Time, only Time - Part 6

He reconsidered the reason why he had been smoking for so long pretty often, also if his sickness was really due to long and intensive smoking.
The former had various answers, almost each time a new one. He could not totally deny that he enjoyed smoking. Sometimes it was definitely the most pleasant occupation in addition to how he adored the taste of certain cigarettes. The only thing about smoking which he really disliked was ridiculously lighting his cigarettes. It somehow seemed quite disgusting for him to light cigarettes, so if he was with a smoking friend or companion he would always ask them to do him the favor and then he would personally turn around in order to spare himself the sight of his cigarette being lit.
However, what really kept him smoking all these years - even when he was unable to tell the taste - was the time effect of his addiction. He was no chain smoker, neither unable to avoid smoking for more hours or even one whole day when he had to. Yet he was addicted enough to feel the urge and the need to smoke every few hours. The alarm worked for him as kind of his personal time measuring system and this was to be treasured most at the times when he could not get his mind clear or off of certain things which bothered or troubled and in most cases also hurt him.
As to the second question, weather his sickness had anything to do with smoking: very little, he believed.
He would not even try to give up, this was a fact, but mostly for he knew ater all this time that his sickness was a great deal more of a mental matter than one to do with his smoking. So he was convinced, should he have given up smoking, his mental disturbance would find another way to express itself. No matter how healty his life was, he could not get away with health problems as long as his mind and his soul were not in peace.
He was obviously tires of having been sick over the past ten days. The worst were however his two days in the hospital. He always kept telling everyone that staying at any health care center would just make his health deteriorate and his suffering greater, but their blind trust in medical science just would not let them accept; or maybe it was their unwillingness to admit that he was truly not to be helped.
This time, he was specially ashamed of himself and how he was only to be helped by her and not by any of the other people who loved him so much and who tried almost everything to help him.
This morning for instance, he had woken up with the pain, which had stopped just one single minute after her arrival, so that he was being fine for the moment, although the fatigue and the residues of pain and sickness did still feel like a heavy load on his chest.
He was tired, obviously tired, mentally and physically tired, too damn tired.
He had been so troubled over these ten days that he was absolutely unable to enjoy her presence as he usually did. She was there ad maybe even god failed to realize how happy this made him, yet it was just not like it always used to be. Maybe he was too desperate or disappointed with how he was being rejected by her fears all over again and again; maybe he was just too tired.
They were cooking and chatting in his kitchen, the same way they had done thousand times before, yet it was not quite like every time; he made the habitual jokes, talked the same way, tried to look calm, chilly and happy as he did every second he had the chance to pass with her, it was just not the same. He was just unable, incapable to feel good.
He was giving his best to excel at pretension, far her presence was far too valuable for him, regardless of the circumstances. He wondered weather he really hoped not to be cut red handed by her or weather his grieving heart did actually wish upon it to happen. For all he had ever dreamt of and all he had ever wished upon would be like blown away with a storm, should she be neglecting the storms inside him to this great extent. There was no mistake to the fact that the two were really close and there could also be none to the fact that she cared for him or the first fact would have already been denied.
So he really felt relieved when she finally asked him the fatal question after they had finished their lunch and were talking over bier. She knew he could not lie, she knew he would not lie. She had suspected why he was being so sick lately, she had speculated the reason. How she felt about it, she would of course not let him find out, just as usual, as he expected. She would never deny anything, she would never say he was just a friend to her, but she would never let him find out what she really felt either. She drove him crazy in each and every way. She just questioned him, she just tried to convince him that he was misjudging his own feelings, his own dreams. How dared she? How dared she tell him what he wanted after all these years of dreaming? Did she know how he smelled her scent every time? Did she know about his nightmares at nights and how he woke up every time feeling guilty to have dreamt of all that happening to her? Had she ever stared into her own eyes to see what stuff she was made of? Was she even capable to realize the stuff his dreams were made out of? So that she could recognize she was made of the same? How dared she ever deny the spell she had cast upon him the first time she ever touched him? Was she aware of how his bare skin longed for her touch every night he tossed and turned in his cold bed trying to defeat pain?
He repeated the questions in his mind in thousand various forms, but he did not dare ask them. It broke his already suffering soul off in infinite number of pieces to be denied by her. Was she actually doing this to protect him? Did she not know that it simply did not work? He wanted to cry, he wanted to shake her until all her fears were shaken off her, he felt like cutting his veins so that the blood flowing out would demonstrate the truth in a way impossible to deny anymore. He felt the sudden attack of the pain which has been forced away for some hours. He felt down, he felt as if gasping for every cubic centimeter of air. He actually burst into coughing over the dining table.

Scheitern

Wer von uns wollte es nicht wahrnehmen?

Wer hat es zuerst geleugnet?

Wer hat zuerst die Anwesenheit der Angst gespürrt?

Wer hat zuerst sich erschrecken lassen?

Wer hat uns als erster unterschätzt?

Wer hat uns beigebracht, der Schmerz sei falsch?

Denn alles Heilige, alles Schöne fängt mit Schmerz an;

das Leben selbst

sogar Kunst...

unter anderem dein Lächeln;

auch jene Hand, die Deine durch diese einsamen Nächte hält.

Time, only Time - Part 5

He held his breath on the phone until he heard the feminine voice on the other end say in an exhausted voice: “Don’t you think it might be pretty inconvenient to call at 2 am? It’d better be really important”
He knew she did not mean what she was saying but she just had to say it for how he knew her all over the years. In a normal conversation this would have been a pleasant joke, but right now he was too far from anything pleasant or any joke. With a sudden burst into panting words rushed out of his mouth: “The songs I have started to listen to were just the beginning. This is only getting worse. I haven’t seen her about 20 days already…”
“Have you talked to each other?” she interrupted.
“Well, yes, of course. Are you out of your mind? But that’s not the point.” he tried to get back to his speech, panting harder. “I see, so?” she said in a clearly unsatisfied tone. “This is just getting worse. I am sick again, just don’t tell me to go see the doctor, for this time I know what it is about and you know that the doctor can’t treat this one…” he was saying, clearly as fast as his numb tongue in his dried mouth could pronounce words.
“Only she can as you are making your point.” she interrupted again. This was the price he had to pay for calling her late, he knew pretty well and he could put up with it. “I haven’t come to the worst yet”, he went on, “I can’t sleep. I toss and turn in my bed all night long and the very few moments when I do manage to fall asleep I have only nightmares… I need help, this is really driving me mad… well, you see… a couple of hours ago I dreamt I had betrayed her.”
“Now that’s new.” she said.
“What is this supposed to mean? I do not think she’d even care. I mean, how can I betray someone to whom I have no commitments made? I can‘t take it anymore, I had to talk.” although he knew he was getting incoherent he went on. “need help, serious help. Am I not supposed to be too old for this? Too stupid? Concentrated on just making my way out of this hell I have lived all these years?”
“Maybe that’s what you should really do. Maybe you need that more than her, maybe she is just awakening your conscious… “ she tried to sound casual, he thought. She knew very well this was not right, she knew he could not quit, she knew he had to stick with the job to finally accomplish what he had tried to achieve all through these years. She knew how important this was to him. She was the one person who could know. She was the only one who did understand. She was trying to relieve him by ignoring the importance of all what mattered and she was no good pretender. Damn was he thinking fast, he thought before interrupting.
“I want her. I would do anything to make sure I’d have her. I’d give anything up. This is serious. Once I could have her, I’d need nothing more. She IS the dream I‘ve always looked for.” he said to leave her no more room beating about the bush.
“Anything?” she asked, more investigating than skeptically.
“Anything.” he replied, already knowing that he was about to pretty soon regret his thoughtless response. “Swimming?” she asked, without bothering to make any sentence out of it. The plain word on its own sounded much stronger, he thought. It hit him quite like a lightning ball. So this was it, it was about how high a prize he was ready to pay for something he was not going to have after all. She had made her point, it was all about what you were about to lose, to give, to sacrifice. It had never been about what you were about to gain, to win. He had indeed lived his life as in the middle of a battlefield and every idiot should understand after some minutes of thinking that there was nothing to gain or to win on a battlefield. It was all about what you would lose in order not to lose what was of greater importance.
Thinking about the answer to give her he felt desperate. A new sort of grief grew in his red eyes. The silence was unbearable for the following seconds; unbearable for both of them, for they both had lived with this bitter truth through their lives and knew very well what it meant.
“Even that.” he whispered as clear as no cry could sound. For a split of a second he believed to have heard her sniff.
“Drive up to her place,” she suggested with a voice which allowed no doubts, “leave her no more alibis to ignore how strong you feel about her. You’re right, no doctor will help you this time. I drop in at your place in the evening to be by your side should you be lying in bed.”
They both hung up with no more words, he knew how stunned his face was about to look at the moment; so he just avoided the mirror on his way to crush in his bed.

Time, only Time - Part 4

Swimming with her was extremely relaxing, the most marvelous and peaceful image in his mind and at the same time accompanied by a pain impossible for him to endure. It was like a scenery of all he had ever wished upon and all he ever dreamt of, found but inaccessible to him. He felt the urge to cry or to commit suicide every time he swam with her.
For some legendary moments he was taken far far away from the world he was about to live in and he actually came to believe that he had both of them, that there existed nothing but he, she and swimming on earth. And then he was suddenly hit by the bitter truth that every thing else on earth stood between him and the two. For a short split of a second, facing her with no more than 40cm distance in water, both panting, wet and smiling, he felt happy. He felt as great a happiness as no one can ever even define. There was nothing else he wanted; staring deep into her hazel eyes he just wanted this moment to last for ever, for all eternity; or maybe just for all his - in comparative to eternity - short life. He wanted to embrace this moment, he felt like embracing her; and then he realized how it was forbidden for him to do so by the “unspoken rules” between them. Rules he was not certain whether they really existed or whether he had made them up for he was afraid she might ever say no or ask him to stop.
He gently touched her hair and pulled it back a little. Her smiling face did not even change a bit.
He suddenly hated all possible rules of the world, he hated his weakness, he hated fear, he hated himself for giving in to fear. Why should he not be able to surround and shelter this woman? He had been playing lots of games in his life, games he was obliged to play to survive the outside world. What kind of a game had he accepted to play this time? Was he really obliged to or was he just too weak to decline the new game? Did she really want him to play a game or was she waiting for him to finally recognize he had better stopped playing any possible game and declare himself to her? He was going crazy, this was not supposed to happen at such a happy moment. He had to stop, he had to just enjoy the moment, nothing else, right now everything else was a great mistake to make.
Why was she doing this to him? What did she want? What was she looking for? was it really she doing this to him or was it actually he himself? He could not tell anymore, he could not tell anything anymore. He was far too confused to be able to tell anything. He was dealing with a confusion so great, that it was already eating him up from inside. He felt like dying for he hoped that death should not be as confusing as life, he wished everything to end up in a silent death; it should not necessarily be painless or quick, just a quiet one, just a silent one.
He did really wish for less complications. He was pretty often told to be a quite complicated person himself, yet he always found the outside world to be much more complicated, complicated beyond his understanding and beyond his imagination; it did really remain “the outside world”, regardless of how long he had already been living in it.