The trick: The Story of The Woman.

The world seems like a mixture of grey and blue. Dark cloudy sky was seen through a chink in the white curtains fluttering in the wind. It seems as if it will rain soon. The light in the room has been out for a long time. Useless articles were scattered on the messy floor helplessly. Only cold, gloomy atmosphere was lingering inside the room. Again, I came back home.

I have a vague childhood memory. My family never spent time together. My mother was an accountant, who rarely came home. My father was a university professor, who was busy with his research project and school works. I always don’t know where they were. I don’t know where they were yesterday, and where they would be tomorrow. Since I was an only kid, I necessarily spent most of my time alone. One day, something that was supposed to come had come. Without any warning, they announced their divorce and asked me which side I will like to follow. Whatever decision I made, neither I nor my parents would care. I just stayed silent with my eyes fell. I found out that they no longer wore their diamond wedding rings on their fingers.

Otherwise, my life was a series of uneventfulness. I actually preferred it and wanted to keep it that way. Throughout whole elementary school to high school years, I neither have friends nor awareness with classmates. My parents – or parent – never really cared what I was like at school. Sometimes I even think I might be born to be a background for the leading actors and actresses in the first place. That can also be meaningful in some ways.

After graduating high school, I went to the university right next door to the place my father works at. I occasionally met him around but didn’t take a blind bit of notice of him. A good thing about the university was that I started to make some friends – though not many – who helped to let my meaningless time slides by much faster. Everything else was the same as before: uneventful, monotonous, aimless, meaningless, and thoughtless.

Yet, for some reason, I started to feel the lack of something. It grew bigger and bigger as graduation came nearer. Maybe it was always with me in the first place but I neither was unaware of it. I felt like I was so detached from everything that was happening in my life. Sometimes it was so severe that I cannot do anything and just wanted to kill myself. It is because man is a creature of loneliness, somebody claimed.

Several months after, I had a chance to meet this man. For some reason, I was strongly attracted to him at once and decided to date with him. I thought it was very merciful of me to do so because, who will like to love a man trapped in a mental hospital, not even capable of remembering other’s names? He should also be grateful to have someone who’d make him laugh all day, call him every night, want to know about him, wait for him so patiently, see him through his darkest hour, and even share one’s darkest fears for him. It made me feel like I’m doing something in the world.

At first, it seemed like it was doing the trick. But later it came out to be a “trick”.

It didn’t take long for the mischief to be managed. Later I noticed that everything I did to him as an act of charity was actually done to fill my emptiness. I never fell in love with him but rather needed someone who will love me, rely on me, share stories with me, and therefore make myself feel valuable. I needed someone to afford me a reasonable plot to explain a mean of living. I needed someone to help me move beyond the real images of myself. I needed someone to hang it all on. Now I know I was obsessed not to him but to the situation that he and I were in. I called him every day since I had no one else to keep in touch. I told him my darkest secrets because there was no one else to share them with. I loved his amnesia because I liked that he couldn’t remember the stupid things I had said. I loved his suicide attempt because it made me identify with him.

I made an effort to deceive myself fully to fall in love, in order to deny my loneliness, unstableness, and worthlessness: I wanted to avoid encountering my weakest parts. I couldn’t bear to look at myself going down deeper and deeper anymore. But now it is over, and I restore to my original state of depression and loneliness. The trick seemed to temporarily relieve the pain – do the trick –, but it failed to draw me out of the fundamental problem. I didn’t yet find the solutions that will “actually” do the trick. I wish I could, someday.

We never saw each other after that. We haven’t talked. But when “Anonymous” appears on caller ID, I think of him.

The painting of Helene Delmaire