Have you ever loved, knowing it would end, but giving with your whole heart regardless?
Christelle came to me like a wave of river, the eleventh hour, life giver—she breathed life into me. I knew the moment I saw her face that it was hers my eyes wanted to look at until death or blindness, not fearing whichever came first. Her face was lifted, elevated like something on display. An art exhibit or a sacred shrine. We started, as you do, with messages: me trying to show my witty quips; her matching; neither keeping the other waiting. Then we moved to phone calls. I noticed her accent, how it carried the different parts of the world she had called home. I wanted to know her journey, and whether she had yet arrived, whether I could walk with her. We would speak for hours, often until the only conversation left was quiet breathing.
On our first date we met by the river. I arrived thirty minutes early to steel my nerves. It worked, only until the moment she arrived. My nerves then exploded as though someone had lit fireworks along my veins. We walked invisible among a swarm of people—in our world, newly discovered, there was only us. We went to a bookshop and created a new sanctuary we could both escape into. She loved books in a different way than I; they brought her back into the world but helped me escape. I would watch her eyes light up, sparkling at the corners, when she spoke about her favorite book, The Little Prince. I had not read the book, but already loved it, for if it was this book that brought her this light, then this book deserved to be loved. I wanted to be this book, I wanted to bring out this light of hers.
We sat to have dinner, I across from her, staring into the galaxy of her eyes, her across from me, a flower unfolding. We spoke of everything, of art, of culture, music and tradition, of the future, and where we saw ourselves in it. The restaurant transformed from raucous laughter echoing around the other diners, to just the two of us floating in the ocean of our quiet. We strolled along the river, lit by the dim lamppost, serenaded by the busker playing a song for hearts. Twice our hands touched side by side, first by accident, igniting a spark, second on purpose, intertwining into each other. Time was suspended, everything around us moved in slow motion and we passed at the speed of light. I told her I wanted to kiss her. She wondered why I took so long. As our lips touched, the shape of our mouths fitting comfortably into each other’s, it sent us hurtling into another dimension. Our bodies were weightless, we floated through space.
With her, life was a promise fulfilled. We would spend hours lying in each other’s arms, quiet, still in our shared solitude; a world we created and let each other into. I remember when I first saw her cry. It wasn’t due to sadness, woe, or misery. It was because the words I spoke were the same words that her heart had longed to hear. As we sat in the darkness, under the light of the full moon, she placed her arms around me, and I knew at that moment I had arrived. It was her. She had lifted a tension in my shoulders that had been coiled like springs. Her touch was a weight, a heaviness, leaving my body. It was her. I knew it. Her arms, her hands, her skin, her shallow breathing while she slept, left eye slightly open as if she were looking at me, her “Why’d you take so long to get back to me?”; her “I just missed you, that’s all”; her fears and her wildest dreams that I would carry on my back like a cross or like wings. So, this is what love is, to be burdened yet weightless, to be bound yet free.
My friends slowly started to find out about us, about my secrecy and unavailability, why my time was no longer my own, and I welcomed it. I found ways to include her name in conversations that did not even involve her, I became the people I despised: the romantics, the over-lovers, the passionate, the obsessives. If love is a field, then romance is the rain that grows the flowers.
I thought about the day I would introduce her to Mami. She would be the first girl I’d introduce to her—the only girl. Mami would say: bring home a good girl from your country who can move back with you someday. But how do I say to her, my mother, that I have no country? That I am a man without borders, I remember not well enough from where I came, nor do I know where I am going. For I am the road, the path, the journey, without place, without home. I belong to nowhere and I belong to everywhere. But somehow, she settled all of that. The feet get tired, and the soul gets weary. She gave me rest. When they met, Mother could sense that about her, she saw the change in me and liked it. It was set, this was our path, our journey; but it did not last.
The essential detail of all tragedies is that you do not see them coming. The tragedy creeps up on you; shadows in the unflinching darkness, the all-consuming night, like death and dying. The very thing that tore us apart was the same thing that brought us together: faith, mine in her, hers in the above. See, I believed in her to the point of worship. Would kneel, palms touching, hands clasped, eyes closed, to a god with her face, praying she would never leave. It felt as though my prayers were being heard, but the day she left came to me like a summer storm. We were having dinner. The esoteric mystery of her presence, the air riddled with magic, was as present as ever. But at the end, she said, in a voice of mundane normality, as if mentioning the weather or asking for the time, that she was leaving me. It was a rapid descent, a clean break that I never saw coming.
I begged, I pleaded; neither pride nor dignity stopped me from falling to my knees. But what good is prayer to a god who does not hear? I thought about how she must have known she was leaving, even before she left; maybe even known while we last kissed, held hands, or even lay together. In the end, everybody leaves—we even leave ourselves. In a field of forever, she planted seeds of impermanence. The thing about losing love is it makes you feel like you can never love again, like you are not worthy.
Late that night, I arrived home, went into the darkness, and lay there, sinking. I wept. I thought about death. I thought about what it would be like not to exist, to die, but without dying; without mourning, without wake, without funeral and procession, without burial and memorial. An act such as this is prepared in the quiet of the heart. To disappear into the ether, erased from earth’s eternal memory, any space I previously filled replaced with a void, an emptiness. I wanted it, I longed for it, yearned for it, this absence, like the love I had lost. This feeling I thought had left, now returned—in truth, it was always there, dormant and waiting. I realized that this was not the first time I had felt this feeling. It had been a growing thing, since I was a child: dust in the corner of a room, damp in a beautiful house, a thousand tiny spiders crawling all over your naked skin. I died that night, like the many nights that I had died before, that I will die again. I was a soul much more prone to my solitude. Not everyone seeks love, some seek quiet, seek peace. I slowly distanced myself from those around me and returned into the quiet where I had been all along. Where I long to be.
I snapped out of this daydream, eyes refocusing on the class in front of me with their heads down, writing into their books. I wondered how long I was gone for, into this daydream; each time felt longer than the last. A few students tried to pop their heads up but were met with my glaring gaze into the nothing beyond them; they quickly got back to work, Jazvinder in particular. He could not sit still for longer than thirty seconds. He found comfort in being the funniest; you could see his small brain processing as he ransacked his mind for the next punch line in a conversation. I admired his chameleon, shape-shifting abilities; to be both rude-boy and geek is a refined act of dualism. Of course, he was completely unaware, but more so stuck between the rock of peer pressure conformity and the hard place of parental expectations; he would sag his jeans low, and cut a slit in his eyebrows, but would pull them up long before he arrived home. I saw Jazvinder with his mother shopping at the local supermarket. She was a tiny woman whom he had already outgrown enough to make him look older than he was. He looked at me, blank-faced, trying to hide the surprise in his eyes. Much like his mother, he was dressed in traditional garb. I didn’t know whether they were coming or going, but Jazvinder made it known that I had seen a side of him he was not yet ready to show the world. It was as though a part of who he was had been revealed, his secret identity discovered, unsure whether it was a superpower or sordid secret. I smiled and continued with my shopping. Since that moment, he had not again crossed the proverbial line of disruption. He looked up again, distracted from the work, and I met his eyes with raised eyebrows. He quickly returned to work.
The bell rang, and I dismissed the students. I felt a sinking feeling even though it was the end of the month. I got paid a little less than usual; my faux rebellion over lunch duties, initially because of fatigue, had persisted into disaffection, or, as I would say, when Sandra accused me of being lazy, “efficient energy resource allocation.” It just reminded me how things had changed. When I first started here, I’d been super-enthusiastic, on time for everything. I would sit at the front of general meetings, notepad at the ready, ears opened up like a flower to the sun. But gradually I wilted, began being a little bit late, and then a bit more, and then a bit more, not replying to emails that weren’t urgent, not turning up to duty or meetings. When you fulfill all that is expected of you, there is no reward or acknowledgment, but when you begin to falter, the consequences appear—people only love you as far as you do what they need of you; when you do what you need for yourself, they fade like shadows in the dark.
Staff Meeting—delete.
Drinks—delete.
Football after work—delete.
Line Management—I guess I must read this.
Update your progression targets—delete.
Student Suspension: DHB—I almost deleted this one too, but doubled back and opened it.
This email is to inform you of the 5-day suspension of Duwayne Harvey Brown, 11 S, effective immediately. Please can you send planned work for the student to complete…
I huffed a gust of air and felt my shoulders slump. I was not surprised. Disappointed, but not surprised. More disappointed in myself for having expectations, for wanting more for him than he did for himself. But is this not the stuff of life? I wondered how many people had given up on Duwayne because he had not met their expectations. Are we not the sum of those who have never given up on us? I was determined not to let him be just another boy who fails.