To My Beloved Enemy
I’m still alive
It was dark in the room at dawn. The clock was ticking in the quiet, and I could hear my sister’s even breathing; she was happily asleep, probably watching a round of peaceful dreams (I read somewhere that we actually dream most actively before dawn).
I was lying in my bed staring at the ceiling.
I was sharing the room with my younger sister because I was scared of the dark and couldn’t sleep alone. So my little sister agreed to let me in, like years ago when we were preschoolers sleeping in adjacent beds and holding hands, so the monster couldn’t catch us.
The little thing was very proud of herself; she was helping out her know-it-all sister who had read a gazillion books and never had to put much effort into anything because it came effortlessly. A generous gesture, because my little sister was at the teenage age when she just started enjoying some independence and the last thing that she wanted was to have her 19-year-old depressed sibling invading her bedroom every night.
Little did she know that sharing a bedroom actually didn’t help.
I very soon discovered that I was scared not so much of the dark; I was scared to close my eyes. The darkness of the room was nothing compared to the inescapable and inexplicable darkness of my mind when I closed my eyes. When I closed my eyes, neither the little night lamp in my corner of the room nor my sister’s peaceful breathing could help me.
Does anyone realize how dark it becomes when you close your eyes? Are people grateful for the blissful unawareness that comes with the ability to fall asleep either quickly or by drowning in their thoughts?
Even drowning in negative thoughts seemed like bliss. You see, when your mind goes through negative thoughts over and over again, your imagination usually runs wild, too, and depicts something for you. So, you can see the scary picture.
In contrast, when I attempted to close my eyes, all I saw was a pitch-black abyss with zero thoughts and a very strong physical sensation of intangible something around me. Not that the ‘intangible something’ was scary in any way. It was scary to sense that it was there.
It felt impossible to close my eyes for longer than 20 milliseconds.
As the noisy morning was settling in — always noisy in the middle of a multi-million city — the household was waking up, I was lying in bed staring at the ceiling. I had to get myself ready for university; that didn’t worry me too much, because I knew I could still study reasonably well, even with the many sleepless nights behind me. I knew that it would end badly, and I’d fail an exam or simply wouldn’t turn up at university one day. I didn’t care much. I had immediate problems to think about. Like another night that was fast approaching.
It’s funny how day hours seemed to rush past me as if someone put an invisible timer that was counting down the time to the evening. Nothing that would happen during the day was important. In fact, I was more and more reluctant to get out of bed every day.
The phone rang and I heard your soft smooth voice.
We split some months ago, but you kept ringing me. I always admired the drastic difference between your masculine brutal looks with your cold penetrating blue eyes and your soft smooth voice speaking in a gentle tone with notes of deep intimacy. Always soft, always soothing, your voice could get right into people’s hearts.
‘How are you feeling today? Did you manage to get some sleep?’ — your voice asked gently.
I could sense your light smile on the other side of the phone line.
You knew very well I wasn’t sleeping much in the last several months. You knew I wasn’t feeling well. You knew why, too. You knew that I knew that you knew.
‘Tell me exactly how you feel’ — you said.
I sensed a slight shade of a lovingly sadistic note in your voice.
Those phone conversations once a week became our ritual. Strangely, your voice was one of the few things that still kept me anchored to the everyday world.
I didn’t feel and say much during our phone conversation, maybe because I conserved energy to plot yet another unworkable strategy to get myself to sleep the coming night.
It’s not like I didn’t have any sleep at all.
Humans can’t live long without sleep, right? My strategy for the last couple of weeks was to lie down in my bed with eyes wide open, like a baby (little babies don’t know how to close their eyes) and get myself so exhausted that I would fall asleep automatically.
Does anyone realize how hard it is to fall asleep with open eyes? I don’t know how babies do it.
The downfall of that approach was that sleep didn’t come at the first attempt, so I had to glimpse the dark terror of the abyss of my mind several times, jumping in and out of the pre-sleep phase before I almost fainted with fatigue which was usually in the middle of the night.
Then there was no guarantee that I wouldn’t wake up to go to the bathroom or because I had a nightmare. I’d jump up, walk nervously up and down the dark room, quietly and carefully so I didn’t wake my sister. Then, after calming down, I would have to undergo the whole process again. It could take me hours.
There were simply not enough hours in the night for all that ridiculous insanity.
‘Nightmares again? Make sure to take the pills I gave you’ — your voice produced genuine compassion during one of our many phone conversations.
Ah, the pills.
Just before our breakup I was silly enough to take some of the pills you gave me until I realized that your gentle compassionate voice was in stark contrast with your razor-sharp eyes that studied my every move with cold detachment, like a lab assistant would study a mouse in a glass box.
I noticed how you looked at me when you thought I wasn’t watching.
Unlike your voice your eyes didn’t lie. I noticed the cold hostility of your eyes a long time ago. Well before I stopped sleeping at night. Why do you think we even ended up like this?
I didn’t know what kind of pills you gave me — we lived in a country and at the time when unprescribed drugs were freely floating around and therapy was unheard of. You were six years older, with some connections to the criminal world and some connections to the government which was a criminal world in itself, at least in that country at that time. You could easily get me any pills you liked.
And why would I even need pills?
By now, my reality was starting to break apart like a mirror with multiple cracks that was still holding together, but ready to flow apart in hundreds of tiny sharp pieces.
Does anyone realize how impossibly hard it is to live on little sleep without having a strong positive motivation? Parents having sleepless nights care after beautiful babies. People having sleepless nights to care for sick family members. What motivation did I have?
‘Do you remember what you told me?’ — your soft voice asked on the phone the next time you called.
I told you so many things during our rather short romance. I couldn’t quite remember, especially with the fog of fatigue that never left my mind these days.
‘You told me you loved me. But you never did, not truly’ — your voice patiently reminded me of the innocent thing that started our drama. Then there came a deep sad sigh with a shade of reproach.
I said I loved you because that was exactly how it felt to me.
As if anyone knows what love is. I definitely didn’t know at the age of 19. For me, love was a light-touch romantic relationship with lots of passion and no commitment. I didn’t realize you wanted undeniable proof of my love, non-negotiable loyalty and total control of my life.
You said that my love was superficial and ingenuine. And I thought that your love was suffocating and restrictive. Neither was prepared to compromise. Understandably, we clashed.
My dream of romantic love went down in flames and your dream of a conservative love story with marriage and kids never happened (who wants kids at 19?)
‘You broke my heart. One day you’ll regret it’ — you added after a silence.
Somehow, I ended up being the bad guy in our love story.
As I was going through the gray days that were difficult to tell one from another, my mother would now and then reappear in my life to remind me how pathetic I was.
‘You’ve lost weight and the sparkle in your eyes. You look like a zombie. What is all the suffering about?’ — my mother was upfront and unforgiving, as usual.
She was right though.
I had no idea what my suffering was all about. Didn’t you say that I’d regret it? You could always put words on feelings better than me. So, it must then be a regret that made me suffer.
I didn’t know that humans could experience a regret that was so strong, overwhelming and all-consuming.
But it wasn’t the regret you’d think I had.
I didn’t regret losing you. I had mixed feelings for you. I was torn between love and hatred. It was like a strong swing of a pendulum: one day total hatred and next day sweet love. Some days, I experienced both, simultaneously. I couldn’t choose between the two. I wanted to have my cake and eat it, too. It wasn’t viable.
You see, somewhere along this journey you somehow became unimportant.
You have to realize the drama was never about you. I wanted to keep my love for you. When I want something, I become very driven and focused on my goal. And I wanted to love you, my way. Period.
But after all the confrontation and brainwashing, after our breakup followed by a prolonged period of sleepless nights, hatred was slowly becoming the underlying note in the mix of my feelings for you until it became as strong as my love. I knew you became my enemy. I knew I hated you now.
But I was still reluctant to let go of my dream that I could love you.
My mind was fully taken by my inability to make a choice. I felt that there was that magical switch in my mind that could put my life back on track, but that switch would only work if I presented it with either love or hate. And I didn’t want to choose.
That was how my mind got stuck and put my life on hold. I bet something similar was going on in your mind, too. Otherwise, why would you be still calling me?
My mother was absolutely right — all that suffering was ridiculous.
As days, weeks and months were passing by in a gray autumn-like blur (maybe it was an eternal autumn outside of my sad reality, who knew?) and I was progressively losing weight, friends and joy, I suddenly realized that you didn’t call as frequently anymore.
Then one weekend you called with the usual ‘How have you been?’ in your usual soft and gentle manner.
It was the usual meaningless but seemingly well-meaning chatter mainly working as a reminder of why we were still talking — two people who couldn’t decide what they wanted to feel for each other.
Then before hanging up, you said, ‘It’s good to see you’re still alive’.
You said that with a sudden metallic undertone in your voice like in a clash of two swords. The undertone was light and brief like a cold breeze, but I noticed.
So, was that the purpose of your phone calls — to check if I was still alive?
Yes, we lived in a turbulent country in violent times, but I wasn’t in the high-risk category of people who could get killed any time. Or did you hope that I would get overdosed with your pills or fade away from sleep deprivation? That was a bit of wishful thinking, don’t you think?
That question, and the momentarily steel sharpness of your tone were the triggers I desperately needed. I was finally ready to make the choice and I chose to hate you.
I felt the magic switch turn in my mind, instantly.
I got out of bed, moved out of my sister’s room and out of my family’s apartment. I forgot what my dream love looked and felt like. I gained back my weight, got back my friends, focused on my studies and my job and started dating like nothing happened. I ditched regret for good.
My sister shrugged and rolled her eyes at my sudden change of heart.
She could never quite cope with the seemingly random moves that I made in life. You know me, I’m not the type of a person who would talk through all these silly things with friends and family. You would be the one who could understand me, but you weren’t around anymore.
My mother, being the person she was, said, ‘You’ve been out of action for almost 10 months. It’s good to see you’re finally done with playing the victim.’
You’ll find it amusing, I know, that my nightmares stayed for years.
They felt like a farewell kiss that reminded me — no, not of you my beloved enemy — but of my stubborn attachment to a feeling that I called ‘love’ and tried forcefully to fit you into it as if you were a Russian wooden doll. So, if nightmares disappeared too quickly, what would be then left to remember?
I didn’t remember your face or our romantic moments, not really. When I tried to remember your face, all that I could see was a pitch-black darkness.
I got used to associating you with darkness, how sad is this?
Then one day I decided to let the nightmares go, too.
That was how my love turned to hatred and then to nothing.
I hope you feel nothing, too, because it’d been too burdensome to live all these years with bitter hateful memories.
