The Novel: Crisis of Life - Chapter one

Through a window to a large room, from the floor of a house on 5th Parklands Avenue came the sound of whimpering; quiet but steady.

The neighbors thought she was watching one of those house-wife delight soap operas The people passing on the street below her window thought....well, they didn't even think about it. They had their own problems. And the dog perched neatly on the sofa, he looked like he himself were crying, weeping for his human. She cried, and cried, and cried......

* * *

"Hey Helga! Did you get the message I sent you?" It was Charles from her office. He sat at the cubicle opposite hers.
She mumbled something inaudible so he came round to her desk. She didn't appear in the mood to be disturbed and was busy typing away at her computer, but he persisted anyway.

"Why don't you open your email while still logged on?" He suggested, "Or do you want me to hang around here all day asking the same question over and over?"

"God no! I'll do that right now. D'you promise to go away afterwards?" He nodded and she added, sounding annoyed, "Okay then, can I get some privacy?"

"What d'you need the privacy for? I'm the one that sent you the message, I know what's in there!"

"I don't want you to see the expression on my face when I open it, so please leave."

"Okay! Jeez! What's your problem? I'm leaving, I'm leaving!

"Good."

As soon as Charles went back to his cubicle, she closed her in box and continued writing her report. She knew it was just another one of his phony love messages again. He never gave up. 'What a pest' she thought. 'I hope my application goes through; I have to get out of here'.

Helga had applied for a job at a local newspaper, not only was the pay comfortable, the workload was light. She only had to write two stories for her column each week. If only this worked out, then she would give Charlie back his money and hopefully he'd leave her alone. And then, she'd also move to another place without telling anyone, that way, no matter how much Charlie tried to trap her, he could never find out where she was in the first place.

She crossed every imaginary appendage in her head, hoping for the best.

On the other side of the miniature cardboard wall that separated them, Charlie snickered at the pictures on his screen. He imagined the expression on Helga's face when she opened the email he sent her and saw them. 'She might start crying. So I'll rush there and comfort her. She'll be helpless. I'll make her need me. I'll make her love me'.

On the other side of him, Helga was wondering how much more of him she could take. She though of Edward and it all felt better. He was coming to pick her up in a few minutes. As she corrected the last spelling mistakes on her report and sent it to her boss, she decided that she'd had a bad enough day; she would open Charlie's email tomorrow.

So she wore her headphones, selected some calming blues music from her playlist, sat back and relaxed, cell phone in hand, so that when Edward rang, she would feel it vibrate.

It would be alright, Edward was coming....

Cookie Just Crumbled

Suicide sounds inviting at this moment. But no, I'm not strong or stupid enough to take my own life. Whoever said that suicide is an act of cowardice is a complete know-nothing half-wit.

Fear of the unknown is what suiciders overcome because they are going to a place they are not familiar with, they don't know what awaits them. No one has come back from the dead (Jesus doesn't count) and told us what it's like when you die, how long you have to wait before you get to that place they call paradise; it's completely unfamiliar territory. So, suicide, an act of cowardice? I don't think so.

I'd rather live and grow old with troubles I've seen other guys go through.

As to where my life is going now, I have no idea, and that to me is suicide.

I might have ruined someone's life and mine along with it.

You know when you reach a certain point in your life and everything feels perfect? If only for a second. That second, that almost unnoticeable moment, is such a haunting thing. You always wonder why things couldn't be perfect like that everyday, because the very next minute, everything that could go wrong, does go wrong.

I've been told life is about making decisions. True, but up until this moment, that hasn't been what my life has been about. I've just been lucky I guess.

Been playing it safe and nice all this time. Even when I got out into the real world, it was always about keeping people at a distance, watching them from there, letting them know only what I wanted them to know, a lie here and 'a truth' there, it never gets too intimate.

But lately, I've been thinking about what my life will be like in 10 years when I'm thirty. Will I want friends that I can't have, want a child that I can't have because, I can't have a child on my own. Even adoptive parents usually must be married or something.

Will I wake up one day, 30, alone and realize that my failure to make a decision 8 years ago has developed into a nightmare that recurs every time I shut my eyes?

I keep telling myself 'if only things had been different'. But then what? If things would've been different, what would've happened? Would I not have taken that ring? Would I still have taken it. Or would I have wanted to get married the very next day and had ten babies after that? Would he have left me for another woman. Divorced me only to come back to me 20 years down the line, worn out and spent from running around with all sorts of 'other' women?

Would I have run off with another man because I wasn't happy? Would I have allowed myself to remain with him in spite of my deep dissatisfaction? Am I strong enough to do that even?

What am I looking for? It's not perfection; it doesn't exist. I just haven't found it yet.

If only the only real man to any woman, her father, my father were here to answer all these questions.

I wouldn't be in this dilemma.

Double Hmmmm.....

Shortly after I wrote the piece below this one, I disengaged myself. For what reason? Something felt terribly wrong! Don't know whether it's cynicism, fear or the fact that I'm just not happy. I don't know what the hell went wrong. Just didn't feel right.

I'm probably going to live the rest of my regretting it. What can I do?

Hmmmm......

So I got engaged this past weekend! Yep! Accepted 21 carats of something that some people would call precious - as a sign of commitment that will end up in marriage.

Engaged!

I'm still in shock. Yeah! Shocked I am.
You'll probably see me walking around with what looks like a plastic mask of a shocked person's face. Or maybe see me walking around looking at the ground...as if the ground just spoke to me!

Pretty soon guys are gonna start asking what the hell I'm looking at the ground for. They're going to be saying:
"Look at that! What's wrong with this person? Is she crazy."
"Yeah! I think she's crazy."
Then they're going to start looking at the ground themselves, just to make sure that there's nothing there and are in turn going to look just as crazy as me because, picture this, guys are going to be looking at them, looking at me, looking at the ground and it's all just going to look crazy. One vicious cycle. Crazy how my brain works.

Well, there's one thing I'm worried about. I'm still devising a way to break it to my mother. Crazy! She doesn't even know him. Never met him!

It's supposed to be the easiest thing in the world to do, but No! I gotta be very careful what to say to her. And I know what she'll say too! She'll say:

You're getting married to a guy I've never even met?"
And I know too the look that will come with those words. It's going to be a look of complete and utter disappointment. Is there anything like that?

Funny how as I write this, I can hear the voice of Robert DeNiro in my head. It's like he's the voice of my thoughts. He narrates...no, dictates and I write. He's the narrator to the tragic comedy that is my life.

Back on earth, I got engaged on Thursday night, two days ago and haven't once called my fiance. He hasn't called either. Doesn't that spell disaster? What is that?

God! I hate mobile phones, whose inventor should burn at a stake. No. How about this? Cut the damn genius up and burn every piece of him at a different stake! You know. To make sure he's cooked good and doesn't come back to life to invent devices that allow you to communicate telepathically!

Think about it! I mean, you could be somewhere thinking, oh he'll never find me here! And Bam! He's got you because you are thinking of how good a hiding place you're in, but at the same time, he's tapping into your thoughts and knows exactly where you are! Crap. That's how mobile phones are to me. See I got tired of lying about where I was, so nowadays, I just don't pick up the phone. Damn you mobile phone inventor.

So the connection between the mobile phone and my engagement? My fiance will call, has called always but not the night of the engagement or the morning after the engagement and only manages a text message that I find suspect.

What the hell am I supposed to think of that? God! I'm a writer, and a damn imaginative one at that, so right now I'm thinking at 2000 miles an hour how he must've gotten high, left the building(whichever) with a hooptie and is right now having drunken passionate relations with her....aaand without protection.

Oh! And there's something totally wrong with this picture. Aside from that, I'm convinced about something else........

Anyway...I'm praying for a miracle.

Getting Things Straight

God! What have I done?
Maybe my writing is too complicated for most guys because it appears that each time I write, something intending to pass a certain message, people understand it in the exact opposite.

The guy I walk with, I'm sure you know who, has nothing to do with this story, this is just my view of the world.

Whenever I look at myself, my life, the things I go through, then compare them with problems that other people have at the time that I'm thinking I'll never get past my own seemingly impossible to deal with problems. Whenever I think like this,I tell myself to look around and see that other people have even bigger problems than me.

I love to write but I don't always have the inspiration to write very good pieces so I just settle for venting my frustrations or frustrations of those I love by writing not so scholarly pieces.

Please, oh good readers, don't take everything at face value. With the things I write, it requires that the readers think about it for a second or 200.

Otherwise, the one I walk with is an Angel in Human Skin.

Don't speak ill of him else you shall have to deal with the very physically violent me. He is an exceptionally gentle man, smart and knows how to behave himself perfectly.

You should be asking God to bless him, not cursing him.

Do I have problems?

Do I have problems?

Let’s see. I’m healthy, I have a job for now, I have a place to live, I have at least one person I can ask for almost any kind of help.

Again, let’s see. Problems is when you have no job and can’t seem to get one and have on one to encourage you to keep looking because, by God, today, after 2000 days of searching, might be the day a boss comes calling.

Problems are when you find yourself homeless, on the street wondering which is more evil, stealing or begging.

Problems are when you discover you have no Idea what you are going to eat tonight, when you forget that you haven’t eaten for the past 2 days and everyone is asking you why you look like crap but don’t really care. They just want to know so that if it’s contagious, they can take cover.

Problems are when you invest everything, you mind, you body, your soul and most importantly your money into a relationship, a marriage, only to discover 25 years down the line that your husband/wife is a cheat. But that’s not the bad part.

The bad part is when he/she leaves you for the other man/woman. A woman might take her children. The man will leave you with your children to take care of. At least you have them. The other bad part is when you discover that on one of his returns from his adulterous escapades he brought home an infection.

So, problems are when you discover you’ve got Aids and you know for God’s sake that you didn’t go looking for it. It was brought to you by someone you trusted.

Problems are when a man out of nowhere or from your own family rapes you and leaves your traumatized for life and you can’t keep a relationship for more than 2 minutes and guys wonder what the hell is wrong with you.

Problems are when you have friends who have no idea what to suffer is and you must save face by pretending that you are just like them and have lived a marvelous life.

Problems are when you have a relationship in the office, everyone knows about it, but then there’s this one jealous bastard who just doesn’t want you to be happy and sabotages everything you work to build in that relationship.

Problems are when you are trying to tell someone the truth but they won’t listen and just keep interrupting you until the lie you’ve been living suddenly blows up in your face when that someone finally shuts up and asks: “Okay now, tell me the truth”.

Problems are when you are living life because you’ve got oxygen in your lungs, and blood in your veins, not because you’ve the desire to live.
Problems are when you go to church and ask God to give you a sign if he exists, and you miss that sign. So you stop going to church and feel so miserable because you feel that you’ve wronged a God that you don’t even believe exists.
Problems…Hmmm….
Problems is when you life is plagued with misfortune but after a while, you begin to accept it because you think that maybe everyone goes through the same thing. And when you realize that they don’t, well, you start to think that maybe, just maybe, you deserve it.

Problems is when you discover you’ve got Aids, no medication, no friends to encourage or support you, no family to love you and worst of all, the realization, for all the trouble you went to, to get yourself sick, you’ve accomplished nothing substantial on this earth.

Problems are when you’re engaged to be married only to discover that you fiancé is married with 3 children. You try to figure out when he must have started producing children. After all, he’s only 26. Okay.

Problems is when everyone looks at your like you’re a walking corpse but you can’t see it yourself.

Problems are when you don’t listen to anyone, thinking that you know everything, only to realize when it’s much too late that they had a point and had you listened to the person that advised you a second ago, your life would be another story altogether in the next second.

Problems is when you’re born without hands or legs and must depend on people to do for you even the most basic things. Or when you go to war to serve your country and come back with a nervous disease...and you get discharged, not honorably. Just discharged

Problems….Hmm….

So do I have problems? No, no problems whatsoever.

Hmmm.....

Let's just put it this way: it's me, it has been all along. I'm a very screwed up human being. Scared and screwed up.

I know I should've gotten past this by now. I mean, it's not impossible! It's possible because you see, people do it all the time, they do. I'm not going to say it's easy. It couldn't possibly be easy, it takes guys years and years to get past these kinds of things. It's been years and I haven't got over it. Why? Let's just say, it's not yet time for me to get past these things. And the one answer that I never want to hear must must give myself everytime I ask the question is: "some things stay with you forever". It's true, you can forgive, but forgetting is almost impossible unless you fall on your head and get amnesia. Wow! Wouldn't that be something.

I still can't believe it. I can't believe that a man single handedly...No wait! One man with the help of a bunch of the hooches and home-wreckers could ruin my life forever and seal the fate of every man and woman on this earth; at least in my eyes.

When I look at a man, I see that man. The absconder, the adultorous, the lier, the two faced son of a bitch. When I look at a woman, I see the 'other woman'. Cursed!

It's because of this man that I'm in my current predicament, which I'm sad to say, is always my current predicament. It's with me all the time. Since then till now.