fifty-percent silk” bedsheets. I reveled in my self-made happiness-light when the world news got too loud and the TV had to be turned off. However, pleasure always stayed of short-term, and after a while I naturally ended up rotting somewhere, plagued with thoughts –concerns I had no solution for. Sometimes I thought they would make me more intelligent, for they were signs of acute mental activity and thoughtfulness; other times I pitied myself as the stupidest girl ever, who could only think but never act. The days went by and I lost track of the days. I couldn’t remember what I had done the day before, yet I was sure I did some rightful things. At least one. So, I stayed on my familiar funambulist line between present and dreamland. Unaware of all but my own existence. Intentionally oblivious to the world around me, except to the global concepts I liked and valued: the kindness of a stranger, climate justice, getting off-grid, social justice, a sense of community not only online but also in the streets, feminism, self-expression and art. At night, I didn’t dream about the encounters I would have outside of my town; I didn’t dream about the frosted juicy taste of strawberry ice cream, nor about dazzling laughter from my friends or pets. Instead, I was consumed day and night by a colorful surrealist painting: one that I paint by myself, a little bit every day, a large bit every night; ever-changing, volatile yet intensely present. I held onto it very dearly because it was the exact reason for my career dream; it was the only thing keeping me alive, and I thought I could never ever let go of it. All the beauty in the world is constantly soiled by its begrimed shadow, lurking behind, in the place you reach when you finally quench your thirst for complexity, depth. You discover this shadow once you reach your teenage years. Violent, demagogue, unmoral but cunning, the shadow sucks the beauty’s blood like a damned vampire. I had once thought I would become such vampire.

With him, I was dedicating my life to false worship of deities in the entrails of my imagination, locking myself in my room, feeling liquor pour down my throat. Working at the very doors between perception and reality. He wasn’t often there, and I would like to say “fortunately”, because this is an activity I can only do when nobody’s at home. I thought about alcohol today, I dreamed about rosé yesterday, I missed white wine the day before. I would hear from afar the crisp music of vegetables roasting in the pan at the same time; there stood my mom, behind the kitchen counter, ready to cook a pleasurably healthy meal for me. Can I be nostalgic and grateful at the same time?

I am sorry I can’t. I can only be nostalgic. I want to cry.

The tides of my emotions carried me through the next monotone days that turned into weeks and welcomed my writing and my art and my pleasure and my sorrow. I washed my silk clothes in clear water with body soap. One day I forgot a pair of pants and a shirt in the washbasin for a whole day and night. I was perhaps too lazy to pick them up and wring them out. Another day, I neglected my phone, then realized it was the best decision I had ever made, so I decided to keep doing it. A few days later, I hurt my back at craftmaking, then sewed it back by moving it graciously; it didn’t last long for I curled up again to write at night. Creating strange beauty out of pain and dirt was what kept me alive and hopeful. In the tiny space in my room, I was experiencing the whole world through the lens of my mind, relentlessly gorged with information and inspiration alike. I knew he would end up being useful, at last…

…For beauty is in its best form when it is born from darkness and pain.

He fueled my darkness; he fueled my pain. But I am no shadow, for pain can be colorful.

The tides of my emotions brought me to a new shore, eventually.