Mostrando las entradas con la etiqueta difficult. Mostrar todas las entradas
Mostrando las entradas con la etiqueta difficult. Mostrar todas las entradas

sábado, 26 de noviembre de 2016

We all know Doris

   Doris had never been the most beautiful woman in the world. She was rather plain and didn’t have anything special going on for her. Besides, she was already over fifty years old and women her age simply didn’t have the same opportunities in life that younger ones. She couldn’t complain about her job, because she had been very lucky to keep it for so long but she would have loved to get married at least once in her lifetime. She had always dreamed of wearing a wedding dress and having one of those fun parties to celebrate her nuptials.

 She had her chance when she was around twenty-four years old. An older man had wanted her in marriage and her father had agreed to it. Of course, Doris didn’t want to marry him but, in those times, women did whatever their father told them to and it was very difficult to do something different than what parents told their children. Doris cried and stopped eating for a week but that didn’t change his father’s mind. However, the old man that wanted to marry Doris died only a couple of days before the actual ceremony so she was saved.

 When she looked back to that memory, she found herself thinking very differently from that young girl she used to be. For example, she regretted the fact that she was never interested in knowing more about the man she was going to marry. Of course, they practically didn’t know each other but she could have asked and maybe, just maybe, that would have changed everything, even the fact that he had died. Yes, fifty year old Doris thought it was a good idea to marry a man that was, at least, thirty years older than her.

 Be that as it may, she never got to wear that wedding dress. Besides, she had to see her two brothers and three sisters getting married. She had to go to their weddings and pretend to be happy for them but she never really was. She also had to go to other weddings, where she was even a bridesmaid. That was even crueler for her because she got too close to the real thing but it just wasn’t the same. It was all an illusion to keep her away from the one thing she wanted in life, the one thing you couldn’t really buy or force to happen.

 In her work, however, Doris was successful. She was the assistant of the principal in the same high school where she and her brothers and sisters had gone. At first it had been weird to work there but she adjusted just fine in no time. Now she loved to reminisce about all those good-looking boys that had walked the hallways back when she was a teenager. She found herself thinking about them a little bit too often and even took to the social networks to track some of them down to see if they had changed a lot or not so much. The results were predictable.

 Before turning fifty, Doris had gone over backwards to get a man. It sounds a little bit too desperate but it was what she wanted. She opened profiles in most of the matchmaking sites in the Internet and also downloaded several apps on her phone with the help of one of her nieces. She even started going to bars on Friday nights to see if she could attract any man. Doris didn’t even mind if it was only a crazy sex night but that didn’t happen either, which was frustrating and also hurtful for her. She felt even older than she really was.

 As her birthday grew closer, she decided to go to all these events that advertised that you would get a couple in no time. Some of them were events where you met several men in a limited amount of time and others were holidays for singles in which the goal was to meet all of the people that were there with you and then just see who you had the best chemistry with. The thing about all of those was that they were only a waste of money. She always came back home disappointed on everything and even sadder than before.

 After she turned fifty, it was as if something inside of her changed. She didn’t want to keep being desperate and accepted the fact that she was never going to find anyone. Of course, she remembered all of those family dinners for special holidays when she had to lie to her family or confess to them that she was still alone. As her family was concerned, Doris had been in a relationship with several men but it never really worked out for several reasons. Some didn’t have a job; some others were scoundrel and they were even a couple that ended up being gay.

 Now that her parents were dead, those family dinners were over. She rarely met her brothers and sisters, only in funerals and such events, which was great for her because that way she didn’t need to talk about her private life. Stopping the lies had been really good for her because for a fragment of her life, she knew too well all the things she need to say to make a believable lie. She was so good at it that it seemed that she was beginning to believe everything she said herself. It was a very sad thing to do and it was for the best that it was all over.

 So, after fifty, Doris was not interested in finding anyone new. She wasn’t interested in anything to be honest. She went from her home to her job and back home every evening. On the weekends, she spent several hours tending to her dog Fluffy and her small but well taken care of garden. It was her pride and joy, as she really loved to spend hours and hours getting everything to perfection. It was her passion and it helped her not thinking about thoughts that hurt her.

 One day, by the advice of her next-door neighbor, Doris sent pictures of her garden to a specialized magazine, just for fun. Her neighbor had said that sometimes they sent people over to take pictures for their magazines and that was always fun. She thought that Doris could be one of the proud owners of a famous garden. At first she wasn’t too sure but one night she decided to do it, just to add a little bit of fun to her life. Maybe it was the wine she had been drinking, but she was as happy as one could be while taking the pictures.

 Days later, she received an email from the magazine telling her that they were interested in a visit and asked her about her availability. Sure enough, they were there the following weekend. Her neighbor stood close by the whole time, showing Doris her two thumbs up every time the photographer took a picture or when the interviewer asked Doris about some of the flowers and she answered in the best way possible. They were only to people but she felt overwhelmed for a moment and had to take deep breaths when they weren’t watching.

 The interviewer, shortly before leaving, told her that her pictures would be in the mix for the next issue, which would portray suburban gardens from the country. She could be in or out, they didn’t know yet so she had to be very attentive of the issue. For Doris, it was a torture to wait that long because the magazine was released every two months. But thinking about it also made her very happy and proud and it was certainly better than wondering why she was not married or why no man appeared to have any interest in her.

 Sure enough, almost a month and a half later, the magazine’s new issue had her garden in the front page and in at least four other pictures inside. There even was an awkward picture the photographer had taken of her looking at her tulips. She was a bit embarrassed by it but many people thought it was a very nice picture. She kept the issue by her bed, to look it every time she felt down. Doris knew not many people knew about that magazine but that didn’t matter because it made her feel great and that’s what mattered.


 However, the following week every single person she met greeted her kindly, smiled and congratulated her. At first she was very confused but then she read a letter she had gotten from the magazine: she had been awarded a prize for the best suburban garden in the country. The prize came with a cash prize and an actual medal that would be given to her in a ceremony in the magazine’s headquarters. For the first time in her life, Doris was really happy, for real, and did not relate her mood to her relationship status. No man could make her feel better than that recognition.

sábado, 22 de octubre de 2016

Hurricane Eliza

   There were pieces of wood and tiles all over the place. No house was left standing. The only big structures close to the big were a couple of buildings, which were about seven floors before the hurricane hit the area. Now, they were also a big pile of rubble that was very difficult to put apart from the rest of the rubble from all the other structures likes house and small business buildings and commerce. Everything had been destroyed in only one night and now people were trying to define what they were going to do after such a tragic event.

Anne had always lived in the area. Her parents had moved when she wasn’t even in their plans and the city was only beginning to flourish. Back then; they had some powerful hurricanes too but nothing like Eliza, the storm that had destroyed every single house. Anne had evacuated early the day before, leaving for a shelter inland. That move had saved her life. Many other people were not as fortunate. They had been afraid of leaving their things, their home, so they had been taken away by the storm along with everything else.

 The death toll rose every hour, as more and more bodies were found beneath what remained of the houses. The ones closest to the beach had been the most affected but destruction had reached every single part of town, even those not so nice houses that were inland. Poor people who lived away form the beach and all of the beautiful things also died or were left to live in a pile of what used to be their home. The storm didn’t care who had money or who hadn’t. She just arrived at peak intensity and took everything with her.

It was true, however, that people had been warned long before the actual hurricane hit the city. But every prediction said it would turn north because of the warmer waters up there. Everyone was convinced that was going to happen. And the turn happened but it was too close to the shoe line. Actually, when all the data was compiles, the hurricane’s eye had never touched the ground. It had been away from the coast for only a couple of kilometers. The destruction was maximal that way. Not even something planned would have been so evil.

 Anne spent all of the first calm day trying to find things in the remains of her house that she could use. Contrary to popular belief, people were not helpful or nice. All the opposite: they were vicious and didn’t want anyone to even step on one of the rocks they thought belonged to their house. People got really scared and believed everyone was out to get them and that their pile of garbage was somehow much more important or valuable than the other piles of garbage in the area. Some people even got weapons to protect their stuff.

 Anne decided to explore her space and try to take as many things as she could salvage from the rubble. Of course, there wasn’t a whole lot to take with her, but she did found some valuables like kitchenware and jewelry and other stuff that she could use to sell and survive for some time. Anne was a widow and had never had any children so she was alone in the task of trying to make something out of her life after such a tragedy. She was always almost at the breaking point but somehow always pulled herself together and moved on.

 When the sunset of that first day after the storm approached, she realized she couldn’t save anything else. The lot was still hers but it would take a while for the city to clean the neighborhood. She had to do something else that wasn’t camping there like a lunatic. She decided to pay a cheap hotel for a night and decide the next day what it was that she was going to with her life. As she drove to the hotel, she realized all of what was happening would have been a lot easier to handle with her husband on her side. But he wasn’t there.

 Walter had died almost a year earlier from a strange disease that had almost annihilated his body in a matter of months. They never told her exactly what it was but the quality of his life quickly diminished: by the end of it he wasn’t able to stand on his own, speak fluently or properly use her hands. When he began to drown because of his problems one day, she had no idea she would lose him. And she also didn’t know he had signed a paper that said he shouldn’t be revived in case something like that happened. He had taken that decision in order or her no to make it.

 Walter had been the love of her life, having met him in college. They used to do everything together. They planned and went on great trips and loved to try new things as a couple like dancing unknown rhythms or trying to learn a new language. It was hard for Anne to admit, but it was because of Walter that she had evolved and become a stronger and more loving person. Before she met him, she as a bit too rough and didn’t really care for romance or love or any of that. It was Walter, which showed her how beautiful love could really be.

 Now she was by herself, sleeping in a small bed that smelled like old people. It was pitch black outside her room but even like that she couldn’t sleep. First, her husband had been taken away from her. Then, the hurricane destroyed everything. And now she felt extremely lost and lonely. It had o be said that she had no more family than Walter as she had lived her full childhood in an orphanage. That was what had made her tough in the first place.

 The following day, she returned to her former house and tried to get some more stuff out but it was a very dangerous thing to do as the rubble could fall on her feet or hurt her somehow. It was a really difficult thing to do, to try and remember he things that had any value in order to sell them. She had also saved many things from him and now she couldn’t find any of it and it was making her desperate. She wanted those things to feel a little bit safer, as if someone was actually protecting her. Being alone was too hard after such a thing.

 Suddenly, a group of people from the mayor’s office and the government appeared on a car with a sound device to reach everyone. They were saying that the rubble would be cleared off in the following weeks, as the machines needed for the job weren’t even en route to help yet. They said the disaster had touched many different towns along the coast and that they were trying to make the best job possible for everyone to feel safe and to be able to rebuild if they want that or to sell their lots if they decided that was the better option.

 Anne was the first one to walk up to the car and make them stop by standing just in front of it. She had an impulse to do so and she did. She yelled at the people on the car, saying that they were talking as if it was something they did out of a routine or something, as if town along the coast got destroyed every day. And she also told them that she new for a fact that machines like the ones needed to clear the rubble were available to mayor’s office because of an article she had remembered reading to Walter when he was in the hospital.

 Other neighbors came closer and agreed with Anne. They also thought the government had come to tell lies and to make them feel safe and calm when there was no reason to be either of those. They needed to get mad and to demand what was right, which was the removal of all the rubble as soon as possible in order for them to properly look for their belongings and then decide if they wanted to leave or not. Many people, most of the neighbors actually, came closer to Anne and surrounded her, in order to support her stand.


 She then declared that they wouldn’t move until at least two machines came to clear the neighborhood. They would stand there and not let the vehicle leave. The people in it could walk away but the car stayed with them. One by one, the officials had to step out of the vehicle and walk away, afraid for their safety and humiliated because their corruption had been uncovered. Now, the neighbors hoped for the machines to arrive soon and Anne realized something she had in herself she didn’t even know about.

martes, 18 de octubre de 2016

About dreams

   This time, I really thought I was living my dream. Everything looked so real, the people and their concerns. They didn’t seem to be following whatever I wanted them to do; they actually seemed to be doing what they wanted. The places looked so authentic, real and well crafted. I have no idea how my brain created that place I was in just some minutes ago but I think I wouldn’t mind going back some day. The difficult thing is that I have to be really tired and not being able to sleep a lot in order to go so deep into my dreams.

 Waking up gets so much harder like that… I would love to be able to choose everything inside a dream. Not only who appears and how, but also the setting and the story and, of course, the length of it all. They are some delicious dreams that make you believe you are on top of the world and, often, they only last a few minutes or at least feel like it. I would love to be able to choose everything because dreams are the best doors to access when the eyes are getting closed and resting is the prime objective of the evening. I love when it happens.

 Thankfully, I haven’t had a bad dream in a very long time. I actually don’t remember when that happened and I think it’s better if I don’t try to recall that event. Nightmares are awful and populated by the most disgusting creatures our mind could ever control. Nightmares are chaotic and that feeling of not being able to get hold of anything is the one that really makes us wake up sweating or screaming. Is not what actually happens, which we know is false, but rather the sense that we are not safe anywhere, even inside our heads.

 But yeah, nightmares have been off the table for a while or at least the ones that are openly awful. I have had dreams that are strange and difficult to understand. Even there, in the middle of the dream, I know that nothing is real but at the same time I know that there’s nothing that makes sense and that makes it worse somehow. Knowing that you are dreaming makes everything a little bit more real, for the better or for worse. But I think I prefer it most of the time, it kind of gives me the idea that I am a little bit more in control.

 Right now, my body hurts a little bit but that’s because I didn’t slept a right amount of time. I push myself to do things no one is asking me to do and they have this negative effects on me. Feeling like crap when I wake up is nothing really knew for me but it’s even harder and more painful when I push too hard and when there’s a dream involved. I feel I slept during a movie and now I will never know the end because it was a one time in my life kind of thing.

 What I like about dreams is that, if your head is up to it, anything can happen. You might have one of those dreams in which you fall and fall and fall through a various array of holes but you could also meet someone you haven’t seen for many years. I think the brain creates whatever is better for us at that moment: if we need a hug, it will create someone that can give it to us. If we want to feel smart, our brain will go back to a moment we felt exceedingly brilliant. Of course, things can be a lot more complex than that. Just like in real life.

 I believe that in every single dream, you have the capacity to intervene and make it yours. Many people thing they are passive subjects when they dream, having to go through some determined events in order to get to the final part of the dream where you may have some kind of revelation or maybe just wake up thinking nothing at all. I do think you can use your mind to affect the outcome of any dream and I even think you can decide when it should end, all of this in the right sleeping conditions, as they are not all ideal.

 For me, dreams are the base of what I try to do. I have been creating things out of them for a long time and if it wasn’t for that subconscious part of my brain, I wouldn’t have as many ideas as I have. I’m not saying that they are all amazing ideas that have to go somewhere but I do like that my brain keeps creating, even if just changing a little bit of some ideas that I have had before or even twisting stories that I have read or heard about. I have to admit that I am probably not one hundred percent original at all times. It would be very hard.

 What I don’t like about waking up from a not satisfying night of sleeping is that, for the rest of the day, I feel like there’s something missing and I’m right. Because what I miss is rest and what I have is an unfulfilling dream and there is nothing in the world that can make that feeling go away. That feeling of being tired and not fulfilled by anything. In those cases, dreaming come too close to actual living and, I have to say, I don’t care about that one bit. If dreams become as heavy as life, then the magic is lifted and everything goes to dust.

 I already have a real life and, although it’s fun when dreams imitate life, I know how to tell apart the imitation from the actual thing. If they both become the same thing, a very essential way to cope disappears into the world. It’s scary to think that we might, one day, not be able to dream again. Some people actively try to eliminate that experience from the nights because they think it makes them feel weak, because it scares them. They don’t want to face themselves and they hide behind any possibility in order not to do it.

 I think it makes us very human, although it also makes us a little bit paranoid from time to time but I do not think that’s always something wrong. I think it’s great when there’s something in life that can shake us so much. And who better to do that than ourselves. We are the ones creating those dreams after all and we cannot be afraid of our own selves. It is simply ridiculous to hide away from who we really are, whoever that person might be. People have to stop living in fear and embrace whatever character may lurk in the darkness.

 Of course, the word “darkness” doesn’t mean that everything buried deep inside us has to be bad or anything. There can be very good things in the dark too but we will never find out if we don’t dare to take a look. And the perfect place to do it is in a dream, where nothing can really hurt us. We have to learn to be scared and to cry and even to scream. We have to accept that some parts of life are more difficult than others. We have to learn how to look at ourselves in the mirror, without any fear but with our eyes wide open.

 All of this sounds so weird, so insane. But anyone that has ever dreamed can easily understand what I’m saying. It is a world of wonder but also a place where we can learn so much about who we really are. We don’t find out about that going to the other end of the world but just hearing and watching what our brain is telling us, all those things buried below the surface of our own personalities. Everything that we area is there, waiting to be able to surface or at least the be represented in some capacity in the real world.

 We all have bad thing and good things. No one is saying that we are going to like every single thing about our personality that we find deep inside our subconscious. But we have to acknowledge its existence in order to be able to handle it correctly. If life gives us the possibility of learning more and maybe improve in some areas of our lives, I think the smart choice is to take that chance and exploit it as much as we can. Knowledge has never really been a curse, only for the ignorant and the ones that live in fear but not for the brave.


 And brave we shall be. Yes, even when we go to bed and close our eyes or when we open them and realize we are in a brand new day. No matter where we are sleeping or who is next to us. We have to be brave in order to accept who we are and dreams are made of us. Their fabric is our life and our thoughts, so we have to learn to embrace it in order to have a stable mind and heart. No one says dreaming is easy, it never is. But it’s the first step to greater things.

martes, 11 de octubre de 2016

Moving on

   As soon a he entered the premises, every single employee was requested to stand still in front of their assigned spaced and smile at him as he moved through the maze of corridors that made up the wellness center. Every single worker knew who Vladimir Natarenko was: the biggest name in boxing in the last decade. He had just defeated his closest rival. In doing so he had become the world’s champion and more than one woman was craving to get close to him. Not only he was very attractive, despite all the cuts, lacerations and so on, he was obviously getting wealthier by the second.

 Carmen stood still in front of her assigned room and waited for the big guy to pass. She wasn’t specially thrilled by the prospect of seeing him or anything. Of course she thought he was really attractive but that day she had receive news from the mortgage on her house and she was in desperate need of money. The one thought on her head was all about asking her boss for help, for a certain amount that she could pay with work or something like that. The center did very well and Mr. Crane was a very nice man that did the best for his workers. She trusted help would come from him.

 Vladimir finally passed in front of her door but, she was too distracted when he greeted her, smiling with his beautiful cherry lips and his big blue eyes. She just gave him her hand and shook it. Vladimir looked at Carmen as he walked away, being moved by his manager. She didn’t even notice him at all. She just went into her room and decided the best moment to ask for money was during lunch, when most people were outside of the building. She didn’t want anyone to know. It was partly because she felt embarrassed but also because it wasn’t their business.

 Trying to focus on her job, she organized her station and received her first costumer of the day. It was a very thin girl who started talking as soon as she walked in. As always, Carmen turned on some music, lit up an incense stick and asked the costumer for her favorite body oil from those she had available. Then she put on the oil on the person and the massage session would begin. They lasted for around forty minutes but people could ask for longer or shorter ones, depending on what they needed, if they felt pain somewhere in particular or anything like that.

 The girl was an actress and she just went on and on about her career and how it was very hard to get the right role and how sometimes she had to do things she wouldn’t normally do. The woman could have told Carmen all the secrets of her craft but she wouldn’t have listened to any of them. She did her job well but her mind was absent. Her hands glided over the girl’s body and sometimes she needed but that was the only way to know she was still, kinda there. Losing her house was too big of a deal to care about anything else.

 The same happened with the other two clients she had that morning: she was so distracted that, when the second one (a tall guy, very handsome) asked her for her number, she told him that it was a pleasure to have had him and just pushed him out the door. She really didn’t have time for men at that point in her life. She needed a miracle to happen in order to help her survive all the difficult things she was going to face if her house was taken away from her.

 What hurt her the most was the fact that she had inherited that house only two years ago, when her parents had died in a tragic car accident. They were traveling by car in order to have a relaxing weekend and a truck just rammed them on a very tight curve. She would always remember the day a policeman called her and bluntly told her that they were dead. She had wanted to know who he was to punch him and teach him how to have a heart. But she never knew who he was and maybe it was for the best. She was in no state to do anything.

 Thankfully she had that job and they paid better than in other places but still not as much to pay all the bills. At first, she had thought the house had been a very nice present from her parents but soon realized she would have many more financial responsibilities and Carmen was not ready to assume all of those. She barely made enough money to support herself, so paying bills for a house too big her was not easy on her. Many told her to sell it as soon as she had received it but there were too many memories and she was still in deep mourning.

 Now, years later, she had moved on. However, she still thought the house should stay with her and maybe use it one day to raise her own family. She thought of that as a tribute to his parents and her family in general. So when lunchtime came, she almost ran to Mr. Crane’s office. Her secretary asked her to seat down and wait until he was available and she complied but it was very difficult to sit still, repeating in her head what she thought were the right words to phrase her request. Her hands were now moist with sweat and she had to clean them on her jeans.

 The secretary finally told her to go in and she did so by trembling all the way to the door. She greeted her boss and he asked her what it was that she needed. She realized he was in a mood and that made her doubt for a second. Bu then she started talking, very fast, telling the whole story of the house and her financial situation. When she finished, her boss told her he was glad she was so honest. However, he confessed the business was not doing so well so he was unable to provide her with the money. He told her he would try to help her out with something but further along in the year.

 As she stepped out of the office, Carmen felt her knees shaking like crazy. Her boss had been kind, as always, but the answer she had received was obviously was not the one she had desired. As she walked to her station, she realized how obvious it was that he wasn’t going to give her any money: he was right, no one was coming to their spa. Well, maybe that was an exaggeration but the number of clients was diminishing. She used to have up to eight clients in the morning, now that was down to three, sometimes even only two.

 Carmen realized two things as she walked slowly through the corridors: the first thing was that she wasn’t hungry at all. She had brought a big salad from home but she had no time for food right now. And the other thing was that her only solution now was to sell the house she had grew up in. As hard as that decision was, it was the only possible one, unless she wanted to be jailed for not paying all of her debt. It was a horrible choice to make but her time had run out.

She stepped into her station just in time: tears came running down her cheeks and she covered her face as she squat on a corner of the room. She felt miserable. Not only sad but also very disappointed on herself. She felt ashamed of losing her family heritage and also because her life hadn’t taken her anywhere. She lived from massages and on the weekends she did the same thing for anyone who would call and she was getting very tired of all of it. She was getting tired of her life and that she was always, apparently, on the brink of losing it.

 Suddenly, she felt a hand on her forearm. As Carmen looked up, Vladimir’s big blue eyes looked down on her. He asked her what was wrong. She stood up fast and cleaned her face, in a vague attempt to pretend nothing had been going on but he interrupted her by saying he had been there the whole time as his next stop in the spa was getting a massage. He had been lying in there for a while when she came in. Carmen was embarrassed and tried to apologize but instead, Vladimir asked her o tell him what was happening. Surprisingly to her, she started talking.

 As Carmen kept talking, she indicated him to lay down for his massage. It was the first time it was her talking during a session and not the other way around. The best thing was that he seemed to ask all the right questions and seemed genuinely interested in her problem. When she finished, and the session was done as well, Vladimir told her losing the house might be for the best, as her parents would always live in her heart and mind and not in the house. With those words, he left with a smile. Silly enough, that session and those words were exactly what she needed.


 And the big tip he left her, too. Help comes in the most unpredictable packages.