Swimming in the Dark

No matter what happens in the world, however brutal or dystopian a thing, not all is lost if there are people out there risking themselves to document it. Little sparks cause fires, too.

This is how I lived back then– through books. I locked myself into their stories, dreamt of their characters at night, pretended to be them. They were my armour against the hard edges of reality. I carried them with me wherever I went, like a talisman in my pocket, thinking of them as almost more real than the people around me, who spoke and lived in denial, destined, I thought, to never do anything worth recounting.

I avoided you, so that you couldn’t avoid me.

Because you were right when you said that people can’t always give us what we want from them; that you can’t ask them to love you the way you want. No one can be blamed for that.

And yet, it occurs to me now that we can never run with our lies indefinitely. Sooner or later we are forced to confront their darkness. We can choose then when, not the if. And the longer we wait, the more painful and uncertain it will be.

The odds had been stacked against us from the start: we had no manual, no one to show us the way. Not one example of a happy couple made up of boys. How were we supposed to know what to do? Did we even believe that we deserved to get away with happiness?

Some people, some events, make you lose your head. They're like guillotines, cutting your life in two, the dead and the alive, the before and after.

I begin to think that not everyone suffers in the same way; that not everyone, in fact, suffers. Not from the same things, at any rate. And in a way this is what made us possible, you and me.

I had always liked the act of leaving, the expanse between departure and arrival when you’re seemingly nowhere, defined by another kind of time.

Selfish. Growing into yourself is nothing but that.

I guess it’s nice to be away from the crowd sometimes, to be able to hear yourself think. I go mad when I’m surrounded by others all the time.

We kissed. You were mine. I realised then that this was the only thing that counted. Nothing else had ever existed. Just our lips and hips and sighs. I fell into different galaxies through you, your mouth a porthole to a better universe.

We’re just queuing for a possibility, queuing for something, maybe queuing for nothing,’ she said, smiling her sad and loving smile. ‘But it will pass, my dear. Even the longest queue dissolves eventually.

There were moments when I wanted to lie on the ground and feel the street’s concrete against my face. Just lie down, stop. To feel a heavy weight on me, feel my bones crack, feel myself drift off to sleep, for ever.

To my own surprise, I was unable to accept the shame he wanted me to feel. It was too familiar to be imposed: I had produced it myself for such a long time that, right then, I found I had no space left for it anymore.

One day your country is yours, and the next it isn’t.

This wasn’t distraction or entertainment: here was a book that seemed to have been written for me, which lifted me up into its realm and united me with something that seemed to have been there all along and that I seemed to be a part of. It felt as if the words and the thoughts of the narrator—despite their agony, despite their pain—healed some of my agony and my pain, simply by existing.

Sooner or later we are forced to confront their darkness. We can choose the when, not the if. And the longer we wait, the more painful and uncertain it will be.

I avoided you, so that you couldn’t avoid me. I didn’t want to be in the field of your power. I envied your lightness and the beauty you carried with such ease.

Some things cannot be erased through silence. Some people have that power over you, whether you like it or not. I begin to see that now. Some people, some events, make you lose your head. They're like guillotines, cutting your life in two, the dead and the alive, the before and the after.

Your mother died out of loneliness,” Granny would always repeat, claiming it was because she had never remarried after my father. But I think it was despair that killed her. Having done only things she didn’t believe in, she must have been dead inside for years before her body finally gave up too.

I tried not to think of all the things I had imagined we would do together — return to our lake next summer, move in together someday.

My heart stopped. I didn’t dare breathe. Your head was heavy, like warm marble, and your hair brushed my cheek. I was paralysed by possibility, caught between the vertigo of fulfilment and the abyss of uncertainty.

I allowed the union between the earth and my body, I let go, and for the first time in my life I appreciated everything for what it was, observed the miracle of it. The earth for being the earth, my hands for being my hands, the plants for growing out of seeds, and the others around me, everyone, with their own rights and dreams and interior worlds.

Stop comparing us to that book!” Your voice shattered against the walls. Your face was distorted, scrunched up beyond recognition. “You’re the one who wants to run off. You’re the one trying to force me into this. You can’t make people love you the way you want them to.

I don't know what woke me up tonight . . . What I am certain of is this: my body feels depleted, like a foreign country after a war. And yet I cannot go back to sleep. I think of you.

We stood for a moment, uncomfortable, mourning the missed opportunity. We searched for words, each one of us, trying to say something that meant anything. In the end, we just said goodbye. We said it casually, like we would see each other again soon or maybe like people who had never been much more than acquaintances. You two walked off, arm in arm, and I watched you, the burning cigarette still in my hand, the last thing you'd ever given me.

Not one example of a happy couple made up of boys.