‘Do you still believe in safety?’ I asked, slightly lost.
Do you? Do you still believe in sleeping late every Sunday, anxiety growing on you like bacteria, killing time with TV series, everyone’s favourite brand of cereals, reading with your feet entangled to someone else’s so it doesn’t get lonely? And do you still believe in asking for comfort from others? Because I don’t.
That’s where he unknowingly pulled the trigger of my automatic escape mechanism — when he didn’t speak to me of love, lust or breakfasts we’d be staring at each other over, but he spoke to me of safety. Did I sound like I needed it? Maybe. But hearing somebody turning a what should have been a midnight ambiguous, delicious and slightly sexual conversation into yet another promise of security was, in that split of a second, blasphemy. The truth was that, more than the promise of safety, I wanted the promise of never having to settle for a life of flipping through the pages of encyclopaedias to catch a glimpse of wilderness. I was scared at the thought of never walking through car parks at midnight again, hand in hand with someone who could teach me the art of having a loud heart and a quiet mind, shivering cold but with his warm coat and warm smile on. I liked him, and I wanted him to be that guy, and I almost hated him for speaking to me of safety when he could have said anything else.
My job as an artist was to create life out of nothing, but the nothingness was thick and sticky and I couldn’t shape it. I was supposed to take little bits of your dark days and turn them into magic dust and chocolate sprinkles and things none of us believed in but looked good on paper. I was supposed to make the black come out of dark caves and turn into silver lines. I was supposed to be the girl to make emotions happen, but I couldn’t try them on first. I kept wishing for a handsome stranger to come out of nowhere and read out loud the words I had written than afternoon, and a dog to jump on the bed between us and coffee to be spilled onto the floor. Life would have made a stain in that second, enough to ruin my perfect ever after. I would have been forced to carry on living with imperfections the size of coffee stains on white bed sheets, and dog hair on my clothes, and unexpected smiles at the wrong time. But in real life, I was forgetting how it is to feel the rain on my skin and his love under it.
The truth is that safety is not a friend. Or if you like, safety is one of those friends who moan all the time because the weather got colder and the film got boring and they can’t find their matching sock. Safety is negative vibes if you dare to move. You’re sat down and forced to listen and obey — do not move that vase from the table or you will ruin the harmony and the alignments and everything you’ve ever done will fall apart. Safety tells you that you’ve surrounded yourself with perfection; do not reach it anymore. It’s there to be contemplated in silence. Do not enjoy it. Do not touch or use. Indulge into knowing that you’ve done it, that you’re sorted, that you got to Heaven. That you are as good as dead.
My only wish was outside the wish jar. It was the world, beautifully simplified and not showing its teeth to me at every turn. It was me minus all the weapons and the accessories and the promises I had to keep at every step. It was the richness of the moment that I didn’t want to feel guilty about not living anymore, because I should have been somewhere else, with somebody else, being something else. I wanted a hammock, a lake and foggy weather so I couldn’t see ghosts’ trace lines, burning hot coffee and the smell of second-hand books surrounding me. I craved icy cold freedom and open fields that didn’t have a maze, a labyrinth, a catch; a goal at the end of the road that I’m running towards, like a dog for a bone or a frisbee. I didn’t want to be in the game anymore, and I felt forever done with stretching and curling in bed at the memories of long-missed bliss, grieving over old agonies and yearning for new ecstasies. I was looking for more nights that felt vivid and surreal. I was looking for walking through car parks at midnight, hand in hand with somebody who’d have me surrendering my love and my fears and not thinking about dawns.
‘Do you still believe in safety?’ I asked again.
‘But do you want to have breakfast with me in a few hours?’ he laughed. ‘I don’t know what you’re on about there…’
‘What?’
‘Don’t worry, it’s safe,’ he laughed. ‘I won’t bite.’
‘I wish you did.’
‘Oh. That will change things,’ he laughed.
Filed under: Stories
