Rush

   What did I dream? What did I eat last night?  What was my last thought before closing my eyes and falling asleep? It’s silly, but I don’t remember any of it, or at least not once. I have to be still and really try hard to remember the answer to every single one of those questions and many more that appear many minutes after I wake up. Does it all have to do with this? Is it all connected, as many people believe? They think that if one thing happens and then another or something else on the other side of the globe, then it’s all connected. To me it sounds stupid and very easily dismissible as a theory but who am I to trump over the delusions of so many of our fellow human beings. Maybe it’s better to let them wonder through the cosmos and just not pay attention to whatever they might have to say.

 Yet, I feel confused, scared and my stomach is rumbling like mad. Did I lose my last meal too, even if I haven’t vomited at all? It feels like I have. My belly really hurts and my body overall feels tired and weak in a very weird way. It’s like something took away my bones for a single second but I can still feel them readjusting to their original positions. It also feels as if the room had been completely moved like a gigantic cube while I was sleeping, causing my senses to become insane. I can’t really tell if up is that way or down is that other way. I don’t know and to be honest I have no intention to help anyone in that department. I just want this very awful feeling to leave me, my heart to stop pounding. It seems it wants out.

 Turning on the light in the room, and I say it in singular because there’s only the one, was not the best idea. Only to see the mess I caused… Well, it wasn’t me and it was, all at the same time. Maybe that’s why I feel a little bit guilty too, like when you’re little and you pee your bed. And you are conflicted between going to your parents and tell them what happen. Or maybe, you think, you can clean it yourself and put the linen in the washing machine and no one will ever know. And when they realize what happened, you feel weak and shaky and you cannot really talk and you want to cry but know it’s not really a moment to cry because, somehow, it doesn’t feel like it.

 My stomach is the worst part. It’s still restless and I don’t know if it’s a good idea to have breakfast. I mean, what if I just expel all of that in an hour or less? I don’t want to be cleaning that or feeling even worse than I feel right now. I don’t want to risk my mental health and my physical one. Besides, the possibility of having to clean the floors (here’s hoping it’s the floors…) does not really excite me at all. If anything, it makes my stomach even more restless, as if I had a very violent electric eel trapped in there and she stings me every time I think of pulling her out of her cozy environment. I don’t feel good, that’s the point.

 Breathing has become harder. I don’t know why, but it feels like this room, filled with freezing air, is running out of oxygen. However, I don’t want to open the window and become a human popsicle. Because even know, seating on my bed, I can feel that damn cold air like a snake going up my legs, through my belly and chest and to my brain. My fingers feel weird too, like they are about to crack. And I still cannot breath. Opening my mouth seems futile and only my nose is trying to keep me alive but I have no idea how skilled my nose is, even less right now when the punch had come from the area. I try to inhale some air and it feels heavy, almost solid. I can almost feel its taste and it doesn’t taste good at all.

 Why is that? Because of the surroundings I guess. I know now I don’t like this student life, or at least not at this age anymore. I sound old but I’m not, I just complain every single second about things that I have decided to be my life, so if you think about it, I should just shut up. And I do. I don’t really use my vocal chords as much as I did back home, although that is kind of obvious. After all, they are your family and you love them or at least I love mine. If you have issues with yours, well, sorry for that. But these other people, the truth is I don’t care for them at all. They could die out there, rammed by a bus, and I would honestly not give a shit. I would only worry for the next person, the next boring and predictable human male to stay in that room and talk about booze and pot, because apparently this is it for humanity.

  Well, that let’s a weight out, somehow. But still feel a bit lost. After all, my awakening today was too fast, too confusing and a little of a low blow. You never know when things are going to take a turn, one of those turns that changes your whole mindset for the day or even for more time. I hate it when it happens because change scares me and it scares me a lot more than I imagined it. I want it all the same over and over and over again and I’m not ashamed of confessing that. Because I don’t see anything over the hill. No green grass, no cute little houses, no beautiful people smiling at me and doggies coming to greet me. I don’t see anything.

 The future scares me and maybe my body had finally realized it. Maybe the war between my insides and my mind has begun and this, whatever it is that’s writing this, is in the middle of the fight. And I know there will be blood and pain all over, there will be losses and gains and my mind is going to spiral down a wormhole that I have made for myself. Because, if we are objective, no one else is guilty more than ourselves. If there’s something happening to us, we probably had it coming and we even knew that it was coming, even if we chose not to acknowledge and just pretend nothing was happening, as we often do.

 That roll of toilet paper is starting to look funny somehow. I guess it’s because it is. Such a funny thing to have around one’s house, when you think about it. It’s shape; it’s function, the one it is built and all the strategic marketing behind such a strange object. I don’t mean that to be funny or make some funny toilet jokes. I’m afraid I don’t know any of those so I cannot be funny that way. Actually, I have no idea if I’m funny in any way. Maybe I’m like the toilet paper, that’s just strange and everywhere and that’s me sometimes. There but not there at the same time, however always out of place, as if I was an extra and I always come in the scene a little too early or too late. I do feel like an extra sometimes and I believe we all do everyday, so I don’t really fell bad about it.

 I put on my socks again, as they slid out of my feet during the night. Maybe that’s the reason why I feel like I feel right now. But I doubt it. What do socks have to do with anything? I just want my feet to feel a bit warm in order for my body to stop trembling and for my belly to calm down. I know I have responsibilities and all that but I’m seriously thinking about staying in bed all day. The idea seems very alluring and a very great one, I must say… Fuck, there they go again with their music and their noise. I don’t care what time of the day it is; you just don’t shove your tastes down people’s throats. It says a lot about someone, music and how they behave with it and how they consume it or however you want to say it.

 My pillow was spared, mostly. I want to lay my head on it and just close my eyes because I start to feel a little dizzy again. I just want to rest and not have any of that annoying noise around me. I don’t want to feel more than the warmth of the bedspread and the smell that I leave in my pillow. That may sound a little bit self-centered, but I guess it is the only way to calm me down, to make me realize all of this is real and that I’m not imagining anything strange and crazy. Actually, I do want this all to be my imagination and I don’t mean this morning, I mean this whole part of my life. Because it doesn’t feel right and I’m just holding on, trying to make time pass day by day.

 All the blood I spilled this morning… It tells me it is real and that I still have to keep my ground, I still have to wait and endure for more time. I’m not a good person but I don’t think I’m bad either. I’m in between. When I woke up to a rush of blood coming out my noise, successfully avoiding everything to be tainted in red, I thought it was a punishment for something, I thought it was because I had done something wrong and now I was paying for it. Maybe through just the bleeding, maybe through something more. I don’t know that for sure and to be honest I don’t really want to know because my head is spinning. Although that awful music might have something to do with it… Sometimes I do hate people.

Silences

   She had always loved to drive; as it liberated her from everything else she had been doing that day. When she drove back home from work, even with the traffic jams, she relaxed a lot and even stayed a bit in the car when arriving home just to think about one or two things. She also loved to be in bed with her husband and just share those priceless silences that people not really think about. Silence is beautiful when you feel you are complete with someone else and feel any sound would be just a disturbance, a nuisance. Emma and Greg had always had that kind of understanding and many people found it to be a bit disturbing but the truth was they didn’t really cared if other people approved or not of how they behave as a couple, they loved each other like mad.

 However, Emma one day realized she had been looking another man at work, someone she didn’t really know that well. She detailed everything he didn’t and she liked him right away because he stood away as different to the rest. Most of her coworkers were noisy and very annoying, always talking and mumbling and just behaving like parrots. The man she had discovered, who probably worked in another floor, was very different and was visibly shy and kept to himself. She realized, after several minutes, that she had been seeing him making copies and looking for a stapler, even as she had very big stack of work to do. When she came back to her senses, she felt oddly embarrassed and just went back to work.

 Emma had thought that behavior would only happen that one time but it didn’t. It started happening more and more, and not only with that man from work but also in the street, in stores and in the bus she took home when leaving the car there. She would just look at them carefully, appreciating everything they did, which was normally something really mundane and boring to everyone else but that seemed like magic to her. She didn’t really appreciated their bodies at all, she preferred to focus on their behavior and on whatever they were doing in the moment, no matter if it was listening to music, reading, jogging, talking on the phone or just standing there, close to her.

 If she was honest to herself, all of this made her feel very strange. She loved her husband but she just loved to look at this men just being there. She thought that maybe it was because she had been married so young and now she was getting interested in others but it was very particular that she didn’t even bothered to look at their faces sometimes and, if she did, she would discover that they didn’t looked at all like the men she supposedly found attractive. This went on for several months and for Emma it was something hard to process, because she had been living fifteen years of a very happy marriage and felt awful about what she was doing, as if she was cheating on her husband.

 One night, she decided to break their ceremonial silence and just tell Greg about what was happening to her. She hated the people that beat around the bush for hours without never ever getting to the point, so she went straight for it. It may have been a little harsh but Greg knew that was a trace of Emma’s personality that was just essential to her and he embraced that attribute with open arms. He just heard what she had to say and, after a detailed explanation of what was going on, he asked her if something else had happened. Obviously, he was worried she had cheated on him with one of these men. But she hadn’t done that so he just hugged her and told her there was nothing wring about what she did and even if something more happened, she could talk to him.

 The conversation was very positive for Emma, who had always known Greg would respond well to any issues that would be presented to him. So she kept on with her life, still looking at strangers and just that. Then, one day, one of these men looked back at her and just smiled. This tore apart everything she had thought about this strange process before and started to wonder if what she was looking for was some sort of action in her life. Of course, she didn’t like those disgusting men who looked like a cartoon character but she was still human and discovered she loved someone that looked much more deep and interesting that all the other men.

 With the man of the smile, she never had anything but she could’ve. The next man that smiled at her was lucky enough to receive a smile back and now her sessions looking at men involved much more interaction, often just smiling or staring mutually at each other. Most people would find that disturbing but to Emma it was all very alluring and it started to become almost sensual. She realized, although this was no real surprise, that she craved a real intimate life with a man. Her husband was kind and good and loyal but he wasn’t adventurous, he wasn’t passionate and that made her terribly sad.  It had always been like that but now, feeling more liberated, she had finally decided to accept it.

 One afternoon at work, when she stayed a bit more to finish up work, she found the first man she had been looking at in the elevator. She couldn’t resist looking and he responded by staring, never smiling. Then, without a word, he pressed the button of the next floor, stepped out there and looked back. Emma didn’t even doubt it and she followed him to a janitor’s closet where they had sex. As she expected, the sex was passionate but it was not vulgar. The sex was fulfilling but never disgusting or plain.  When she came back home, however, she knew she had to tell her husband so she did. She told him everything and then just waited for his answer. There was a long silence.

 Finally, he stated that he understood her and that he had felt like that too, some months ago. Of course, she instantly thought about asking if he had met someone too, but thought it was better not to push any subjects to the floor. Greg held Emma’s hand and asked her what she felt for him. Emma told him she loved him and she had never doubted it. But she also knew she was curious about the world and she wanted more from it now, more than he might be able to give to her. It hurt her a bit that a single tear slid down his face as he smiled and said that it was all fine, that he understood and that he just wanted to know if any feelings changed or if she started to change her mind about other things.

 She never had sex again with the man from her office but they did see each other often. It was incredible to realize that they had been feeling the same or at least seemed to agree on whatever it was they were looking for in other people. It wouldn’t be another couple of months until Emma had sex with another stranger, a man who was a bit more interesting that the man from the office simply because he really never spoke to her and didn’t even smiled or anything of the sort. It was very strange and even frightening but it made it him so interesting and attractive to her. She also told her husband about this man and he was also fine with it. She couldn’t deny it felt strange, but she knew she had become, a long time ago, into a real free woman.

 Time passed and her interest in men started to decline. She wasn’t just interested anymore and just wanted to dedicate the following years of her life to herself and her husband. She proposed for them to go away on a holiday, to some beautiful place far away, in order to just be with one another, in another background and see what they really felt for each other. The first time they had sex during that trip, neither of them could believe the change that had occurred in the last few years. It was obvious that something had changed and it apparently had changed for the better, as the two of them ended up being extremely happy with everything that happened. They did not discuss the reasons and it really wasn’t necessary as long as they were happy.

 And they were, for many years, until he died from a stroke. She cried all day long that day and when she finally stopped, she felt part of her soul die with him. She realized that she had loved him more than she could ever understand and that everything that had happened between them was just about learning and talking things, in their own way. She did discover he had been with someone else too, before she had her “season” but she never managed to discover who it was. Somehow she needed to know, to thank whomever it was. But that thought vanished in time and eventually she joined her husband, adoring him always.

What the past is telling me

   I woke up sweating, trembling a bit even. I had just had one of those dreams about the past, but one that was distorted and made me feel even more lost that what I was back in school. I turned around and realized, relieved, that Paul was there. For a moment, I had thought I was all alone and had to calm myself down by myself, which was difficult because I would always go back to what had made me feel so uneasy instead of calming myself down. But with him there, his warmth and even his smell, the task would be much easier. I just moved closer to him and he moved, putting his arm around me without waking up. With only that, I was able to fall asleep again and, this time, I didn’t have any horrible dreams. It was all blank, just like I preferred it.

 Some hours later, we were having something for breakfast and he asked me about my dream. He said he had heard me wake up but that he had been so tired he had fallen asleep again very fast. I told him nothing and I don’t really understand why. Not only were we closer than ever now, he was one of those people that make you feel good just by being there. But somehow, I decided not to say anything, only that I did not remember anything about the dream, which was I lie. I don’t think he bought that but that didn’t matter. I knew he wasn’t going to start asking more and more questions. That wasn’t he’s style. We just kept eating and said nothing more about my dream or anything related to that.

 Instead, he told me that he really wanted me to go to his next performance in a bar not very far away from my place. Paul was a musician and played the bass in a band. It wasn’t a rock band but I don’t know that much about music so every time someone asks me about what he did, I would say he’s a rocker or that he plays the bass, which makes me sound horribly ignorant. But weirdly enough, he has always liked me to say things like that. I think that’s why we got along so well since the first time we talk to each other. He perceived me as crazy and I felt the same vibe from him. The night we met we kissed and had sex, which made me think I would never see him again. I was so wrong.

 Karma has a way of doing things, or maybe it’s meant to be or whatever… Anyway, the thing was that I saw him everywhere. Every time I went for a beer with my friends, he would be playing with his band there or in the next pub or something. We would run into each other and it was very uncomfortable until he told me that he had being wanting to get my number but couldn’t find me online. I laughed at that remark, possibly because I thought that was something very nice to do and I just gave him my number and from then on we have being close to on e another, without labeling our current situation. He’s not my boyfriend or anything like that. We just spend time together.

 Anyway, I kept the dream to myself. At work, it kept haunting me. Different to other dreams, I remembered everything about this one. The faces, what people said, everything that happened. It was difficult to get away from it and I decided to confront it and just tell someone.  So I went to my best friend and told her everything. But her reaction was not what I was expecting. She told me to explain to her what made me uneasy from the dream because she didn’t understand what it was. I explained to her that the dream dealt with many of my high school classmates and the fact that I had pissed my pants out of fear once when I was like nine or ten. She ten became very serious and told me that probably it was something I had never faced and now it had decided to come back.

 But I didn’t want that to come back. I had worked for many years and with no rest, in order to make myself into someone less sensitive to mockery and laughter and such. Back then, people were very cruel and had treated me in a wrong way and my solution had been to become someone tough, lonely and very sarcastic. It worked beautifully because, although people still talked about me behind my back, I decided I didn’t care and they just wouldn’t say a word. When I graduated, I thought that would be a big shell to pull off my back, but it wasn’t. I realized I needed again, because I had begun dating and I had entered the gay world, which is more complex and awful than people realized.

 I just didn’t want to dream about it again. Yes, I had decided not to confront it and maybe that was why things happened but why confront that and how? Yes, I had being laughed at but who cares? Who hasn’t? I refuse to say I was bullied because that feels wrong, it feels wrong to say it because there was never something as harsh as that… I don’t know. That following night, Paul didn’t come to my house because he had worked to do in his. I realized I had to spend my night alone and that made me think for hours and hours before I went to sleep. With Paul, he had sex and then we fell asleep but without him it was difficult.

 The following day, something happened that made me feel that something didn’t want me to forget about those damn times in school. I was in the grocery store, more like a supermarket, checking for jams and just turned my head and so one of the jocks from high school. Of course, he wasn’t a jock anymore, he looked a bit bigger, much more stupid that ever before, but it was him and I could hear his laughter like in the dream. That distraction was worth a jar of strawberry jam that I mistakenly put in the air instead of the shelf. I was so ashamed with the lady that had to come cleaning and with every single member of the staff of that supermarket. I just paid for the smashed jam and left almost running.

 I got home fast and just stayed there for the rest of the day. I asked for some Chinese food and tried to distract myself with a movie but I had already seen it and I just felt like crying, which I ultimately did. I was sobbing like mad all alone on my sofa and the only thing I could think off was about calling Paul, so I did. I sounded pretty congested when I talked to him and he noticed it right away. I asked him if he could come home for a bit but he told me he was still finishing his work and had so much more to do. He asked me to tell him what was going on over the phone but I just hung up on him because I was disappointed. I had wanted to pull my heart out for him and apparently work was much more important so I called my best friend instead.

 When she arrived, I paid for her taxi because it was late and she did not live close by. As soon as we entered my apartment, I began crying again and just told her everything, how bad it felt that I had to hide my feeling just because some stupid fucking kids had been mean to me for doing something that was normal and for being afraid. They didn’t understand that I felt intimidated by them because they were all friends and I was the new kid that no one wanted to talk to because it felt as if had brought the plague to the school. I didn’t wanted to be popular or anything, I just wanted to fit in and they just gave me the fucking finger.

 And it had been like that for years and year afterwards. People always thinking I had nothing to say or nothing to share and they just put me aside. In college, it was so much better but then it was guys, because I had to like them and felt like shit because the gay fucking world is shallow and they only care if you looked good and I just had a low self-esteem and that didn’t help at all. No boyfriends in several years and the only guy I had met that met something had just refused to come to my home and spent some time with me, when I had been the one to go to his fucking concerts and support him every single time. I was disappointed, hurt and confused by it all.

 My friend took my hand and told me that what I was doing was necessary, to vent all my frustration out and realize what was really bothering. And that was that I felt I needed more than what I have been given. She thought that I had tried so hard to be away from people not to get hurt, that now my need for a human touch was greater that it could have been before and the person that I felt something for was just not there. We were nothing. Not that I needed a boyfriend but I needed commitment more than a name. And, apparently, Paul wasn’t the one to give me that. Besides, we were not “exclusive” and I knew there was at least another guy around. And now that I cared for him so much, it bothered me.

 She stayed the night and we watched movies and ate ice cream. Luckily it was a Thursday, so I could get to work late and my friend had her day off. We talk about her life too, her boyfriend and her crazy mother and I realized that she was one of the things I had always wanted from life: a true friend. I just needed to be a better one myself and realize what was else I needed and wanted for myself, because no one else would do it for me.

The last march

  After the Great War, the lone commanders of the Union that were still loyal to the ideals of their lost cause, decided to force thousands to march to the deserts. One would think people would rebel against this in a heartbeat but the truth was that they didn’t. They were all exhausted after having been prisoners and slaves for almost five years. They didn’t have any energy in them and the commanders were the only ones that, though deranged, still kept some integrity and ideals, even if they were twisted. The war had destroyed every major city and no government had remained after the last nuclear warhead had been either used or destroyed in the ocean. The world was no longer in chaos because humanity was broken and it would take a very long time for it to be fixed.

 The march went on for a year, by which the commanders had begun to show mercy to their prisoners as they were all in the same condition. As the climate always changed, everyone wore the same robes that were cool during the day, when the sun was specially harsh on the planet and were a bit warm during the very cold nights in the deserts. The people only marched and marched. Sometimes they rested, ate what they could find, mostly insects, small animals and plants, if they could find them, and they had all agreed to harness the largest amount possible of water and to share among the whole community of marchers. The commanders wanted a larger share for themselves but, in time, they stopped asking for special conditions.

After the first year was done, almost five hundred people had died from exhaustion or disease. Among those, many commanders, some of the hardest and cruelest among them, which explained why no one was being as evil as they used to be anymore. The commanders had always believed that their race was superior and that their values and morals were the ones that would make the world better. But now, the ones remaining secretly believed that to be just propaganda statements. In the desert, going almost completely mad, they understood they were not superior to anyone and that they are equally fucked by war and the decisions of men that weren’t there to be punished.

 Of the group that marched, there were not many children. People began to notice, after a while, that sexual desire had decreased after the war and that even when people had sex, children were almost never produced. The general belief was that many women had been rendered infertile by the radioactivity in the air. One of those cases was Yolanda, a woman in her thirties that used to have three children but now only had one and had been rendered sterile. The only child she had was now too skinny and his skin was a weird green hue. She knew he was going to die soon because of radiation and, when it happened, she barely even bury him. She had been prepared.

 Among the commanders, Rick Wolf was maybe the oldest one remaining. He almost forty years old and had joined the Union because he had believed it would lead to a better life for him and his family but that was proven to be false. He actually thought about it often during the long walks, and he had reached the conclusion that the most disastrous point of his life had been the one when he had worked for some of the mad men that had rendered the world into a barren dust ball. Even then in the desert, he had never felt guiltier and shocked that during the war, were officials were demanding to exterminate certain groups o for them to be examined. They had inspired themselves from the past because, he thought, humanity had always been rotten.

 Commander Johansson was much younger, not even reaching his thirtieth birthday and he was beginning to think he would never reach it.  The truth was that he was never too hungry and when they happened to capture a large animal in some large wasteland, he just wasn’t hungry enough to eat more than a bite. He knew it was the radiation that was eating him slowly. He probably had cancer but he did not want to know anything about it. He was kind of glad medicine was over because he wouldn’t be able to cope knowing what was going to kill him. He felt better like this, just walking without thinking and waiting for his death.

 Not all of them just walked. A man called Jeremiah had been named one of the leaders of the prisoners, which were no longer really prisoners, and he was the one that lead them and decided were to go next. In the morning, he was the first one to be awake and he would often go around the camp singing waking everyone up. The songs he sang were sad and very ancient but they made the trick: people were ready in no time and it was him who decided which way to go. He thought that they should go to Australia, a country that was rumored to be still full of life and only marginally affected by the war. Radiation may be present there but not in such large quantities like here so he tried to take them there but no ocean had been seen yet.

 No water bodies had been seen at all to be correct. All the lakes and large rivers appeared to have been vaporized in the war and the small amount of water they often found was the kind that poured from the mountains over rocks and that could barely be kept in any bottle or can. They just drank from it or licked the rocks and went on with their march. Most people had forgotten fast about the taste of the food that they had eaten before it all went to shit. They forgot about juices, about cooked warm meals and about water that you didn’t have to lick to be satisfied. Their memories were slowly dying and nothing could really be done to stop it.

 They all knew that, eventually, they were going to die. They also knew that it would happen much faster than usual and that the weak would go first. And so it happen during that first year when mostly children elderly people and the ones that had a proper disease just died stumbling down to the ground. Some people, the ones that still had any real feeling left, tried to bury them with sand or under rocks but they soon realized that was too much work and that they didn’t have the amount of energy to be doing that every time. So from then on they decided to just let the dead lay down on the ground and for the living to continue their journey in peace, or at least without worries.

All that could be seen on their walks was dead or dying. The few creatures that they had managed to hunt were skinny animals that were simply not enough for such a large amount of people. At first, when capturing an animal, they would let one of the commanders skin it and then cook it in some hot water they had found. But like burying bodies, that too proved to be just a waste of time and energy. With time, they began eating raw meat, which gave them the energy needed to keep going and live one more day. Because in the end, that was their goal, to just live one more day in this world that had been destroyed and that would eventually be empty and with no recollection that we, the humanity, had ever been here at all. All of our things destroyed, our individual stories rendered useless and forgotten in the abyss of time.

 People didn’t know why they wanted to keep living. But they did. Most of them still had hope that they could fin more people, maybe living like proper human beings, or maybe getting to that Australia place and live in peace for at least a couple of years. Some of the walkers still remembered the old world and they would often tell storied to the others, to keep them entertained. The commanders allowed this and they would too be enthralled by the stories of the man, who claimed men had walked on the moon and that they had created viruses to be weapons and how an entire country was blown up in a day by the forces of the Union before the war even started. Although most people thought they were just stories, it happened to be all true.

 People had forgotten who they were. Humanity was no more and just people remained, empty, like a shell that some animal has left in the ocean to be covered by algae and sand. People had no interests in the world anymore or on each other. Some were still more human than others but it was all the same because they all knew that they were the last generation to walk the Earth. Strangely, that didn’t make them nervous or crazy. They had just accepted it because they knew it had all happened because of them and now the consequences were upon them and not accepting them was not an option.

 The march went on for as long as ten more years. The last group, of no more than twenty people, finally arrived to what used to be the ocean. Now, it was a region of canyons and death. It was then when humanity disappeared.