Read My Life in Darkness Online
Authors: Harrison Drake
My Life in Darkness (5 page)
Or you might just stick around for the money. Not that I’m accusing you of that or suggesting it, it’s just, most of my ‘friends’ have only stuck around for the money. I haven’t given any out for a while, just to see what would happen. Not one has called me since then.
What else can I do? It’s probably too late to change. But I want to, I want to try. Just in case one day, one day, you and I actually have a chance to really talk, maybe to even forge a friendship or something more. Not that I would want you to leave your husband, but if things were to change…
Sorry, I’m losing myself here. Lost in thoughts and dreams of a life that’s not meant to be. But the darkness comes once more, another five-oh-eight. Hopefully it’ll last me, over two years until the next one.
NOVEMBER 25, 2030
Dear Lena,
I hope time has kept you well. I can’t say the same for myself. Not much has really happened. I celebrated my fiftieth birthday last year, alone, of course. With my mom gone I’m all alone. It’s been tough to get used to, we talked on the phone every day and I probably saw her twice a week.
I’ve found myself slipping into some old habits and old thoughts and it scares me. Two and a half years I’ve been alone now, you’d think I’d get used to it. It’s not like I’ve ever been a very social person. I started going to meetings with other people dealing with grief and bereavement and I’ve made a couple of friends, but no one I can really trust or count on. No one I want to call, just people I can talk to when I’m there.
There’s one woman, I think she likes me but I just don’t feel the same way. I mean, it would be nice to have a girlfriend, someone to spend some time with and to talk to, but I’m not sure. I don’t know what to do, how to have a girlfriend. I’m fifty-one years old now, dating is something you’re supposed to do—to learn—when you’re young. Like riding a bike. If I’d never learned to ride a bike I doubt I’d be able to pull it off now, not without a lot of pain and broken bones.
And it’s the pain that keeps me away from her, that keeps me thanking her for her kindness and offers but never going out to grab that dinner or coffee she mentions. It makes me feel real guilty though, she’s just as lonely as I am and when she talks to me, I see a lot of myself in her-the same awkwardness, the same fear, the same failures. She’s a lot younger than me as well, not even forty yet, so that makes things even stranger for me.
But the one nice thing is that—I don’t think anyway—she knows about my money. So I guess she likes me for me, something I’ve never experienced before. And she’s pretty, not like you of course, but she is pretty. I hope you don’t think that I’m giving up on happiness because of you. My feelings for you will always remain but I know that it’ll never be. You and your husband, standing there right now with your arms around each other, a child on either side, that’s something I could never compete with—nor would I try.
As time goes on and I lose sight of any sort of happiness for myself, all I want is for you to be happy. When I see you smile, I can feel it within me. It lifts my spirit like the darkness does, but in a different way. The darkness makes me feel perfect, comfortable in my life-a life alone. But your smile, well, it makes everything else seem right with the world. And when that smile is for me and no one else, I can’t help but think that maybe there’s a chance, however slim, that the rest of the world will see me the way you do.
I know. Wishful thinking, right? But I have to hold onto some hope, some ray of something to keep the thoughts at bay, to keep them and their ticking away. They try to come back, but I don’t let them anymore. It’s like they’re a part of me now, something I’ll never get rid of no matter how much medication I take or how much therapy I go for.
I can’t help but feel too, that I’m not alone right now. Maybe the sadness and loneliness is making me crazy, crazier I guess you could say, but sometimes I feel a hand on my shoulder, or holding my hand and I swear I can hear someone telling me it’ll be okay. I think she’s still here with me, my mother, refusing to miss an eclipse.
I don’t feel her presence any other time, just a little at the last one and again now. Maybe the darkness brings her back to me, and when that ‘magic’ (still no other word for it) is gone, so is she.
We’re almost there, another two minutes and twenty-seven seconds. I swear I can feel the grip on my shoulder tightening, the voice in my head getting louder as the sun disappears behind the moon.
I hope you don’t think I’m insane. Sometimes I do. I mean, who really believes in ghosts?
MARCH 30, 2033
Dear Lena,
I’m getting way too old for these cold weather eclipses. I don’t want to, but maybe I’ll have to start skipping some. It just gets into my joints and the pain and discomfort is too much. My father always said I was a wimp, a low pain threshold that he obviously didn’t give me. Maybe he was right, though. My grandmother was better suited to the cold than I am. At least this will be the last really cold one for a while.
You know, I never did ask you what you thought of the eclipse in Norway, on Kvitøya. It would be too weird to ask you now, twenty-five years later. Things really hit the fan, as they say, for me after that and it just slipped my mind. I hope it was an amazing experience for you. There isn’t one in Canada again until 2044, so I don’t know what it’s like to see an eclipse in my home country—the one when I was born doesn’t count obviously, I can’t remember that one.
So, I finally went on a date with that woman I was telling you about, just last month. Three years after I met her-I can’t believe she held on that long. I haven’t been going to the grief counseling sessions for a while, but we’d exchanged contact information and we message occasionally. Never over the phone, not before the date, anyway. I couldn’t handle that, I have a hard enough time knowing what to say when I’m with someone, when there are things around to talk about. On the phone, I just go numb, everything leaves and I’m left with a blank mind.
It was nice, the date. We just went out for a coffee at a quiet place. We talked for a couple of hours. Sure, there were awkward silences—from both of us luckily—but we worked through them. It’s nice being with someone like me, someone who understands the way I am and why I sometimes act the way I do. We’ve talked since, but haven’t been out again yet. I know she wants more, I can see it in her eyes, which is amazing because I never know what anyone is thinking, but I just… I’m not ready. And she knows that, and she’s okay with it. She says she’s not in any hurry.
But I know she’s a little disappointed, too. She’s just as lonely as I am, but she’s not used to it. She’d gone from bad relationship to bad relationship, most of them abusive, and was trying to stay away from another one. But I don’t think she can handle the loneliness like I can. I know I want to see her happy though, to give her something nobody else ever did.
Maybe I’ll bring her one time, maybe you can meet her. Would that be weird for you? It feels like it would be a little weird for me. I still wish she was you, maybe then I wouldn’t be holding back so much. I just want to walk right up to you and hug you or something, just to let you know how I feel.
I still think I could channel the darkness into you, make you feel as energized and perfect as I do when it comes. Two thirty-six. It’s coming soon, and I can feel her hand on my shoulder again.
I guess I’m not as alone as I think.
MARCH 20, 2034
Dear Lena,
Things are getting more and more confusing for me, and as usual I don’t know what to do. She moved in late last year, my… girlfriend. Why do I have a hard time saying that? Is it because of you, or me?
We’ve been living together for a while now, and it’s nice, but it’s weird too. I feel like the lead in Harry Chapin’s song,
A Better Place to Be
—I’m dating myself big time with that. Just that she and I, two people united by loneliness—it seems to me to be like a relationship of convenience. But I guess it’s not for her.
I can’t get used to not being alone. Funny how that works—I’ve been alone all my life and cursing it and now I find out that maybe I liked it all along. It makes me confused, not sure how to act at times, not sure what to say or do, not sure if I’m doing something wrong.
Maybe I just need to relax. Maybe I just need to let things progress normally and forget about everything else. She says she wants to get married. And get this, she wants kids. I told you she was younger than me. She just turned forty last year. I guess that biological clock is ticking and she wants to have a baby. But I’m fifty-five now, too old for kids. I keep telling her that but she won’t listen, she keeps mentioning it, slipping it into conversations.
I should probably break it off, but then I think about how nice it is at times to have someone, someone who cares for me in ways I never thought possible. Someone who cares for me more than I care for myself. I just worry that I’m leading her on or something, that somehow she thinks that if she stays I’ll change my mind, sweep her off her feet, marry her and give her the children she so desperately wants.
I don’t have that in me. Maybe decades ago, maybe with you, but not now.
I wish I could ask your opinion but I think I know what you would say. Look at you, standing there with your husband and kids. I bet your daughter will be bringing her own boyfriend or husband soon, what is she now? Twenty-one? And your son’s about seventeen now, right? I know how happy they make you, I can see it in your eyes when you look at them, and I know you would tell me that kids would make me happy too, that I should do things that will make me happy.
I guess that’s why I haven’t tried to talk to you about it. Not that I could anyway. It’s not like we’ve ever talked much, just a few words here and there, ‘congratulations on your kids’, ‘sorry about your mother’, that sort of thing.
I still want to pick your brain one day, see what the eclipses mean to you. Maybe the darkness will bring the answers I need, maybe it’ll set me on the right path.
It has the time, four minutes and seven seconds this time around. It’ll be nine years before we get one longer. Let’s enjoy it, you and I. Separate, alone, but together too. Sometimes it feels like in the darkness I know you better, like it links us somehow. Maybe that’s why it gives me such strength and peace. Maybe it isn’t the darkness, maybe it’s you and the darkness is just the conduit.
I can feel it coming now.
I can feel you.
SEPTEMBER 2, 2035
Lena,
I love it here. Of all the places we’ve been to, I think Japan is one of my favourite countries. The people are wonderful, so kind and courteous. And I find that people here, they’re honest and hard-working. Where’s the crime we see in so many other places? What is it that they’re doing right that we aren’t? I don’t know how it is in Norway, and Canada isn’t bad, but the crime here is almost non-existent in comparison.
I’ve been thinking about retiring here. Funny, I haven’t worked in at least ten years and I still say ‘retiring’. But it seems like a good place to live out the rest of my life. Maybe I’ll bring her along, we’re still together and she’s still pushing for a baby. I’ve tried to break it off, but she says she loves me and wants to stay with me, even if it means she won’t get the kids she wants. I don’t know. I can see how much it pains her, and I think the time is coming for me to be more forceful, to end it now before it gets worse for her.
I do have feelings for her, but not the same as she does for me. It’s not fair, she deserves to be with someone who can love her the way she needs and the way she should be loved, not with someone who borders on indifferent most of the time. She needs someone who can give her the life she wants. Maybe I’ll have to break her heart to do it, but it’s hard for me. I can barely talk about anything to anyone, and to have a conversation like that… I think it’s beyond me. I wish I could just give her a letter, it’s easier to express myself in this form.
I hope everything has gone well for you the past few years. I’ve been talking about myself incessantly and haven’t even asked how things are for you. Are you still doing what you love, your architecture? Do you still dance? What are your children doing now? I can see your daughter dancing, too. She reminds me so much of you, the same litheness, and of course the same golden hair and emerald eyes. It’s like looking back in time when I see her.
And your son, he’s everything I wished I could have been. Slim, athletic, handsome and intelligent. That spark in your eyes, it lives in his too. He’ll do great things, I can see that for certain. You must be so proud of them, and I think I can see pride in their eyes as well.
Of course you had to look in my direction right now, right as I was looking at you and your family, and right when I laughed. I wasn’t laughing at you, just at how much, despite being completely different from me, your son reminds me of myself when I was his age. He hasn’t taken his eyes off the sun since the moon began its transit, the special glasses he wears protecting his eyes from the sun’s light. I think everyone of us could leave and he wouldn’t notice we were gone until after the eclipse.
I was the same way, still am I guess. So engrossed in the scene above me that little else (I say little because there was always one thing that could draw my attention away and you know what that was, is and always will be) could make me lose focus. I like the totality the most, of course, and I’m sure that he does as well. The time when we can take the glasses off and stare at the sun directly without worry. It’s so freeing, and today, we get another two minutes and thirty-five seconds of it.
