The Perfect World

For days afterwards, searching through the cobwebs of her mind, she could not quite put her finger on exactly what had done it. What had opened the floodgates on all those tightly suppressed memories of more than a decade ago. She had carefully placed layer upon brittle layer of control and sheer will on those memories, until it felt like a hard core, and she had almost forgotten they existed.

But how fragile are our defenses of our own making ! For the first few years, a smell, or a song, or a familiar turn of the cheek or shape of the head could bring a sudden rush of tears when she least expected them. But she would harden her heart and move on, looking only forward. Those episodes slowly stopped. So she thought she had won the battle with the past.

And yet, last night, the many gossamer veils added by the years just faded away, and she could taste the cold air from that other night, as clearly as if she was standing there again.

” Question for you”, she had said, her manner so carefully casual, he could not fail to notice that her hands were clenched together so tightly her knuckles were white, “Do you believe in destiny ?”

He had waited, buying time. Her question felt like a test, like if he said the wrong thing somehow, she would fade away into the smoky air. It was so misty outside, it would take her only a minute to disappear. And he had a feeling, this would be for the last time. And yet, how could that be? They hadn’t met to say goodbye this evening. He knew it was coming, the goodbye, but he had been sure it was a few days away. Until now.

” Destiny is overrated”, he replied, “people don’t want to take responsibility for their choices, and blame destiny or fate. Did you choose to come here tonight, or was it your stars brought you here?”

“I don’t know, actually,” she replied, slowly, as if was thinking about it for the first time. “I felt I had to, like my feet just brought me here before my mind had the time to think about it.”

“What about your heart?” He asked, hating himself for asking. “You pathetic little dog”, went a voice in his head. “Shut up”, he snapped at the voice.

“What ?” She said sharply. “Nothing, sorry” he mumbled. She let it go, and that was when he knew. She was leaving. Soon. Tonight. His hands froze and his throat felt dry, far too dry.

She ignored his question. “Choices. So like a man. For most people, there are no choices.” He was taken aback at the bitterness. He had seen her, sad and bereft before, but never so bitter.

“Do you really believe that? That someone else is controlling our strings and we are just puppets, dancing to their tune? You, who are one of the strongest people I know? “, he asked.

She didn’t answer for a long time. When she did, it wasn’t really a reply.

“Do you hear laughter? ”

” What, no, do you ? ” he asked, in some confusion.

” Yes. I can hear them. Someone out there is laughing at me. Well, chuckling at least” and she suddenly smiled. A half smile, but a smile nonetheless.

“Not true. There is always a choice” he said. You have a choice right now. Stay. But the words faded into the mist.

“I have been in a dream for the last year. This is not real, it never was. It simply cannot be. You have your life and I can’t do this anymore.”

“What do people really mean when they say, that”, he wonders out loud. “They can’t do this anymore. Do what exactly? Love someone ? Share your joys and sorrows with someone? Be there for them ? So they just stop loving them one day, because they can’t do this anymore? ”

She laughs lightly, without bitterness this time. “What would you have me do, she says? Go through my days forever like this, pretending we mean nothing to each other? It’s all wrong, wrong ! ”

“The only thing wrong,” he says, “is timing. Time. Everything else is perfect.”

“Do you think there is another world out there, where Time is shaped exactly as it should be for us? Where the bits that are so wrong in our picture here in this world, can get edited like a badly written movie, and be just perfect? ”

“Perhaps…. “, he says. “But if you weren’t exactly as you are right now, would you have been drawn to me? If you hadn’t had exactly the life you have had, would you have even noticed me? If you hadn’t earned every beautiful line on your face by living the life you have, would my heart twist every time I think of you ? ”

“I think that in that perfect world, where you would have had a perfect life and I would have had a perfect life, we might never have found another. We would have gone on with our perfect lives. ”

” What do you think though ? ” he turns to her and asks, his hand reaching out to smoothen her hair.

“So we are back there,” she said, “the bitterness back in her voice.”

“Where?” he said, starting to panic. Stop her at any cost, his heart said, clenching in fear. If she leaves tonight you will never find her again.

“Destiny. I used to think we were destined to be together. That no matter what the difficulties, nothing could separate us. But that’s not really true is it? We are just together in one random version of our reality, probably the most absurd one.” Her voice was cracking, her body almost starting to break like fragile glass.

His voice rose to a shout “Absurd? You would kill me if you left. How can you call that absurd.”

“We would be ridiculous together. The gap is too wide, the void between us too deep. I can’t bridge it. I don’t have the strength any more to keep hurting. ”

“What if the reverse is true?”, he asked, getting desperate. “What if in every version of the universe, we end up together. What If in every world, at the end, you look beyond the absurdity on the surface and realise that we were always meant to be with each other, that our hearts can bridge the void you are so afraid of. And you stay with me.”

There it was again, that impossible dream, always lurking at the edges of her mind, threatening to shatter what was left of her brittle control.

Walk away, her mind said. Now. Don’t look back.

And so she did. Ignoring his soft “Don’t leave, please….”, which soon turned into a shout.

Her feet burst into a run and as she ran away from him into the black void, she felt herself indeed disappearing, falling, and she had the sensation of falling, fading.

The cold mist faded as quickly as it had come, and she was suddenly back in her present world. She had made her perfect world, bit by painful bit, where time was in her control. She had mastered it.

But he had been right. In this perfect world, there was no place for him, for them. No place for the magic that had drawn them together, for the strange conversations that happened in strange little snatches late at night – little vignettes of life that lasted a lifetime in each tiny exchange. When she felt that this was someone who really got her, no matter how different their lives or their “timing” as he had liked to say. They had never touched, really, but indeed they had, through their words, touched a thousand times.

But he had been right. In her new perfect world, he was gone. And except for those unguarded moments when memory played its nasty tricks, so was the person she had been with him. Except for those times, where every once in a while, when the mist came back over the shore, she could almost feel that other world, where they were together, having another absurd conversation, once again.