i woke up just as the dark was setting in, and discovered to find two people missing. i wanted badly to stay in bed, and fast forward this part of my life, but i knew that once i can't recognize night from day my life will be over. or what i have of it anyway. i went outside, dressed as i was, in ridiculous looking house slippers, which are not really meant for trips outside. i didn't care. as i came downstairs i saw the obsessive-compulsive man we make fun of all the time. as someone who is obsessed with what he does, can't he at least find meaningful things to do obsessively? but this time i felt sad.

surely we aren't the last two people in the world with no one to share sedar night with. where is his family? why is he doing the things he does all the time on a night when a family is supposed to save him? i looked down at my slippers, and walked past him. thinking, we share two things. insanity, and lack of family. but i shook my messy head, and said i'm not insane. my slippers have tracking on them, so they could potentially be used for that purpose. they don't expect us to run 10 meter sprints circling around our kitchen ... i have asthma, anyway. and not a big enough kitchen.

i soothed myself with the clanking of kitchenware as i walked by the windows of families chatting and getting ready for dinner. there is nothing wrong with being different.

she knew that life doesn't consist of having people around to love her all the time. she shouldn't be made to feel guilty for wanting to be alone, for wanting some quiet, and peace. they watched her walking past, as they jogged by. they had no dinner waiting for them at home either.

just passed by the school, that means i got another quarter mile down. if i do this at least ten more times tonight then i could justify eating the rest of the cake. isn't tonight pesach? i hate it when a government can decide for you what you are eating and whom you are eating with. a few years ago i met an adorable polish woman on my trip abroad to nepal. we knew each other for only a few weeks. no incredible communication although. but incredible in that it consisted of smiles, nods, winks at each other when we would both hang our heads down after a difficult hike. i met her a year later in a café in vienna. i had a conference there, and she was visiting an aunt. i wanted badly to tell her how much i loved her when she spoke of her brother that died when she was nine and he was three. he seemed more real to me than any of the members of my family. she took out her hand from under her napkin and showed me her ring on her right hand.

when i get married i will move it to the left hand, because it is closer to the heart. he took my left hand and put it in his heart. she told him that his country would never accept her because she wasn't jewish, and that her family would never accept him. so getting married, settling down would be the easiest thing to do. darling, don't you want an easy life. she says with that smile he has come to dream of.

no, i want you. he says with hurtful anger, and walks away.

maybe after this last lap instead of eating a cake i fly to poland and find her. she'll be married. but divorces are in existence, i'm sure. and anyway, israeli summers drive me insane. i want a real winter. i want to bury her in snow. why did i just walk away? what was she thinking? he just walked away.

i know him, he'll never turn around. see, there he keeps on walking convincing himself that i never meant that much to him. but you can fall in love in a minute, in an hour. she walked closer to the cars, quieted by the inner machinery, the things that have always been this way and always will. the shopkeeper puts out his freshest loaves now, and the woman looks down at her shoes as she sits on a bench waiting for the bus. these things happen everyday, and will keep on happening. so what does it matter that i can't breathe? what does it matter that my heart is breaking with tears (the ones in cloth not in eyes) ... i have to go back there, i have to see; he wasn't there when she came back, and she thought, that if she continues she will go back into the rhythm of things just as quickly as she left them. she thought, as she read once in book, "as for me, i was confronted by own black heart. you can bury what you like, but if it's still alive when you bury it, don't hope for a quiet life."

maybe you feel that i think too much because you don't think enough; or rather you're too afraid to think. afraid of what you'll find in there. find that you are perfect, when everybody else is imperfect, and oh, how you would love to be imperfect. i hate you for being perfect; just as i hate myself for letting you get to me. my parents always raised me to be an upstanding citizen. why do i still think of you to this day? going to poland on a whim, how stupid. what will i gain from that? there is no such thing as closure. and if there was, it was when i walked away and you didn't come after me. here you are now, in your cozy room with your cozy husband and your cozy bouncing baby in your cozy life. how simple it is for you not to think.

he takes out the money from the machine, and keeps on walking. too tired now to jog. just the thought of her, and see, i abandon everything, like it never existed. some people cry in silence forever, and even having a wife and child does not seem to take away the pain. i wonder how much longer i will write in blood, write of rejected love. surely, there are other topics. i guess it's good it's not my career. my wife would see right through me. when he refers to the other woman, he talks of his wife. instead of cozy what he has is secondary. a secondary wife, a secondary flat, a secondary job. surely this is not what they meant when they said happiness is a fight. and so is love for some reason. why can't we lie back in sunshine like when we were 10, everything was so much easier then. i want to take the other woman out of the picture, but i can't. she shared the same sunshine, she was my neighbour, and my best friend. it is not how it is often described that we become strangers. i am not a stranger to her. but ...

he wants the sex, he wants the fights, and the desperate transcontinental phone calls in the middle of the night. he wants the complete truth and the complete betrayal. and after that he wants the falling asleep next to each other in front of the television, the tea at 3 pm after making love all morning. i have some of that right now, but not all of it. why can't i be happy with the some of it?

Copyright © Ilana Petraru 2003