Twenty, Insomnia

" You know Anna, I was thinking to go for my master degree in nursing. In fact, you gave me the idea. Now you're backing up from it and discouraging me, too. " She was lying on the sofa. Anna could see a glow in her eyes. "Why don't we both do it.? Isn't that hat your plan was from the beginning?"
Stacy's words resounded in Anna's head for a few times before she was able to answer her friend, When they finally sank in, she got up from her chair, started a cigarette, and paced the room for a while.
"What am I going to do with it. I know that was my goal earlier, but now I see no reason for it."
"Well," Stacy started: "First I can have a better nursing position, like head nurse in a hospital. I can teach. I can go for my PhD. like you were planning. It'll make a whole lots of difference., more money..."
Anna could no longer hear was Stacy was telling her; instead in her mind she was thinking about the brilliance of the idea even though it was originally hers. More education, more time, more money , more independence! Finally she snapped out of her long silence.
"I am with you. We can be with each other a lot longer time; two more years for our master. May be even less. I am finishing four years college in two and a half, and two or three for out PhD., I think you hit the target Stacy."
Stacy smiled. She knew this idea which was originally Anna's might work.
Anna sank into her chair. She was overwhelmed by Steve's image and at the same time the image of the raging parents, and then her own future.
"WE both have a great idea Stacy. But what am I going to do with my parents. They are getting old. I am the only thing they have left."
"I understand. But they have had their lives, good and bad days. Now it's your time. No child ever stays with his parents for ever. You need to think about yourself, your future. They had theirs."
"This is cruel!"
"It sounds cruel, nut it isn't. It's reality."
Anna had a couple of days before Sunday morning to think about this renewed plan, which would but her more time and perhaps save her from perplexity. "By Sunday morning," She thought: "I'll make my decision."
When Anna was out walking Sunday afternoon, Stacy called Steve.
"I have good news for you."
"What is it?'
Anna is staying here."
"How? What happened?"
"She told her dad this morning that she would plan to stay and continue her higher education, as she had planed before, isn't that great?"
Steve sighed: "What are you doing tonight?"
"I have a date. Charlie is coming at seven, probably dinner and a movie."
"What if we double date?"
"That sounds great."
"I'll be there at seven, too."
"Don't you want to ask Anna first? She isn't home now."
"You tell her. Tell her I called."

To Be Continued

Twenty IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII Insomnia

To Anna, Stacy was remarkable. The feeling she had for Stacy was beyond two friends who were studying the same thing, going to same college, working in a same hospital, and sharing the same roof. To Anna, Stacy was daring, straight forward, and she was a person who in the course of conversation, understood, created, changed, and changed others; and above all, she had impression, her eyes had impression. To her, Stacy was not only a dear friend, but she was also like a sister, and a blood relative. Anna knew if Stacy insisted her to stay in America, mostly was that she did not want to lose a good friend, and somewhat she wanted to unite her brother in marriage so they could become family. Even though there was some selfishness in Stacy's hidden effort to keep Anna in America, Anna recognized that all human had some degree of egoism, even the ones that were honorable and moral like Stacy.
The truth was that Anna, knowing how conditioned her life was, could sense the fragment on her unruly soul, smearing against all her internal body; and the world around her, her family, her life, Stacy, and even Steve had become painfully so dear to her suddenly. But to choose one over the other was painful. Her twofold feelings was despondent, like a bad dream that one fears to dream anew; and to run away from that dream to reality was a restricted getaway, for the dream stayed without consideration. She was faced by people who tried to brush away her doubtfulness and pain.
She was certain that Stacy's concern was for her well being; nonetheless, Stacy did not know how exhaustingly difficult was for her to reveal herself. She wished she could find the perfect words to to express herself to Stacy, seeing her worriment. Because of the respect she had for Stacy, she could not tell her lies, which neither of them accept it anyway.
All her life, Anna resented other people's intrusion in her decision making, but now making a decision was like climbing Mount Everest. She wished she was still a child so someone else could do it for her, or order her to do certain things; but she was not a child anymore. Religion was out of question, nonetheless, she wished she was religious so God would inject an answer into her veins like a sudden storm. She had been to church with Stacy a few times, where she had seen people had left the church with the same pain before they entered there. Those silent faces, who had come to the house of God with their sunken bodies in pain and despair, now were haunting Anna's vision with exasperation.
They had confusing series of sleepless nights. Anna's ambiguity and insomnia affected Stacy's sleep pattern, too. Their midnight conversation always started with Anna saying. "What if?" Her bewilderment smashed all the hopes, and accepting reality brought her a numbness. In fact, she was somewhere out of herself, looking at the magic of her ordinary life. However, in one of these sleepiness nights, a casual suggestion of Stacy brought her a sudden light. Unexpectedly everything came to clarification. She need to buy some more time, that precious element in her life. It was an excuse that her parents could not object it and would give her some time to think about what she wanted to do.


To Be Continued

Twenty, Insomnia

Did the winter move away,
That pale, blue outline of melting snow,
That echo of all voices with dismay?
Or am I too late for such a show?

With a candle in hand, I took at remains,
At all traces, books, and the naked tree.
The shadow of candle flickers, oh, my pains!
In the depth of this hole, it is past and me.

My soul is exasperated by oblivion slightly,
And I carry a list of undreamed vision.
And there is a final, but visible halt in my nightly
Visits to insomnia, those ashes, the dull world of decision.
*
How Anna was asked to make a decision, an open and wise resolution! How she was asked to change everything with his choice! No, she did not have the courage to tell him: "No, I can't don't it." She did not have the dauntlessness to leave or stay; and she did not dare to tell him: "Exist, and be quiet. If this is your defense, It can't be mine." She told him, nevertheless.
"I have the impression that you use your inflexible purpose against what you can't fight."
There was this terrible destitution, scare, and dullness in his eyes from what he had experienced. His glance penetrated nowhere. He was disassociated from life which dishonored his body, all the organs in that body that once had been healthy. Savor that had lost his taste. He was a man that still physically alive but internally was long dead. He had faced the most painful punishment anyone could encounter. He was forgotten; or at least that was how he perceived it. Delight now was an attribute he freely considered hateful.
His soul had changed to be venomous against everything for this unfair disrespect to his body. While the world beyond his bed prospering in its worth, virile people flowering far from death. He foresaw his death; and that discernment exalted his unnatural life with perplexity, and disgust. He closed his eyes so as no one could see his expression of forbidden loathsomeness.
An indefatigable sympathy often grew in Anna when she looked at him or spoke to him, hoping for an answer. Those colorless moments of life seemed like a rare dream; nonetheless, it was a dream that Anna had to live with it with her dying husband, Joseph.
*
Steve knew that Anna meant well and hard it was for her to express herself; for her ritual had been to suppress her desires and not to speak of them. Anna wished she could find the courage to bring out the words which were hard to come out to satisfy him and herself. He wanted to wipe away her pain from that darkness of holding. When they were together, she unwillingly challenged him to run him away; and when they were apart, she missed him and wanted to be with him. Steve recognized all these; however, he had a hard time to change her or to make her understand that she needed to be honest with herself.
Stacy observed all of these; nonetheless, she was increasingly involved in her own life and a medical student she had recently met. When two friends talked about their dates, Anna recognized how Stacy was flowing with the current; and Stacy realized how Anna swimming against the flow. What frightened Stacy more than anything else was that Anna might cause her brother to run away from her for the second time. Stacy found Anna's behavior incredulous.
"What is it you want in your life? Don't you like my brother?"
Anna was not shy anymore to hide her feelings for Steve from Stacy.
"Yes, I like him a lot, but I also have my volition."
"Then, what is it that keeping you from having a free will?"
Anna thought for a moment. She did not know the answer. She was not sure why she behaved the way she did when she was with Steve. "I don't know, Stacy. I am puzzled myself."
"Do you want to lose him again?'
"No, but I am still torn between staying here or going back home. My parents expect me to go back since I'd already told them."
"People do change. You can tell them that you want to stay and finish your higher education which is not a lie. Tell them you need to get some more experience here. Give yourself a little more time. Don't rush things. Why everything with you have to be this way or that way, nothing else?"
Anna frowned. She did not have any answer to a very true statement of Stacy. Her silence was more deadly than any destructive talk. Stacy sighed and gazed at her, as though she wanted to bring out an answer out of her forcefully.
"It seems to me that you like a hard life. You like problems and you like to solve problems of others all the time; and if there isn't any, you look for one." Stacy talked with frustration.
"Is this how you think of me, Stacy? Someone that searches for problems?" She looked pale and gloomy. Then she continued: " I don't look for problems. I think my existence is about thinking and living for life. I don't turn my face away from it but I face it. This is the meaning of life for me. I don't justify life only in its problem."
"What is achieved by thoughts," Stacy retorted: "always stays with us. An idea that is attained by thought always remains, whether is a stable or a dangerous idea. Bad thoughts bring bad feelings. If you only think about bad ones, you will lose your strength to confront the good ones."
Anna's heat beat unnaturally fast. She thought that no one is ever given a life by choice. She knew that she was constantly creating new thoughts to avoid inevitable; and it was all these inescapable thinking that had consisted her life. Rivalry was turning to be virulent to her. Life around her seemed all wrong. She roamed frivolously the morning, the afternoon, and all the evening of the life until she could neither think nor feel; and lastly at night, when the sadness was at its highest point and peak, she would settle down in numbness or walk long distance until she would come to places that she did not know. She wished time moved faster for directing her to a resolution. Nevertheless, in her dreams she was easily overcoming all the obstacles on her way.

To Be Continued