She

She had always spent her life waiting for something: for her father to come back home from work, for the train, the bus, and the phone call that never came, the holiday, the end of the holidays, for the response from her lover that never arrived. In the dead air, she cries, in the anticipation of the god who was looking on her, would listen.

She was clear as mud. Her condition was food for thought and she knew that. It does not mean that she never tried to save herself from unnecessary suffering, but now she had no option.

The science says that a chemical substance, serotonin, was one of the compounds responsible for how human beings felt. A lack of serotonin lessened one’s capacity to concentrate at work, to slumber, to eat and to enjoy life’s pleasure. When the substance was completely absent, the person experienced despair, pessimism, a sense of futility and would end up dropping into permanent gloom, which would lead to eternal apathy. She read that somewhere in her mom’s monthly magazine.

In her case, however, the reasons were simpler than anyone suspected: a man hidden in her bygone, or rather, the fantasy she had built up about a man she had known a long time ago.

Her past left her in a sticky situation, set her out in the left field. She had to plummet herself deep inside in madness because of a man whose current whereabouts she didn’t even know, but with whom she had fallen terribly in love in her youth, since, like every normal young girl, she had needed to experience the Immortal Love: once again.

I’m alive and everything’s going to start once again. She thought. I’ll roam around in the streets of Mumbai once again with him, the main square, the bridges, and look the people going to and from work. We will talk about injustice and the problem of the world in café. We would talk about pollutions and global warming, sitting on the same bench, along with other people who also choose the same benches on which to sit and have their lunch, people who all have the same vacant look, feigns to be pondering extremely imperative matters. She told herself.

We would go to movies and have the popcorn from the same bucket. We would have the red wines that we will cheer in the cabana, or in on the beach. We will go back to the rented room, we will eat together and do household chores. And what about those Blue Berry cake? We will read books, turn on the TV to see the same old programs that are the same as they were ten, twenty, fifty years ago. I’ll make love with him, in his house, or in the woods. I’ll feel a certain degree of pleasure, but the moment I reach orgasm, the feeling of emptiness will return.

I’ll go back to work. I would ear to office blathers about who’s going out with whom, who is suffering from what, how’s such and such person was in tears about her husband, and I would be left with the feeling that I’m privileged.

One day we won’t have much to talk about, and both he and I will know it. On that day we will plan babies. And when they will grow up, we both will keep asking what they going to do with their life as my mother ruminates about me, “Look at me, for example, I’ve been married to your father for years, and I’ve tried to give you the best possible upbringing and set you the best example.”

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She put her phone out from her leather beg and text him like all thousands of times she had attempted: CAN WE MEET?

She knew it will take time. She had to wait for hours. Sometimes she got the text in days or in months from another side.  She was good at waiting though. And she was waiting for his reply, something affirmative, from nine months.

He lived on the other side of the mountains and she wanted to sell up everything to go and join him. She was not aware where he lives there, and someone managed to convince her that the land on the other side of mountains was very large place and there was no point going there if you didn’t know what you were looking for.

He had a family burden, he had issues with the health of his own brother and she knew about that. Deep inside her heart, he was soldier, a soldier fighting for his brother, a soldier to foot the bill for his family. He was the man who can fight till his last breath for his family, for his sibling.  And she was the girl that can fight till her last breath in the despair waiting for him. The love was pure.

He was not wrong. No one can judge anyone. Each person knows the extent of their own suffering or the total dearth of meaning in their lives. He wanted to explain to her that, but instead he chose to reply her: NO.

She spent a few months barely eating and remembering every moment they had spent together, reviewing, again and again, their moments of joy and pleasure in bed, trying to fix on something that would sanction her to believe in the future of that relationship. She was down in the mouth. She spent the whole time praying to God who, until then, had seemed far-off, but who now seemed her only hope. Her friends were worried about her. She didn’t budge an inch. She knew it was just a passing phase. Personal growth has its price, and she was forfeiting it, without any complaint.

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And so it was: one morning she woke up with the mammoth will to live; for the first time in ages. She decided not to let herself slips through cracks. She made herself up, wore the same old black dress that she used to attire in her past dates: she knew she looks fabulous in black.

“I’m not disfigured in any way, I’m still young, pretty intelligent, I won’t have any difficulties in getting boyfriends.” She told to herself.

Days later she got not only a new job in her domain but also a handsome guy, suitable enough to establish a line. He was the prince of a fellow that can cremate her all worries and provide the dais of her dream: those fantasies that she had since her teen years. He disheveled her grind, dragged her life too lively from dreary.

Years later she is in the same bed, holding up the same monthly magazine that her mother subscribed for, leafing through one page to another.

Science says, if your Serotonin is normal, you would feel happier. If you are in a good mood you should thank your serotonin, if you are in a bad mood or depressed about something in life, you’ve got serotonin. It is regulator.

She shut her eyes, recognition flowed in her head that every second of existence is a choice we all make between living and dying.