A Private World of Pain

Paris is a mercurial city which shapeshifts, changes faces with the onlooker’s mood. On good days it sings with colour and light; the Seine glitters green and gold, the bridges and buildings soft-edged, smeared pastel sketches, statues smiling benevolence and the earthy scent of spring in the air. The rest of the time it is grey and brittle, a smeared pane of gritty glass- the wide roads aching with wan pools of colour stretched too thin, weak watercolours, the faces of passersby white with dark judgemental eyes, sneering Lowry mouths.

Your visit coincided with my collapse. Our routine is tragic. I get up for work. I make it as far as the bedroom door most days, but no further. You email my work, close the blinds on the waking city and let me cry until it starts bothering you or until I can’t breathe, whichever comes first. Life, I have learned, is nothing if not sadistic and cruel. Fortune has turned its back on me with contempt, as if I must pay in full for some past misdemeanour, a crime committed in another life, another time.

Explain. Why not? It might kill some time. But... how could I ever hope to explain? If I had a broken leg or the measles, you and anyone else would immediately see, understand, empathise, and I would be patched up or tucked in and that would be that. Here, I would be able to say, pointing, it hurts here. As it is, my pain is invisible. It lacerates me from within and my eyes bleed tears. Tears are for children or for those who have lost someone, exclusively. As it is, I’m not allowed to give up. The rules say so. And what a waste of time, how pointless this long year has been if my resolve fails now. Yet it’s been so long. Too long. I can’t fight any longer. I don't have the strength. I don't have the will.

You tell me again and again to hope, knowing I don’t have the slightest shred of hope left, that I have drained my innermost resources dry. You shout. You swear. You apologise. You hold me. We cling to each other like children, the commas of our bodies shielding each other from cruelty. I feel like a fraud when comfort finds me, and a burden when it evades me. And always the question- what have I done to deserve this? This isn’t what either of us deserve. It isn’t fair to make you wait for the good times; it isn’t fair for me to live for them. When it strikes I forget that there has ever been a life any different to this. I forget that we are young and and in love, with a world of opportunities ready for the taking. I forget that we often laugh, go out, explore, enjoy, make love. I forget my dreams and hopes for the future, and I forget the wonderful moments which comprise my past. I forget who I am and who I want to be. Life means nothing.

Time trickles away like grains through the hourglass, a slow stream. When I wake again the room is dark and the glass is empty. But I am still here- time does not claim my body, not yet, much as I long never to wake.

Thus we dream away our days, alone together, together alone.

Sometimes we talk, delicately, about things which are inconsequential. Sometimes the brittle silence is sharp with our thoughtless words, tiny dagger pinpricks to distract from the greater suffering. Sometimes we mutely kiss away each other’s tears. The afternoon is a golden triangle of dust, creeping through the curtains like a pale tide, drenching the room in thin watercolour veils, then receding once again in a never-ending cycle, the slow progression of days. Mostly we sit in silence, touching but no longer touching souls, remote, distant, removed, deep-drenched in sullen thought, in contemplation- each locked into our own private worlds of silent pain.