When I Wake Up

by Macedo, Ana Paula

  When I Wake Up

  A novel by

  Ana Paula Macedo

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  Acknowledgements

  Other books by Ana Paula Macedo

  Dedication:

  In memory of my parents. I shall see both of you in Eternity

  to:

  My dear husband, Hinglay, from a daydream to reality.

  and to

  All of us who dare to daydream

  1

  Sometimes I think that the hole in my soul will never be filled. In fact, I did not even know when it was opened, I lost myself in time… I cut myself off in the depths of my imaginations. I have tried to run from both my loneliness, as well as my distress, from my emotions and the torture of my pain, it made me look back and wish that everything had been different.

  Sometimes, I imagined how my fate would have been if I had been the author of my own history. If I had permission, I would go back in time and make specific changes… but in a few years, when I reread my story, would I find myself to be a good writer? I think not. I can give meaning to the lives of my characters, I lose myself in my mind, building a world of make-believe, and if I could, I would never come back to reality.

  When people asked me my name, I usually asked myself: what is the name you want to know? The real one or what I used to entertain my imagination, escaping this painful world, hoping that one day things will get better?

  But if reality called me and there was no room for fiction, I would present myself as Sophia, simply Sophia. And in my mind, I tried to give a meaning to my name, which sometimes seemed to be a combination of sadness, melancholy and guts. Guts, in spite of everything to say no, even when I tried to call the world's attention for help, even in the midst of despair, within me there was still a little hope, almost inexplicable.

  Sometimes when people called me or talked to me, I was forced back to reality, but at that moment, I preferred my fictional world. Not that it was perfect and composed only of happy times. No. It was also kind of sad, but at the same time interesting and full of life, but both in reality and in my fictional world, the certainty of better times were still present.

  A few years ago, I woke up looking within myself, something that encouraged me to be happy… something that would remove my pain and make me forget all the negative scenarios that insist on going through my mind as if it were part of a movie. Some of these scenes, I would like to forget, others, I would simply like to be able to transform, while others, I wish I could just make small subtle changes. I could not change them, because they have already passed, have already happened, and were marked and living in the tunnel of my memory.

  I realized that my life was made up of scenes of drama, comedy, suspense, and maybe even a little terror. Terror caused by anxiety that has always wanted to be part of my script and never let the comedy prevail.

  Sometimes I think my vital organs were composed of feelings of bombarding emotions in my bloodstream, which took them to the heart and caused it to be completely ripped apart. I waited for a surgeon who can come up with the scalpel and perform surgery, removing all that prevented me from being happy, as I would really like to be.

  Oh, how I wished I could give up these feelings that were prevailing in me and torturing me, but it looked like I've become friends with them, I tried to protect them and let them stay in my mind, as in some situations where the victim in captivity fell for the abductor and started to defend him. I thought I ended up being seduced by the prison of my thoughts and have not had the strength to break the shackles, or who knows, simply opened the lock for my abductor, left the keys within my reach and all I had to do was look up, raise my arms, grab the keys, open the lock and release myself from this prison of sadness that was consuming me.

  Throughout my life, there have been people, opportunities, places and situations that were no longer present. Some of these people were gone forever from my life and I never reencountered them here on this earth, and have only seen them in my dreams, because sometimes when I slept, I dreamed of them. These people left my life without warning, but not spontaneously, they were simply removed. There were also those who left willingly and left me wondering what happened. Finally, there were those who decided to stay and those that I decided to accept. Both the first and the last groups were interesting, they were worth it, but the middle group was not. They only served to harm me and made me the somewhat complicated person that I am today.

  Besides all the pain that I carried within me, I also carried some guilt and remorse. I felt this when I thought I could have done things differently, or behaved differently, but I did not feel blamed by others, but yes to what I regarded myself, and I often felt that way, for I was not being careful to pick up the pen and make the draft of my own story and I ended up not editing some important chapters.

  I will not leave you thinking or wondering why I was so sad. I'll tell you the reason for my depression. I confess that I was tempted to write with ornamentation, and change some facts, but then, you would know my pseudo self, so I needed to introduce myself to you as I really was: Sophia. Not as full of wisdom as the Greek name, but full of stories to tell, writings that will bring my story to light, using beautiful words to decorate my pain and make me as interesting as a character in a movie, although sad.

  Do not judge me. Do not pity me. Because I do not like those feelings and people who acted that way toward me; they were part of the second group of people that I have either excluded or have excluded themselves from my life. But what about you? How do I want you to feel about me? I want you to simply try to understand me and have empathy for me, for what I went through and what I imagined, as I could no longer distinguish the actual Sophia from the pseudo Sophia.

  All resilience for life had been taken from inside me. I reached a point where to go on living, I had to sympathize with pain and hide inside it. I started to keep these feelings so deep inside me, they seemed to be closely guarded in a safe, that they could only be discovered by myself, or the joy that could one day find me and replace all of the negativity that I carried inside me, as a defense mechanism, protecting me, and not allowing me to hurt myself again.

  No, my life was not simply made up of tragedies and disappointments, sadness simply excelled both in one as in another and today I found myself in the position of an author and protagonist of my story, hoping that you will read it and identify with me and tell me: Sophia, you're not alone, I have also suffered, or perhaps you will say it was worth going through all this as in the eyes of many, I seemed to have overcome my pain and things seemed to have finally worked for me. That's because others could only see my exterior.

  It has become a habit that I asked myself what I was running from daily and why I created a fictional world in my imagination. In search for answers, I resorted to my inner google and almost reached the indefinite conclusion that I was running away from myself, from rejection, of not feeling loved and the fact that I was feeling excluded. I flee from the despair of my loneliness; this was not because I did not have friends, but exactly the opposite; to be surrounded by people and still felt out of place, like I did not belong anywhere. Sometimes I thought I lost my true identity and I was trying to find it so I could able to just pull myself together and stop running from myself and from everyone around me.

  The escape has become my greatest comfort. If not for it, I would not be here, because I have found this to be a very painful world, but I thank God who in o
rder to keep me alive, presented me with my imagination, where I could create and delete without sharing with anyone, and without the fear of being caught. While everything was inside my imagination, I could not even be caught in the act.

  And what would be the best place of escape but within myself, taking into account that the human being is a being so complex? I decided that if I was running away from a situation, I would flee into myself. Perhaps reassuring myself that everything would be fine and that if I believed so, the situation would improve.

  In fact, at this moment, not even words of comfort could revive me. I even thought about taking a trip, buying a ticket towards happiness, but that thought sounded like false advertisement. I was afraid to board the boat of hope and reach the final destination, only to realize that it was an island of disappointment, so I decided to stay where I was, living on the island of frustration, nourishing some hope and refusing to go to a place that does not give me the certainty of a happy ending. Meanwhile, my emotions were still in an internal battle, fighting to stay within myself and doing everything to capture my attention.

  2

  It seemed like I was watching the movie Indecent Proposal. I was having a coffee at Starbucks when my iPhone rang, I looked at the screen and saw: unknown number. I don’t normally answer unknown calls, but something in me told me that I should answer that call. I said hello and from the other end a woman's voice said, “Sophia, I'm Nancy. Do you remember me? I was your fourth grade teacher and we haven’t spoken in a long time, but I need a favor from you. In fact, Roy, has a problem and you are the only person who can help me right now.” Nancy spoke fast, and I, of course remembered her, but I was, trying to remember her face, like trying to put a face to the person who spoke to me so desperately.

  “How may I help you Nancy?” I replied

  “Roy was arrested yesterday here in Florida by immigration agents and is in jail awaiting deportation to Brazil. The process can last up to ninety days.”

  “O.K.” I replied.

  “As a mother, I'm desperate and was looking for a solution to get him out of there as quickly as possible, and I thought of you. I know you were friends during adolescence, and even studied together. I know you're an American citizen. I was wondering if you are willing to marry him, so he can stay here in the United States. In fact, I'm asking you to marry my son for papers. Of course, in return I will give you fifteen thousand US dollars. But you do not need to have anything more with each other.”

  More than friends, I thought. In fact, I had met Roy in my teens when I was fourteen and had a childlike mind and an uncontrollable desire to be an adult. Roy had given me my first kiss and became my first love, and also the first man to open a hole in my heart, making me understand for the first time, in a painful way what it was to suffer for unrequited love and go into a failed process of conquest.

  When Nancy told me about Roy, two thoughts crossed my mind, and as I positively accepted the marriage proposal that was made to me referring to my first love, I had to wonder. Was I at this late date, buying a ticket toward happiness and having a chance to rescue a lost past and reissue my love story, or would I once again be drawn into an emotional trap, filling me with false hope and giving myself once again the opportunity for Roy to pierce my heart and break it into a thousand pieces? Would it be a lucky chance, like playing the lottery and being the only winner of his heart or simply life once again holding me down in the streams of trouble that could soon end up driving me into despair?

  But I thought that Roy had been buried in my past, and now, having this opportunity to have a fake wedding with him, was reigniting in me the hope of rewriting some of the pages of my life and the opportunity to leave a different autobiography, to maybe be read by people one day.

  I was not sure if what led me to accept this offer was the idea of transforming a rejection into a love story with a happy ending, or just a mere expectation of a different future that maybe a whim of a teenage girl who was still alive inside me, telling me that in the end, like in the movies, the protagonist would be the winner.

  Roy was not offering me the love that I so much craved for in my teens. He just was offering me a marriage certificate in which he would be the groom and consequently, would gain a license to get out of the US immigration jail. The reason showed me all the facts and did not lie to me. Roy also did not make me any promises, but my imagination mixed with my excitement told me that everything would be different and that life was giving me the opportunity to return to the past, bring it to the present and rescue my great love.

  I began to imagine and devise a future with Roy. And I realized that my imagination could be imprisoning me and that deception might be taking control, but at that moment, I was not willing to give up on Roy, even if I had to use the fertility of my imagination to have him. Analyzing situations already seemed to be part of my nature and lifestyle. They told me that anyone who thinks too much does not marry, but I'm getting married and so I'm looking at all aspects of this arranged marriage. I did not deny that in order to analyze it, I put sails into my eyes and almost hung up the rational part of the brain and just left the emotional and imaginable side running. If the worth is to be happy and for that reason I have to use my imagination, then why not?

  Would I be hurting anyone but myself, to embark on this inward journey in search of answers and to put my creativity into action so I could reach my inner happiness? And if Roy was the person designated to make me happy that time but had robbed me of, and now out of nowhere, was being brought back? Except that everything was now different from then, when I was that naive teenage girl. The time, along with my birth certificate and my physical traits, showed that I was a grown up. I was big, already reached the age of maturity, but still carried within me the fears and insecurities of my childhood, and despite being extremely marked by time, with visible scars, I continued to harbor within myself the hope that in a moment's notice something good could happen. And who knows, maybe it was already happening?

  I took this time to think about Roy's life inside the prison. Was he eating right and being treated well? I've heard of cases where immigrants had been taken to a common jail, sharing cells with criminals and being humiliated not only by the criminals but also by the police who should be there to protect them. But Roy was not in one of these prisons, he was in an immigration jail where all inmates were awaiting either a hearing with the judge or a return ticket to their country of origin. The biggest problem of these prisoners and the biggest crime they had committed was that they simply did not have a document to allow them to legally reside there in America, and so they were treated as criminals, or discriminated against in a society that had already interbred, but insisted on continuing accusing immigrants of being inferiors and offenders.

  But I know that Roy had no inferiority complex, at least he did not have one when he lived in Brazil and was part of the high society, where he was a playboy, but one day was taken by financial hardship and came to the United States in search of the American dream and ended up facing the nightmare of ending up in prison. He had already won the fear of not getting a visa at the American consulate, the fear of not entering the United States and being sent back to Brazil. He succeeded in these two stages and was caught just when he thought he was free to move freely here in the United States.

  My heart ached at the thought of Roy being arrested by immigration agents without a chance to return home. All I wanted was to be able to go rescue him, free him from that prison and take him to the safety of my heart, where I thought I could soften his pain, remove the trauma of living in a land that was not his, that often being seen as an alien can bring. In my imagination, I came to think that my love could bring relief to anything that Roy went through there.

  Was I just being presumptuous or would there be something there? I've heard that lightning never strikes twice in the same place, but the radius of passion emitted from the locality of Roy’s being was coming toward my heart again, paralyzing me or who kn
ows, simply trying to get me out of this state of sadness I have sunk myself in lately?

  How I wanted to rush into getting him out of that prison and embark with him to a safe island in a real place, where my script was my reality, and not a fairy tale. It was while thinking of him that I remembered an island that I visited in my teens at the time I was in love with him. But in this love what could symbolize the dry land? I remembered this island, which had a long bridge that connected land to land and gave access to people. The bridge was narrow, but entirely swayed when you stepped on it. The crossing took about five minutes but it was worth it to feel the rush, not to mention that it was the only way to reach the island.

  There were those people who were overcome by fear and did not cross the bridge and simply stared at the island from a distant place because they were afraid of falling into the river if they decided to cross that bridge, but I did not belong to this group of people, I was a part of those who took risks, although to achieve my goals, I have to cross dangerous bridges that do not bring me security, I still think it was worth risking, merely for the hope of reaching the other side and being able to set foot on dry land.

  I did not have this fear of hurting myself that many people carry within themselves, for my heart has been so hurt that I even thought that another wound would make no difference. In my case the difference was in healing, and fear would be not to be prepared to live a happy life with an emotional transplant done by someone with infallible techniques.

  Would the freedom of Roy affect my emotional imprisonment? Would I be exchanging my freedom for his? Would I be a totally confused person with a failed past and a desire to live a different story? But anyway, I had already brought myself along for this trip and was not willing to stop along the way. With so many thoughts and expectations screaming inside me, I started to design my wedding. The ceremony was not at all what I had planned my entire life. It would not be a wedding held in a castle, but would definitely have the most important piece of my dream; the groom.