But we haven't, have we? Because it will never be settled. Not until or unless one of us is no more.
Why does it have to be like this? Why can't we be like normal people? I have looked at others and wondered at their relationships, and I've envied them. For ours is so stilted, so strained, so weird. No touching, no kind words, no gentle understanding without words. No comfort from you. No comfort from me, too, I suppose - though I've tried. To be a comfort, to make you proud, to do the right thing. To make you happy.
But yours is a world of silence. For me, and for us. If there is something wrong, it won't be my ears that hears it. It will be someone else's, and if it finds its way to mine, I will either be angry, or not even think about it and try to make things right. Often, it is a complaint, or a wrong I've done by omission, or by directly hurting you. Although I know I've never willfully or consciously meant you harm.
I have wondered if I will be sad at your demise. Would I be empty when you no longer are. Will I regret that I had not been kinder, better, softer, more understanding? Would I regret the way things were? Should I have just pretended to be a good catholic girl and held the rosary beside you, and got down on my knees, and joined you in your martyred-pain as you gazed holy-ly up to Jesus and begged, 'Please Jesus, life me up', until you were safely in his arms. Would it have killed me to try to meet you half way?
Never mind that I think you're nuts. Never mind that I think that if he did exist, he'd be so disgusted with the utter waste of the life he'd given you. Because you filled it with pain, and being unhappy, and being a martyr and enduring, enduring, enduring. No easy smile. No happy laughter. Just duty abiding to fill the empty days and months and years. And all for what? For eternal salvation in a heaven I cannot believe in, because it would hold you - and exclude the ones I love.
But I never tried to explain, of course. Of what use would it have been to go there? Your mind is closed, and you'd have so easily slipped into prayer-mode and not heard a word I'd said.
So I was too wise to even try. Let you think what you will of me. If your god questions you about me, tell him, do. If he really exists, he should understand what I am about. If he really exists he can see into my heart and know that I was 'good' - even by your harsh definition of the word. If he really exists, he'd give you heaven, I hope. The only heaven that would make you happy - and that would be have you be no more. Piffftff! Gone. Out of your misery, and suffering, and eternal sadness... forever. That would be the kindest thing of all.
Yet no word is said.
And to think I think all this with no outward clue from you. No sign. No word. No spoken or even implied reprimand. All is silent.
I have become a reader of nothing, of no response from you: a mere nod, or flash of eye, of a round-backed pose. I make meaning from amorphous wisps of diaphanous thought that never reach your lip, nor my ear. And I act on my imaginings and find out that I am right. You respond, and I know, you are now happy, though that is stretching the use of that word somewhat. I do believe you have no notion of what happiness means - either for yourself or for me.
And now you say, 'There is no rice'. And that in and of itself is such a simple thing to say, no one would believe me if I tell them that it is ominous, momentous, larger than the words could ever actually mean. A short and simple line, and yet, they toll a bell of doom, and the black face I see belies the simple words.
I greet the words simply. I respond in kind. A simple sentence - and I respond in simple terms as well.
But the black face persists. And the sighs begin. The page of The Herald - fount of all ecumenical Catholic virtue and truth - is turned with heavy hands, and a hunched and tired body. Another sigh passes the your hard lips. Eyes shield behind the glasses, but they are glazed and angry.
But the reply reflects not how you feel. So all-is-calm-all-is-bright for anyone who overhears. 'I'll buy some tomorrow, then.'
And yet I know it has pained you to say them. They have been wrenched from you, all tortured and tormented. It has almost killed you to have to let them past your brain, let alone your lips. It is meant that I say that it will be me who will buy the rice. Who will rush out and get you what you need, and see that no other need appears that I cannot foresee and forestall. Not that you will ever ask. 'I will never be a burden to anyone,' you say.
For you say you want your independence. You want to be left alone, with your prayers and your own interests. And yet youit with venom, and with malice, and with a pain in your eyes that tells me with no uncertainty that it is me and my siblings that have been the source of this pain. You want nothing of us, and from us. And you want to be away from us.
Independence.
That's a two-way street, you know. You can't have independence and then want me to buy you rice! Or fix your stuff when it doesn't work. Or read a letter for you when you don't know what its saying.
And god do I want independence from you, too! I want to be free of these hundredweights around my neck that drag me back and make me two again. Yes, please, two scoops of independence, please.
A cold world I don't want to return to because I love it where I now am: in warmth, and sunshine, and smiles, and love, and being happy. Because there's no you in my world, or in spite of you?!
Physically removing myself from you has not been enough. Telephone lines have hands attached, to disentangle their fingers to fix around my neck and keep me from breathing. So, distance is no separator, is it?
I think you will out-live me. And given that that will be, I see no hope for me. I will always feel guilty. Bad. Wrong. Ungrateful. Always wronging you.
I see no hope for me. What can be my salvation? How do I fix this to make it right?
Perhaps... if you were no more. If I didn't walk in and see you there, and hear your false-happy 'hi' - not to me, of course. The only way I see peace is if I didn't need to deal with you and all this anymore. But as long as you be, so will be this that keeps its weight on my chest, and keeps my breathing shallow.
I want out. But there is no 'out' card, is there? I think there never will be.
