When I Wake Up

by Macedo, Ana Paula

  As we drove towards Roy's apartment, where I housed myself for a month, I simply lost myself in the daydream of my reality; Roy was not with me. My plan had not worked and I once again became that insecure and vulnerable teenager I used to be. I needed some medicine, a palliative that eased my pain. What is the period of time he would last and would calm my pain?

  I could not let Roy and his mother realize my sadness. If they found out the reason for it, they surely would dispute my sanity, for who but a crazy person unilaterally plans a love for two with the expectation of everything working out in the end?

  I had a month to bring Roy to my heart. To many, I had taken advantage of an opportunity to get extra money and take a well-deserved holiday. For me, I was not on vacation, but I would be working full time, trying to win the heart of Roy because I thought he had the master key to open my heart and remove from within me all that was not good.

  After two hours of travel, we arrived at Roy's house. It was a medium-sized house, not as small as the apartments of New York that immigrants live in and often small spaces that would serve in normal situations only as a wardrobe or pantry, they were transformed into bedrooms to accommodate undocumented immigrants that want to stay there a little while, depriving themselves of perks to gather a sum of money and go to their country of origin; it was not a mansion, but a cozy home, which had a lake in the background that looked to serve as the backdrop for my honeymoon. To me, Roy had left the prison and returned to a castle, where then I would be hosted as a princess, and he only had the duty of making me happy.

  I did not understand, not even me, the reason I was fighting so much for happiness, and I had never been happy in my life. Perhaps happiness is that? What does it feel like to be happy? Why do people fight so much for happiness? I looked around me and imagined a very sad world that seemed to be missing a piece of a puzzle that is hidden.

  If my happiness resided in Roy's love, why have so many people who married with the love of youth today found to be separated, sad and repentant of ever getting married? Would the covenant of marriage be lucky for some and misery of others? Was happiness linked to the wedding? I do not know, but if it was, I have not felt it. I knew that my marriage was not real, but even in my imagination, I seemed now to see a conflict where I was not sure if the end would be a happy one.

  I was the target of solitude, pain and disappointment. I'm tired of looking around me in search of who is to blame. There was a time when I blamed Roy for my sadness. Other times, I blamed my childhood playmates and so on, but it appeared as if I have got tired of blaming and I was just looking for the solution that brings me joy.

  5

  A week has passed since I came to Roy's house. To sit outside and watch the lake with its ducklings, the grass around the swing giving a charm to the landscape and the small pigeon house became my favorite routine. It seemed I did not adapt myself well inside the house. Not that I was not being well received, it was not that. Roy and Nancy treated me very well, but sometimes I felt like an intruder in there, like a person who was excluded from a situation and instead of trying to include themselves, putting themselves back, they flee, seeking out an escape.

  I wondered why I sought this form of escape on the outside, while my prize was on the inside. I think the lake made me reflect, and sitting on the grass by the lake, I saw my reflection in the mirror of water and I realized that the problem was not in the house, but within myself. While I thought so, I confess that I also sat there imagining Roy by my side, holding my hand, caressing me and asking forgiveness for lost time. I could imagine him repentant, asking himself how everything would have been different if he had chosen to be with me in his teens.

  “Sophia,” I heard Roy calling me, “it is cold out there. Come here.” To me it was not cold, first because I was used to the harsh winter in New York. Secondly, because the little cold outside and the wind beating on my face, bothered me a little, and made me lose concentration of my pain. That landscape distracted me, but the water for some reason seemed to look at me and call me to reality. I turned to Roy and said, “I'm coming.” I entered, soon to leave again in order to do the Christmas shopping. While we waited outside, Nancy hugged me, and for me it was like she silently thanked me for getting Roy out of prison.

  We got in the car and went to the mall. Roy did not speak much, but he was a bit playful and the little he spoke seemed to make me smile. His games took me from my thoughts and disguised my emptiness for some time, which did not last long, only a few minutes but it softened and ended up giving a touch of fantasy to my pain.

  While we were Christmas shopping, I watched people shopping and they looked happy. Some chose the gifts carefully, as if committing a crime if they gave a gift that the other did not want. Some checked out the iPhone, some couples kissed and walked hand in hand. Some parents smiled with their troubled children, choosing their gifts, looking as though they no longer believed in Santa Claus.

  I was still carrying myself within me, as I walked through that shopping mall, despite the contagious joy of the Christmas spirit, my image appeared to match the weather; I felt like a Christmas tree that had not been decorated.

  Roy surprised me, by hugging me in the mall and holding my hand. “Give me the honor of walking hand in hand with my wife,” he joked. But with every joke, a touch of hope lit inside me.

  We made the purchases and went home. Roy's house was all decorated for Christmas and now presents were carefully placed underneath the Christmas tree. Everything in the house appeared to be happy, except me.

  Nancy bought all the Christmas food already prepared and made a wonderful supper. It looked like I was having the Christmas of my life, with the prince I dreamed of at my side. We had fun during dinner and I could even turn away from my own imagination. For a few hours, I lived in my reality and stopped planning and worrying about the future. I gave myself entirely to the moment, something I rarely did because I had developed a habit of looking back, projecting forward and almost never lived the present at Roy's side.

  After the midnight supper, Nancy went to sleep and Roy and I decided to watch a romantic comedy film. While I chose it, I thought about how I would never imagine this happening in my life. Me there with Roy. How the world spun and things changed. I in my turn, would like to follow the changes, but it seemed that I did not change within myself and a vicious cycle has developed.

  The film began and our reality became the story that someone else wrote, and it was so good that it became a movie. That movie made us laugh, while others make people cry and even afraid. All this because a mere story was invented and told by a creative person, and can trigger emotions in those who are reading or watching what was once written.

  Does the world of fiction really exist or it would just be someone's mind designing something that did not exist as if it had already existed? What was life like for the author of this romantic comedy that we were watching? Was he a happy author or did he just manufacture this story to escape from his own reality? Would it be his sad story to the point of being transformed into a comedy, because sometimes life is so sad that you even want to laugh? And speaking of laughs at that time, my reality was managing to take a real smile off my face as Roy, the great love of my life, had his hands in my hair and was about to try and steal a kiss. All this because we were watching a story where two people smiled and kissed and that was so infectious that it had reached us here in the room and was creating a perfect atmosphere for the both of us.

  Before I realized it, Roy and I were kissing. No. It was not my imagination, not this time. And immigration also was not there. It was our moment and that of the comedy that inspired us. I got involved in the kiss, in Roy and my ghosts jumped inside my mind, trying to scare me, to the point of telling me that none of this was happening and I had even imagined it so much that I did not know how to separate fact from fiction. But I knew. And that moment was real. And I would not let him escape, for I had dreamed of it all my life.

  I held
him in a way as if not to release him. For him, it could have been just a kiss, but for me, it was the beginning of a planned conquest in my mind. I was holding on, because I was afraid of losing him, but he made me an invitation, playfully:

  “Sophia, I think we have to consummate the marriage.”

  I replied, “Sure, Roy, it is all I want.” And it was only fair that two persons of legal age married, of course they should consummate the marriage. It was for that reason alone that I accepted.

  I spent the night there with Roy and I woke up embracing him, on Christmas Day. Nancy certainly should have known I was there. Roy was still asleep. The night had been consummated and I found myself there in his bed, afraid of being rejected. And that emptiness I felt inside me seemed to have increased. It was terrified, I had wished so much for that moment, but he had not changed my life. Not that I was sorry to have spent the night with him, but simply because the rejected girl who lived inside me, had woken up and told me that from now on, Roy would not want me.

  I did not know what to do. If I should remain there or leave his room because sooner or later I would have to face him, so I decided to stay there and let him wake up first. Roy woke up, hugged and kissed me, and I thought, yes, I have chance with him, but I knew that my return ticket to New York had been purchased and that this novel with him, this consummated marriage, had a time and date to end.

  These thoughts filled me with sadness and would not let me enjoy the moment. I was taken by the fear of losing someone who deep down, I never had but always wanted. I was there in the room with Roy for a while. We have had our official wedding night and I should be overjoyed, but I was not. Maybe I was like this because I was sure he did not love me and had simply taken advantage of an opportunity to spend a night with me. I began to analyze what Roy thought of me: a woman who was in love with him as a teenager, was also rejected by him, came to the United States and with the opportunity to meet new people, ended up accepting a marriage proposal lie to get him out of jail and after all, easily, without much insistence, ended up spending the night with him. These thoughts tortured me. As I worried so much about what others thought about me. These thoughts seemed to have conquered my mind and refused to leave. It was as if they thought my mind was a territory occupied by them and that I had no authority to get them out.

  I was afraid that Roy would find out all that went through my head. Imagine if he or Nancy possessed an x-ray that could read my thoughts? They surely would find me to be an imbalanced person.

  Roy continued embracing me, and I felt all the security that I had one day desired, but that in no way at the moment made me feel safe. I never felt more vulnerable and that emptiness inside me, seemed to have grown another centimeter and warned me that it had room to grow some more.

  What if Roy had fallen in love with me? Could he, the great love of my life, have finally noticed me and seen me in a different way? No! I could not even fuel this idea within me, because I find myself impossible to be loved. I'm just a weird being on the planet fighting to occupy a space, but have not yet succeeded. As I thought this, I had to contain my tears and sobs.

  Roy stroked me and spoke kind words to me. I in turn, could not believe what he was talking about, because to me it sounded false and meaningless. I was not the pretty sure about the things he was telling me that I was.

  But if all I wanted was Roy, then in a way I had him last night, should I not go ahead with my plan and conquer it? Have I just created an imaginary love about Roy, where he was simply the character? Was I really honest about what I felt or was it just another piece of my mind that was holding me back?

  The more these thoughts rattled around in my head, the more I physically drew closer to Roy, as if his touch could remove these thoughts dancing to the music without rhythm inside me, driving me crazy. As I wanted to stop the voice speaking within me, telling me I had made a plan with no strategy whatsoever, and that soon he would be frustrated and that I would be sadder than before. I embraced Roy tightly, as if my hug was strong enough to keep him near me.

  From outside of the room, I could hear Nancy's steps, walking around the house, going into the kitchen and preparing breakfast. Attracted by the smell of coffee, we got up and went for our breakfast. “Merry Christmas to all,” I said. That's how the day started externally because inside me, it was not good. The table was made with panettone, Christmas cookies, fruits, cakes, coffee and a delicious fruit juice. For the first time in my life, I was having Christmas breakfast with Roy. I cannot deny it, not even my negative thoughts could take this from me. There at the table, the morning was wonderful and even looked like a fairy tale, with real characters, where Roy, me and Nancy played a perfect role which I fought so that it might become a real chapter in the history of my happiness. And so the breakfast continued with jokes and harmony, for me the great achievement was to be next to Roy while the disappointment of it was not having solved my inner conflict.

  Not that I was certain that Roy was in love with me, but I knew some feeling was rising within him relative to me. I still have to spend three weeks beside him. Could I make them into something to remember for a lifetime? What strategies could I use to win him when I did not consider myself able to win one? And if he truly fell in love with me, would I accept his love or let the fear of being rejected by him in the future make me escape this love?

  Beyond all my insecurity and rejection, now I had the fear of losing something I had never possessed, added to the fear of Roy not resolving my inner conflict and extracting from me the right to assign all of my emptiness to the lack of an overwhelming passion.

  At that table, all these thoughts passed through my mind. I was getting a strategy to manage two thoughts at the same time, one that I externalized while the other no one had access to… just me. Even though they were inaccessible, unfathomable, and out of reach. For if one could see the thought, they could also meet my emptiness, my pain, along with my vulnerability.

  It was undeniable that the situation around me was changing. And was I finally managing to reach my goals? And what were they? Was happiness approaching me and for never having met it before, I was not recognizing it? Or that happiness was simply a word used to circumvent the human being and in order to provide an expectation of hope that it could fight the despair that occasionally knocks on the door of all? Are there people who are happier than they are empty? Did that hole that resided within me also coexist within others or would I have won in the lottery of pain, with a prize of having to carry it alone?

  How I wanted to take the emptiness of my heart and deliver it into the hands of someone so that they could carry it for me at least for a little while. But I think no one would be able to bear the weight of this void that despite the emptiness seemed to weigh tons. Maybe I would have gone back to the days of slavery and continued waiting for the Golden law to free myself of all these agonizing feelings.

  My thoughts did not stop, did not give me respite and did not even respect the hands of Roy that naively slid through my hair, unaware that his touch told me I could calm my emotions and live in the moment. But it was impossible for me, for my fictional world along with the emotive which insisted on coexisting within me and would not let me depart from them.

  Roy, on the other hand was totally different from me. He did not seem to think and did not spend time overanalyzing things. He liked to live in the present without complicating matters much, not that he was an irresponsible person and did not think about the future, but he sure thought that thinking too much was not the solution.

  I myself was stuck in the past, fearing the future and stagnant in a present that I could only run away from, looking back, forward or simply escaping from it, daydreaming through my imagination. As I drank coffee and looked around me, I noticed something different. It was as if Roy had changed with me. There seemed to be feelings there. Maybe not love but something that if it was well maintained, it could become love because I had read somewhere that love is a decision, not a feeling. My
problem was that I was full of feelings, emotions and passions.

  That house looked even more decorated and cheerful with our presence there. This should be the happiest Christmas of my life, after all my biggest dream was coming true. However, the more I thought about it, the more my interior was filled with pain. Something told me that moments of sadness would unfold before me. How would that be possible if Roy was there beside me, drinking coffee with me, with his hands in my hair, as if declaring to me: Do not worry, it was not just a night of love. We can try to recover all the lost time and I can try to make you happy. It felt like I had entered a river with Roy, I was swimming, and he called me to go to the deep, and I for not swimming very well and with a fear of drowning, I could not rely entirely on him and go a little deeper. I should trust him and I would be safe, because if I started drowning, he would rescue me. But I did not trust him enough to support me on him. My floor was my insecurity and I had to hold on to my pain to be able to feel at ease. There seemed to be a bug in my mind, like a beetle, walking from one place to another inside my head and I needed to make him get out of there because I had noticed that his goal was to drive me crazy.

  I wanted to lie in his arms. I wanted him to put a few ear drops in my ears that would work as a poison to kill the bug that insisted on walking freely inside my head.

  His touch soothed me exteriorly. I could not decide whether to grab the sense of accomplishment of having achieved something or the despair of this achievement not having changed my life completely. Although I had only been his completely for a few hours, change could come at any time, fulfilling the void that lives inside me. It seemed that I had once again returned to my adolescence and sought comfort in his love. At that time, as I have explained, I did not have him.