When I Wake Up (4 page)

I was still carrying myself within me, as I walked through that shopping mall, despite the contagious joy of the Christmas spirit, my image appeared to match the weather; I felt like a Christmas tree that had not been decorated.

Roy surprised me, by hugging me in the mall and holding my hand.
“Give me the honor of walking hand in hand with my wife,”
he joked. But with every joke, a touch of hope lit inside me.

We made the purchases and went home. Roy's house was all decorated for Christmas and now presents were carefully placed underneath the Christmas tree. Everything in the house appeared to be happy, except me.

Nancy bought all the Christmas food already prepared and made a wonderful supper. It looked like I was having the Christmas of my life, with the prince I dreamed of at my side. We had fun during dinner and I could even turn away from my own imagination. For a few hours, I lived in my reality and stopped planning and worrying about the future. I gave myself entirely to the moment, something I rarely did because I had developed a habit of looking back, projecting forward and almost never lived the present at Roy's side.

After the midnight supper, Nancy went to sleep and Roy and I decided to watch a romantic comedy film. While I chose it, I thought about how I would never imagine this happening in my life. Me there with Roy. How the world spun and things changed. I in my turn, would like to follow the changes, but it seemed that I did not change within myself and a vicious cycle has developed.

The film began and our reality became the story that someone else wrote, and it was so good that it became a movie. That movie made us laugh, while others make people cry and even afraid. All this because a mere story was invented and told by a creative person, and can trigger emotions in those who are reading or watching what was once written.

Does the world of fiction really exist or it would just be someone's mind designing something that did not exist as if it had already existed? What was life like for the author of this romantic comedy that we were watching? Was he a happy author or did he just manufacture this story to escape from his own reality? Would it be his sad story to the point of being transformed into a comedy, because sometimes life is so sad that you even want to laugh? And speaking of laughs at that time, my reality was managing to take a real smile off my face as Roy, the great love of my life, had his hands in my hair and was about to try and steal a kiss. All this because we were watching a story where two people smiled and kissed and that was so infectious that it had reached us here in the room and was creating a perfect atmosphere for the both of us.

Before I realized it, Roy and I were kissing. No. It was not my imagination, not this time. And immigration also was not there. It was our moment and that of the comedy that inspired us. I got involved in the kiss, in Roy and my ghosts jumped inside my mind, trying to scare me, to the point of telling me that none of this was happening and I had even imagined it so much that I did not know how to separate fact from fiction. But I knew. And that moment was real. And I would not let him escape, for I had dreamed of it all my life.

I held him in a way as if not to release him. For him, it could have been just a kiss, but for me, it was the beginning of a planned conquest in my mind. I was holding on, because I was afraid of losing him, but he made me an invitation, playfully:

“Sophia, I think we have to consummate the marriage.”

I replied,
“Sure, Roy, it is all I want.”
And it was only fair that two persons of legal age married, of course they should consummate the marriage. It was for that reason alone that I accepted.

I spent the night there with Roy and I woke up embracing him, on Christmas Day. Nancy certainly should have known I was there. Roy was still asleep. The night had been consummated and I found myself there in his bed, afraid of being rejected. And that emptiness I felt inside me seemed to have increased. It was terrified, I had wished so much for that moment, but he had not changed my life. Not that I was sorry to have spent the night with him, but simply because the rejected girl who lived inside me, had woken up and told me that from now on, Roy would not want me.

I did not know what to do. If I should remain there or leave his room because sooner or later I would have to face him, so I decided to stay there and let him wake up first. Roy woke up, hugged and kissed me, and I thought, yes, I have chance with him, but I knew that my return ticket to New York had been purchased and that this novel with him, this consummated marriage, had a time and date to end.

These thoughts filled me with sadness and would not let me enjoy the moment. I was taken by the fear of losing someone who deep down, I never had but always wanted. I was there in the room with Roy for a while. We have had our official wedding night and I should be overjoyed, but I was not. Maybe I was like this because I was sure he did not love me and had simply taken advantage of an opportunity to spend a night with me. I began to analyze what Roy thought of me: a woman who was in love with him as a teenager, was also rejected by him, came to the United States and with the opportunity to meet new people, ended up accepting a marriage proposal lie to get him out of jail and after all, easily, without much insistence, ended up spending the night with him. These thoughts tortured me. As I worried so much about what others thought about me. These thoughts seemed to have conquered my mind and refused to leave. It was as if they thought my mind was a territory occupied by them and that I had no authority to get them out.

I was afraid that Roy would find out all that went through my head. Imagine if he or Nancy possessed an x-ray that could read my thoughts? They surely would find me to be an imbalanced person.

Roy continued embracing me, and I felt all the security that I had one day desired, but that in no way at the moment made me feel safe. I never felt more vulnerable and that emptiness inside me, seemed to have grown another centimeter and warned me that it had room to grow some more.

What if Roy had fallen in love with me? Could he, the great love of my life, have finally noticed me and seen me in a different way? No! I could not even fuel this idea within me, because I find myself impossible to be loved. I'm just a weird being on the planet fighting to occupy a space, but have not yet succeeded. As I thought this, I had to contain my tears and sobs.

Roy stroked me and spoke kind words to me. I in turn, could not believe what he was talking about, because to me it sounded false and meaningless. I was not the pretty sure about the things he was telling me that I was.

But if all I wanted was Roy, then in a way I had him last night, should I not go ahead with my plan and conquer it? Have I just created an imaginary love about Roy, where he was simply the character? Was I really honest about what I felt or was it just another piece of my mind that was holding me back?

The more these thoughts rattled around in my head, the more I physically drew closer to Roy, as if his touch could remove these thoughts dancing to the music without rhythm inside me, driving me crazy. As I wanted to stop the voice speaking within me, telling me I had made a plan with no strategy whatsoever, and that soon he would be frustrated and that I would be sadder than before. I embraced Roy tightly, as if my hug was strong enough to keep him near me.

From outside of the room, I could hear Nancy's steps, walking around the house, going into the kitchen and preparing breakfast. Attracted by the smell of coffee, we got up and went for our breakfast.
“Merry Christmas to all,”
I said. That's how the day started externally because inside me, it was not good. The table was made with panettone, Christmas cookies, fruits, cakes, coffee and a delicious fruit juice. For the first time in my life, I was having Christmas breakfast with Roy. I cannot deny it, not even my negative thoughts could take this from me. There at the table, the morning was wonderful and even looked like a fairy tale, with real characters, where Roy, me and Nancy played a perfect role which I fought so that it might become a real chapter in the history of my happiness. And so the breakfast continued with jokes and harmony, for me the great achievement was to be next to Roy while the disappointment of it was not having solved my inner conflict.

Not that I was certain that Roy was in love with me, but I knew some feeling was rising within him relative to me. I still have to spend three weeks beside him. Could I make them into something to remember for a lifetime? What strategies could I use to win him when I did not consider myself able to win one? And if he truly fell in love with me, would I accept his love or let the fear of being rejected by him in the future make me escape this love?

Beyond all my insecurity and rejection, now I had the fear of losing something I had never possessed, added to the fear of Roy not resolving my inner conflict and extracting from me the right to assign all of my emptiness to the lack of an overwhelming passion.

At that table, all these thoughts passed through my mind. I was getting a strategy to manage two thoughts at the same time, one that I externalized while the other no one had access to… just me. Even though they were inaccessible, unfathomable, and out of reach. For if one could see the thought, they could also meet my emptiness, my pain, along with my vulnerability.

It was undeniable that the situation around me was changing. And was I finally managing to reach my goals? And what were they? Was happiness approaching me and for never having met it before, I was not recognizing it? Or that happiness was simply a word used to circumvent the human being and in order to provide an expectation of hope that it could fight the despair that occasionally knocks on the door of all? Are there people who are happier than they are empty? Did that hole that resided within me also coexist within others or would I have won in the lottery of pain, with a prize of having to carry it alone?

How I wanted to take the emptiness of my heart and deliver it into the hands of someone so that they could carry it for me at least for a little while. But I think no one would be able to bear the weight of this void that despite the emptiness seemed to weigh tons. Maybe I would have gone back to the days of slavery and continued waiting for the Golden law to free myself of all these agonizing feelings.

My thoughts did not stop, did not give me respite and did not even respect the hands of Roy that naively slid through my hair, unaware that his touch told me I could calm my emotions and live in the moment. But it was impossible for me, for my fictional world along with the emotive which insisted on coexisting within me and would not let me depart from them.

Roy, on the other hand was totally different from me. He did not seem to think and did not spend time overanalyzing things. He liked to live in the present without complicating matters much, not that he was an irresponsible person and did not think about the future, but he sure thought that thinking too much was not the solution.

I myself was stuck in the past, fearing the future and stagnant in a present that I could only run away from, looking back, forward or simply escaping from it, daydreaming through my imagination. As I drank coffee and looked around me, I noticed something different. It was as if Roy had changed with me. There seemed to be feelings there. Maybe not love but something that if it was well maintained, it could become love because I had read somewhere that love is a decision, not a feeling. My problem was that I was full of feelings, emotions and passions.

That house looked even more decorated and cheerful with our presence there. This should be the happiest Christmas of my life, after all my biggest dream was coming true. However, the more I thought about it, the more my interior was filled with pain. Something told me that moments of sadness would unfold before me. How would that be possible if Roy was there beside me, drinking coffee with me, with his hands in my hair, as if declaring to me:
Do not worry, it was not just a night of love. We can try to recover all the lost time and I can try to make you happy.
It felt like I had entered a river with Roy, I was swimming, and he called me to go to the deep, and I for not swimming very well and with a fear of drowning, I could not rely entirely on him and go a little deeper. I should trust him and I would be safe, because if I started drowning, he would rescue me. But I did not trust him enough to support me on him. My floor was my insecurity and I had to hold on to my pain to be able to feel at ease. There seemed to be a bug in my mind, like a beetle, walking from one place to another inside my head and I needed to make him get out of there because I had noticed that his goal was to drive me crazy.

I wanted to lie in his arms. I wanted him to put a few ear drops in my ears that would work as a poison to kill the bug that insisted on walking freely inside my head.

His touch soothed me exteriorly. I could not decide whether to grab the sense of accomplishment of having achieved something or the despair of this achievement not having changed my life completely. Although I had only been his completely for a few hours, change could come at any time, fulfilling the void that lives inside me. It seemed that I had once again returned to my adolescence and sought comfort in his love. At that time, as I have explained, I did not have him.

At any moment it would be lunchtime. Nancy wanted to give us privacy. I thought she was the best mother in the world. She wanted the best for Roy, and in my opinion, I was the best. I was the girl who had fallen in love with him, had secretly kept that love in my heart for many years and did not think twice when the opportunity to redeem this love had come to my door. But was a person who acts the way I acted the best for him? Or was I simply an obsessed person? She probably realized that I had not married Roy for the fifteen thousand dollars. Nancy knew I had accepted the offer because I had feelings for him. What she did not know about me, was the fear that consumed me. The fear of being rejected again. Of not being able to take this relationship forward.

I always dreamed of a fairy tale, with castles, princes and princesses, which has always been part of my imagination. But now that I had finally managed to enter the castle, I was afraid that I might not remain in it. Maybe it would have been better if I had left everything as it was. However, I made myself available once again to a feeling that was trying to finish me off. How did this feeling enter my heart? Just from a kiss between two teenagers or maybe there was something else there that I had not yet realized?