- Look, you can talk while I highlight the notes from my last patient's session. You are a psychologist too, so your presence is not threat... - she said seating down, taking a hard deep breathing - Go ahead, Gus, tell me why did you arrive here in such way that looks you are claiming your sadness?
- Well, I have this constant feeling of being abandoned or forgotten and I don't know how to deal with that in a normal way.
- Again, hun? When does these feelings come across?
After a long pause to analyze his self, in order to use the words accordingly and profusely, he amended:
- I feel it more intensively when the dusk comes to pledge me, but irregularly, once in a while, it also catches me along the day.
- I see... Do you feel any abnormal physical condition? I mean, one of those that had affected you in the past, things like nausea, numbness, headache or anything else?
- If inertia counts as abnormal physical condition, well... the answer is yes.
She stopped for a while, saved her notebook in the drawer of the center table. Perhaps, in order to say what was needed to be said, she should be fully present... so grasping something in her mind, she said:
- Do you want to share anything regarding this inertia, my friend? Because, honestly, I do not think you would eager yourself to come here and not sharing what are the things that are really bothering you... ---
- Do you really think that?
She knew him time enough to do this kind of judgement.
- C’mon... you know you can share whatever you are feeling up to! So, please, put this fucking shit out!
In the other hand, he knew that this theme, specifically, she would not accept in an ease mood, so he was reluctant to share it, even though he also knew that she was the only one he could entirely trust - you know... life paradoxes.
- I am just sad, you know, and feeling fully sad, I cannot even feel anything else. I mean, i know that the feeling are there, but somehow I cannot feel them. Just this grey emotion that is absurdly dominating me.... Fuck!
- You know - she cleared her throat - it may sound that I am changing subject, but I remember something that I would like to share with you.
- And what is that?
- It is something regarding when we first met, there in the past, at that University Congress... I always envied you back then, you know?
- Why did you envy me back then?
- You were a smart man, Gus. With infinite qualities that I would spend the whole evening naming here, and there, back in times, you were so easygoing, eloquent, with your fluid conversations, that all my friends had a crush on you, even the gay ones... well, even myself, in the beginning of all that, had a crush on you too. And I envied you for your reasoning, your sense of get things done. But then...
- Then what?
- You felt in love for that girl, you know... That relapsing and meddlesome person that pretty much knows everything better than everyone does. That dress better than everyone does. That is fitter than everyone is. You changed a lot because of her, you know that, right?
He stared at her in silence, with his wandering eyes.
- You do not need to agree, ok? But after this long-term relationship that you had with her, you became blue, you forgot the reason you are here, you lost your principles, you became lazy and mischievous... well, you became another man... an asshole, I would say.
His silence occupied the room... and it speaks by itself, honestly.
- Do you miss her, Gus?
After a long sigh and some rub in the eyes with the back of his hand, he looked at, he confronted her with his words:
- A lot. I confess that I do not know what to do anymore. 'It is just a girl' I hear you all say, but, no, she is not just a girl for me. And you know ---
- What? What do I know? - Her facial expression changed. Seemed dubious and sorrowful at the same fucking time.
Gus frowned for a while more, trying to choose specific letters and words that could, perhaps, harm her less:
- Look, Debra, when it comes to these things... I mean, related to her, specially, it looks to me that you are always pissed-off because we did not work as a couple. You kind of hating when I go deep in this subject, because when we broke-up, two months later I was hanging out with her... and it seems to me that you did not accept that up to now...
It seemed that the clock stopped for a while: a long and awkward moment endured with them hanging in their solitude... but afterwards, he carried on:
- ... but, Debra... we tried, and you know how much we have tried... So, please, do not blame her for me kind of leaving you or for the flaws that led us nowhere, ok? You are also frustrated as I am, but you do not admit that to yourself too...
From this moment on, she stopped listening what he was talking about... “What the fuck? Where all that shit came from?”, she thought to herself and a second later, spit it all together:
- So... You come here, to my office, interrupting my sessions, telling to help you out to put your shit together, than you sum-up telling me that you still love that slob creature and finally, of course, you want me to be empathetic with you? Fuck-off, OK! Screw your blue mood and your heartbreak!
They got stuck in silence once more. And, in this absence of mood and temper, they still provoke themselves, struggling with the mental abyss that is created between people, and it that only can be perceived by the dilated eyes and bent postures. One only breaks the silence whether the thing to be said is worse than this mental fight or the collateral pain generated by the abyss is not steady anymore.
- I am sorry... I do not know what I was thinking when I came here expecting that you could help me with that. I should have imagined that it would somehow cause you harm. I am leaving, ok?
- Ok, I think it is the best thing to do right now. I cannot help you with that, I am sorry. It is too heavy for me ---
- Don't say a word - he whispered moody with his hands in his jeans pockets - I understand your reasons Debra. Bye.
Even with his disappearance of the room, took her a while to escalate the fucking abyss back up, stop staring at nowhere, feel herself minimally alive again and react to the walls of the room...
- The door... - she said emitting a spasming voice - he left the fucking door open.
After these words, inevitably, she thought to herself about the conditions that would make him let the door opened:
- Does he want me to follow through to reach him back again?
She stared that opened rectangular vain for a while until she got another hypothesis:
- Does he let the fucking door opened because he is unsure and insecure about this whole thing?
- Too much thinking for a door, don't?
- Holly shit! What the hell are you still doing here?!
- I just stepped back in to let you know that your next patient have just arrived, but could not avoid you brainstorming about me and this fucking door.
- I am sorry for that, I did not mean to...
- Save your words for now, Debra, OK? - he said interrupting her abruptly - Look, I love her, you know. I still fucking love her. And I did not forget her. I am actually pretty much far from getting done with this whole thing.
Debra's tears started to pop out from the corner of her left eye now.
- I am sorry if you still love me, but I do not love you anymore... Again, I am sorry for that Debra.
He left the room again. But this time, he turned to her, he hung the doorknob with his right hand and closed it slowly and patiently, staring at her wet eyes, as he disappeared from her view.
It may sound heartless at first glance - and even evil, I know - but it was him being honest, bloody hell honest.
As soon as he left the building, he felt himself lost and landless, like he was not even part of this planet. Walking around and around again, with the feeling of crossing the same fucking streets countless and countless times, so he decided to stand still for a while on that nameless street.
People crossed by countless times, looking at him, as he was panhandler or a rustler.
So he chose a bank and sat to disguise his mischievous posture. Remained there for a couple of minutes, then he took his cellphone out of his pocket and looked at his agenda's phone number. Her number was the last one that he have tried to call. Six attempts in less than thirty minutes.
He was unquiet, tried to save his cellphone in his pocket again, seconds later got it again, looked at the last calls, yearned a little more. Then, like not holding himself anymore, he pressed the button to call her.
In this moment, he stood up again, because the anxiety was unbearable, but then he heard the click and a voice:
- Hi! Can you hear me? It is me. Yes, great! I-I-I am sorry for calling you again, but... You know, I miss you. Listen, could we talk it through? I still think that we can make the things up, I just, I just... We just need to talk about it... Can we? He could hear her hard breathing crossing the telephone line and reaching his ears in a mix of pain and despair... But suddenly, she answered the uncanny and unexpected:
- Yes, I can meet you today. What about 7pm at the coffee shop we used to go?
For God sake... thank you! Yes, I see you there at 7pm.
He felt strangely relieved, like he was in peace, as if he felt that it could be rearranged. For a while, after the call hung-up, he remained there, paralyzed, on the middle of the street, stuck with his emotional past memory of everything that he and she had once built. Despite the counter arguments of people about the negative influence of this girl in his life, he does not give a fuck. That is a particular thing, hard to explain, to put into words, especially because love is something that aches in the soul, not in the flesh, so how can we testify that he was right or wrong?
[to be continued]
