The issue, as she wrote, was obviously the pain

9th May, 1:30 AM

Three days ago, on one of the most humid days of the year, a girl from my work tried duping her parents a million. Her name, I did not know. The issue at hand, which had forced her to fake her own kidnapping, was something extremely trivial. She had a friend or a boyfriend, who she had lent a million in the first place. The million, she had borrowed from her parents and now the parents were asking her to return the money. And yes, the friend/boyfriend wasn’t ready to return the money. So, she had kidnapped herself and gotten busted.

The story had caught the media’s attention, just like the two other instances from my work place. They had milked it to the fullest and had run it dry by the second day. Today was day three and there was no mention of it anywhere. It was just like the instances before. A guy had committed suicide before her. And before him, a girl had been stabbed, almost to death. They were all isolated and different instances and to be honest, I couldn’t care less about the people involved. That’s just me, the apathetic guy.

But sometimes, it feels as if it is all connected. Like there’s a thread to all these events, these random, arbitrary acts of violence. All we need to do is just figure out where the thread begins so that we can pull at it. Pull it and make sense of everything, make sense of it. Since March, I’ve grown a beard. It’s not the first one in my life but it is the first unkempt one. It continues to surprise me every morning for some reason. Every time I look in the mirror, I can’t help but wonder how well it hides the grief and the sorrow. Hiding the flesh that once everyone adored and pulled at.

I wish I could hide my old house the same way. It’s still closed and gathering dust. I am sure there are a few cobwebs behind my old desk and maybe behind her old stretcher too. She’s been gone since September and I try not to think about her. Or her illness. Nor her last few months. Or anything at all.

The evening prayers have just ended across the street, and with the unseasonably warm weather still in the low thirties, though the sun’s been down for 6 hours, most of the temple goers mill about outside. Their voices are sharp in the night air as they wish each other good cheer. They remark on the strangeness of the weather, how hot it’s been all year. How spring was warm and the summer boiling, how no one should be surprised if it is 50° during June. Someone mentions the woman from my work, and they speak about it for a moment, but a brief one. I sense they don’t want it to spoil their night. But, oh, they say, what a sick, corrupted world. Corrupted is the word, they say, corrupted.

I spend most of my time sitting out here lately. From the balcony, I can see people, and even though it’s often cool out here, their voices keep me here as my scars singe and my head begins to pound.

In the mornings, I carry my coffee out, stand in the cool morning air and look across, to the playground. Watch the kids run around the yard, playing football. Their sudden shrieks and darting movements, their seemingly bottomless supply of frenetic energy, can be wearying or invigorating depending on my mood. When it’s a bad day, those shrieks ride my spinal column like chips of broken glass. On good days, though, I get a flush of something that may be a memory of what it was like to feel whole, when the simple act of breathing didn’t ache.

The issue, she wrote, is pain. How much I feel and how much I let go past me.

She came during the warmest, most erratic autumn on record, when the weather seemed to have flipped completely off its usual course, when everything seemed upside down, as if you’d look at a hole in the ground and see stars and constellations floating at the bottom, turn your head to the sky and see dirt and trees hanging suspended. As if she had her fingers on the globe, and she slapped it, and the world-or at least my portion of it spun.

Sometimes, I visit my friend nearby. We sit and play video games, discuss football and the latest movies in town. We never talk about her. He doesn’t know about her and I don’t talk about her. She’s done her damage and there’s nothing left to say.

The issue, she wrote is pain.

Those words, written on a ruled sheet of paper, still haunt me. It’s been 8 years now but those words, so simple sometimes seem as if they’ve been etched on stone.