And as the tears were forming in her eyes, like a lily’s petals opening into their fullest form right before being discarded into nothingness, the only beauty she had left was sadness. Gone was the light that she once carried; it left her like the cold hands that she imagined warm, drawing her escape just before she could grasp the concept of feeling complete. Slowly, they ran down her cheek, savouring their last moments before they died on her lips, lost and forgotten somewhere between her dream and the ache for a difference she was not willing to make.
I was lost. The meaning of life dreaded on me as I realized what I had become. Perhaps it was determined to be that way; perhaps I was a nymph morphing into a hollow shell, the kind you see but do not bother picking up. My ends are broken off; I am incomplete. I was taken my only possession that day. But I doubt that, on that particular Tuesday afternoon, anything could’ve led to a different outcome. I always knew I would end as an empty doll, a puppet whose puppeteer has left the stage even as the music kept on playing. I was not deep nor exceptionally interesting; I was simply a woman who feared the consequences of living so much that she had found comfort in being dead.
She had many names. She was Margaret on the dotted line, she was Margo at school, and her grandmother had always called her Maggie. But at night, when she thought about that August in Italy, she knew she was Margarita. A light and carefree girl with porcelain skin. It was funny to think that that same being would never return home and fall into the hands of the sharks that would suck her soul until a blind man would say that her eyes, once so magnetic, now just look empty.
If a psychiatrist was to ask me, I would not say that I wish to die. Not because I fear the consequences, but because I do not deem myself suicidal. I still remember the beauty of life that I was once driven by. I am aware that I can go outside on the streets of Paris, get a bouquet of flowers and do a promenade around Versailles. Perhaps I’d even feel a sting of happiness as I’d sit on a bench in a park, eating a croissant and looking at children playing, so unaware of the ugliness of the world we live in and the world they are destined to accept. But when I’d get back, the urge would overcome me, the thought that I simply cannot handle another day amongst the living and that I have ruined myself and every last piece that was once Margarita.
People are books, puzzles and pawns, in that order. First, they’re read, then they’re figured out, then they’re persuaded. Some may call that wrongly manipulative, but what’s the alternative? Anything taught by parents, teachers and educators? Don’t make assumptions, don’t judge people. All these factors that make you a nice person. And one day, if you’re a nice enough girl, you’ll end up just like the people who have their gravestones on the very outside of the graveyard, away from everyone else. Is there still hope? Or is Margaret a fool for getting up and checking her mailbox every morning, waiting for a letter, the validation, the light of her life? Will it ever come and brighten her mind that has been nothing but ruined, eaten by bugs from inside, and yet her heart keeps on beating? Perhaps she will receive her letter on a seemingly usual day. It will come and consume her, almost like that same mania that consumed her on that same sunny Tuesday in Italy, where she was still Margarita and the world seemed to be okay.
The letter came. Oh Lord, my savior, the letter came, and it came so beautifully, as I remember it being written. My long days of suffering have now ended, and I may return to my life. Or rather, I will go far and far away! Who cares? My life here is done. Oh Lord, I am alive, and I will go to a faraway place and count the days that remain until I am old and have forgotten about all this foolishness. And what a letter it was! Oh dear, it was so full of love, and I will love it with all that remains. I will let the lines consume me, let them leave scars deep inside my heart till the scars fall out of the sky, till time ends and everything dies, and it will feel like that one last kiss and the final goodbye, and I will let the melodies play as they played over our last dance, when he, one last time, looked me in the eye.