I shouldn't care but I do

   When I woke up, the world was still blue. I had slept for only a few hours, which was very impressive because I had been drinking a lot the night before. However, I didn’t drink nearly enough to forget about the person that I was sharing the bed with. He was sleeping on his side, his face towards mine, gently breathing with his mouth slightly opened. I wanted to reach for his face and just caress it for a moment, but I realized it was still too early in the morning and it would be cruel to wake him up.

 I decided to only stare at him. I wanted to detail every single feature of his face and try to remember it for a long time. I was the kind of guy to have casual sex pretty often but they would normally leave after we had finished. Our connection to one another was always physical and, when all was done, they knew they had to leave without much fuss. That was the first time I shared my bed in a very long time and it was also the first time in a while that I could actually say that I really liked the person I spent the night with.

 Of course, we had sex. But it wasn’t the kind of passionate and rough sex that I would have with just about any other man. It had been special in a way, for him and for me, I’m sure of that. The way he handled his body and the sounds that came out of his body, as well as what he caused in me, all of it told me that it wasn’t just another crazy Friday night. It was something more and I really wanted to know why or how, because it wasn’t still completely clear. Maybe that was because it was so early.

 My head wasn’t buzzing or hurting, I could handle my liquor. Maybe he was a little bit on the weaker side, which I found to be adorable. Then, he said something in his sleep and the moved slightly, but remained facing me. He was really beautiful. Or maybe he wasn’t and I was just imagining him to be even more beautiful than he really was. Maybe I was idealizing the moment and everything was just as usual. Maybe the real problem was that I was feeling alone and empty, and casual sex had run its course.

 I had thought of that many times and it always hunted me how things change from one moment to the next. I mean, I love the way I behave and I do things because I like them. I don’t feel any pressure to settle down or to go out and find someone to fuck with. Not at all. I just feel this freedom inside me that lets me do anything that I want, wether it is being with that beautiful man in bed or working out or eating breakfast. The thought of breakfast though, made my stomach growl. It was very early but I really wanted something to eat. So I carefully got up and went out the room.

 It almost made me laugh how much shit there was around the apartment. There was a pizza box with two very cold slices just resting there. A group of people had come to have a nice evening of talking and games, so we had ordered some food after drinking several bottles of alcohol. I remembered how some were carrying others out the door, how I received messages of “I got home” while I was making my new friend moan in my room. It’s funny how life takes in one place and puts thing in the other.

 The fridge was almost empty as it was one of those weekends I had to go to the supermarket. Luckily, there was still some orange juice left because some friends had ordered two bottles of it to mix with vodka. That made me do a funny face, there by myself, reminding me of how much alcohol I had drank. I poured some juice on a clean glass and then grabbed some bread from the cupboard. As I was looking for the toaster, a sleepy voice greeted me and that made me smile from ear to ear.

 He was there, wearing my Avengers t-shirt. I had worn it the night before and then it had been thrown to the floor when we started kissing. Apparently, he was too shy to come out of the bedroom fully naked. He had also put on his underwear, some lovely red briefs. I put the toaster on the counter and greeted him, smiling. I then realized that I was naked, with nothing on at all, and that I was also probably sporting some crazy hair and bad breath. Thinking about that got me paralysed. His smile made me forget all about it in seconds.

 We had toast with strawberry jam for breakfast and we shared the glass of orange juice because all the others had to be clean. His skin was a bit pale, which I imagined was all about the drinking. I asked if he had slept well, and he nodded. He said I was very warm all night, so that helped him sleep better. It was so strange, to talk to him as if he was some unknown person that had just walked in. True, we had only met a couple of times, but we were past conversations as polite as the one we were having by the counter.

 So I just went and asked him if he had something to do that morning. He told me he never woke up so early and that he would only go out of his house in the afternoon, to have something to eat. So he was free until then. I asked about his parents, as he lived with them, and he assured me they weren’t the kind to worry too much. Actually, they never seemed to worry or ask any explanations from him. I found that to be really strange but left it there, because I know how awkward it feels when some person just drills you about your personal life. It’s just one of those things you shouldn’t do.

 In order to continue the conversation and not have some weird moment of silence, I told him I usually went out on Saturday mornings to the supermarket, as it was one of the moments of the week when my nearest grocery store would be almost empty, deprived of any crying children or annoying people trying to find products they would never buy. He laughed at that and I smiled because his laugh was just perfect. I realized then that maybe I was idealizing him but I decided I did not care, for once.

 Normally, I’m not the most romantic man ever.  But right then and there, I decided to go around the counter and just seat besides him and look at him as I did when we were in bed. He clearly thought that was a bit odd, but he stood still and just finished eating. When he did, I took his hand and just caressed it for a while. Then, I stood up from my seat, and walked slowly towards the bathroom, still grabbing his hand. He came gently and it was him who closed the door. We kissed the moment he did that.

 We made love again in the shower and then again in the bedroom, after we had cleaned ourselves thoroughly. I thought he was going to leave then but he decided to come with me to the supermarket. We spent the whole morning together and then we parted ways after he helped me get everything in order in my house. He left with a kiss on the lips and a smile. He hasn’t been back since then. It has only been a few days but I already miss him. Am I too sensitive or something? Should I just not get attached?

No. Again, I cannot care too much. It’s dangerous.

Two Theresa's

   Theresa had just come out of the asylum. She wasn’t supposed to call it that but she found it was better to call things by their name. She had been there for five months, after suffering a very serious mental breakdown in her office. Thing had been thrown, insults had been hurled and the police had to be called to stop her from hurting more people. Things had really gone badly that day and she had to accept, in front of a judge, the condition of getting help in the insane asylum.

 Her stay there had been largely uneventful, except for the screams she had to hear every single night, that prevented her from sleeping like a normal person. Besides that, she had to go to the shrink every single day, for an hour, and also to group therapy once a week. It was a lot of talking, of listening and of showing others how she felt and looking at people hurting from their pasts or presents. It was kind of tiring at the beginning, but it eventually became part of the routine.

 Same happened with the meds. Her doctor had assigned a certain prescription to her at first, but then it was change several times during her stay in the asylum. The things she had to take, with a little sip of water, kept getting stronger. She had begun losing grip of reality. After having a crisis in her cell, she decided to leave the meds and just pretend she was taking them. It wasn’t easy because they checked everyone afterwards, but she was able to make one of her new friends take them.

 The first week she spent outside of the asylum, she realized how mean that had been. Making someone unstable taker her meds could have been potentially destructive for said person and maybe even for herself. However, she knew that those chemicals would have never helped her at all. She just needed to get away from everything, she needed silence and calm, as well as some time away from everything that bothered her, starting with her job and her family. In short, she needed some sort of holiday.

 That’s why she liked to tell people that her stay in the asylum had been uneventful, just something he had to do in order to please the society that had deemed her unfit to be in society. She tried to fake her hatred of the system and decided to get a job that wouldn’t be as stressful as the one she had before. Over two months after her release, Theresa was able to get employed in a flower shop, taking care of the plants and also attending costumers when the owner wasn’t around. It was a very calm environment, perfect for her. Free of stress and fear.

 However, her family was still around maybe even more than before. Theresa had tried hard to make them understand she needed time for herself, in order to get well again. But they didn’t care about that at all. They were too busy thinking about how others would perceive them. Her mother had many friends all over the city and she had even received some gossip about her own daughter that Theresa just refused to discuss. She had no need or urge to comment on any of it with her mother.

 Her father had been dead for a couple of years and her mother and siblings would always say, when she was around, that it was better that way in order for her not to shame the family name and her father’s prestige in front of the rest of the community. They behaved as if they were kings and queens or something very similar. It was a relief when Donna, the owner of the flower shop, asked her to go for a short period of time to the small town from where she received the flower shipments.

 Apparently, they had been having problems with some of the plants and they needed to get them in line because Valentine’s Day was coming soon and that was their big day of the year for sales. Theresa had shown so much interest in the business and in the plants as themselves, that Donna thought it would be perfect to send her to represent the company. She would have to visit several plantations and tell them exactly what they were looking for, in order to improve sales and wealth for everyone involved.

 She accepted the moment Donna proposed her plan to her. She left a week later, without telling her family or anyone else. She just grabbed a suitcase and hopped on the bus. She arrived there and discovered how beautiful real nature was, how calm really looked and how people lived without so much tension from urban life. She hadn’t realized how her rough lifestyle had been an important factor in the development of her emotional crisis. City life almost killed her.

 When she arrived, Theresa was supposed to stay up to three weeks in the town, travelling to other parts of the region every day. However, she ended up staying more than two months. She only came back to help Donna with all the craziness of Valentine’s Day. Once the season ended, she went back to the countryside. No one ever knew what she did there but the truth was that she had been hired to do the same thing she did in the flower shop. The only difference was that she did it in the open; with real sunlight caressing her skin and that was priceless.

 Her family looked for her through email, mobile and telephone, but they never got to her because she had taken a step back from most of the things the modern world could offer. She visited an Internet café once a week to read some news and chat with Donna and other friends, but that was mostly it for her technological life. Most days were spent in the fields, sweating from early morning to sundown. It was hard work but she loved feeling so tired that no thoughts ran through her mind.

 She would be the first person to wake up, feed the chickens and pigs and then help in the field, doing whatever they asked her to do. She loved tending to roses, sunflowers and dahlias, but she would also work on a potato plantation and picking strawberries and grapes. It was always changing but it was good money for only one person. She eventually got to save enough to have her own little house, from were she could travel by foot to any of her jobs, no matter what she had to do.

 Before her breakdown she had been one of those women that never touched anything without a real necessity. She had a chauffeur to pick her up from her meetings and then take her back home or to the office. She had a maid to cook for her and two assistants that helped her much more than she would admit to. She would be very cold to all of them. Cold wouldn’t be the word as she was never outright mean, she just wasn’t one of those people that liked to hang out with others.

 Looking back at her past, she thought that woman in her memories was someone she couldn’t really recognize. That woman, through some sort of creep psychological magic, had been locked away in the asylum, with all the other crazy people. She was a danger to herself and others and it had been quite a difficult task to get rid of her. Because, before anything else, Theresa had to realize how bad everything was before taking the road to a better life, which is exactly what she did.

 Eventually, she met someone she was able to fall in love with. He was the first person there, in the countryside, to know who she had been and how much she had changed. He praised her for that and acknowledged her might every day of their life together.

 As for her mother and siblings, they kept trying to reach her but she never went back to the city. She just wrote them a letter telling them how her life was now much better than before and she had no need to go back to a place so toxic for her.

Two of one

   Used. That’s how she felt the moment she arrived home. The idea behind all of it had been to prove herself stronger than she thought she was. But maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she was just the frightened girl she didn’t wanted to be. The idea of being fearless had been a nice one to imagine but it had been highly unrealistic. This was, mainly, because she was always terrified. Every step she took into the world made her feel as is she had stepped into the mouths of hell. And though she forced herself through the most difficult things, she knew she was much more affected by everything than what she recognized.

 She sat on the bed for a while. Blinds and a curtain covered the window, which was good. She didn’t want to know a single thing about the sun out there, about light or life in the world. She wanted to stay there in her room for a while, a long while. After fifteen minutes of staring at a point on the floor, she remembered her clothes and took them off as fast as she can. Once she was only in her underwear, she got into bed and tried to sleep.

 It felt like the hardest thing she had ever done. Once again, her eyes would face the wall and wouldn’t close for nothing. She was too distracted, trying not to think about anything. That thought made her think about every single thing that had happened that night and she found herself repeating the scenes she had been through over and over again, like a movie in her head. She moved around in bed a lot, not being able to sleep or to shake off the thoughts.

 Maybe it was her, or maybe it was the weather, but the room started to feel like a sauna. Everything felt hotter, as if she was trying to sleep in an oven. It made sleeping even harder. She got out of bed and head to the door but stopped there. She wanted to have some water but, to do that, she had to go to the kitchen and that room was surrounded by windows and light. It was everything she wanted to avoid. Yet, she had begun to feel a sore throat and had no idea way.

 It was seven in the morning when she opened the door and practically ran to the kitchen. She grabbed a bottle of water and ran back to her room, as fast as she could. Other four people lived there and none of them were friends or anything like it. She barely spoke to any of them and couldn’t trust them with how she felt on that moment.

 Once back in her room, she drank half the water in the bottle in one sitting. She cleaned her mouth with her arm and decided it was time to try again. Only covered by a thin sheet, she finally fell asleep after finally deciding not to think about anything. She just put her mind blank and it worked. She fell asleep but it was an uneasy sleep.

 The poor woman moved around, her arms from one side to the other of the bed. She talked in her sleep too but it was hard to properly hear what she was saying, it was almost as if she was whispering to someone. That way, thrashing and whispering, she got to sleep for five hours. Around lunchtime, she woke up and decided that small rest had been enough. Her body wasn’t tired enough to keep on sleeping, although her mind certainly needed more time to get used to every single thing she was thinking about.

  Once up, she moved the curtain and raised the blinds. Her window led to an inner yard but some light came through it.  She had no intention of turning on her artificial light. The idea was to have natural light come into the room and feel a little bit less aggressive. After that, she decided it was time to have another expedition outside, this time to the bathroom. She ran quickly to it and did what she had to do as fast as she could. She didn’t want to stay there long enough to be greeted by anyone outside. Avoiding them was the idea for the day.

 When back in her room, she looked around in her closet and found something she had thought about in the bathroom: cookies. They were the ones she used to eat as a little girl. They were really thick and covered with chocolate chunks. She took the box to the bed and grabbed her laptop. The idea was to eat and distract her mind from the night before. She still felt dirty, she still felt she had transformed into someone she wasn’t and now she had to live with that other person.

 The best thing she could find was a cooking show, so she watched it in silence while eating about seven cookies. Once she was done, she put the box on the ground and covered herself entirely with the bed sheet. The food had helped her to feel tired again, maybe even sleepy. But then she realized there was something she needed to do before that, before anything. She put the laptop on the floor too and just stayed there, looking around the room.

 But she wasn’t only looking. She was recreating her night in her head, from the moment she had decided to step out of her house to the moment, just five hours ago, when she had come back feeling as she was feeling. The idea had been to have a drink or two and then head back home but she knew it had been then when the other woman had taken control of her.

 It was funny to talk about herself like that. She even smiled thinking that, after all, no matter what she told herself, she was that woman too. It was really another person, a dark figure in the night or something like that. That other woman with no scruples was also her but somehow she didn’t want to recognize her. She was scared to look at the mirror and realize who she was.

 Her sore throat was still there. She blamed the smoke in the place she had ended in but also the people there, the men especially. She had gone to that dark world to loose herself and, she realized, she wasn’t ready for it. The place was very dark and filled with all kinds of people, at least all physical kinds. Because, in their minds, they were all exactly the same. They all seek pleasure beyond anything they had ever imagined; they wanted to experience the extremes.

 She had used her cellphone to get to that place and she used it once again to get out of there. She stayed for about two hours and then ran out, leaving someone inside waiting for her. The nice girl that showed her face most of time, had appeared suddenly and had taken control of a body that had been through a lot during those two hours. She had done things she had never done before and that she probably would never do again.

 That’s what she wanted to ignore, to forget, to stop thinking about. But, after eating her cookies, having food in her belly, she realized the best way is always to confront ones fears, to look at them in the eye and see if they are really scary, if it’s worth it to be afraid of them. Because some fears are useful but others are just there to be in the way, they have to be defeated or at least jumped over to go on with life.

 She thought of all the kisses every touch, and also tried to put faces to all of that. It was good that she was able to do that. It made her feel less stressed, less like some kind of failure. She remembered everything, even with the alcohol and the drugs. Because it had been her who had done all of that. It had been her who had been inside the belly of the beast and had gotten out. It wasn’t some other imaginary woman.

 She turned around on her bed and decided the subject was closed. The past has to be left aside, always in our minds but not in our way. She closed her eyes for a while but did not fall asleep. She just wanted to be quiet and in peace with herself. She wanted to feel less like a something and more like someone. With her eyes closed, she heard the world and decided to think about how she perceived it all, how she could imagine a whole universe only by the sounds.

 It was a silly thing to do but it was the best game she could come up with. She was tired again and, as she played her game, she fell asleep. This time, it really felt like she was resting, not having to battle anyone or anything inside her mind. It was only her. She had been the one making every decision and she had to realize that was the way it was. She was the one calling the shots and she had to realize that wasn’t going to change.