home at last

   We arrive, finally, at the building’s front door. Out of the car and barely able to stay on my feet I sit on the sidewalk, back to the wall, waiting for Priscilla to find the keys amongst the mess in her backpack.
   “You know what just came to mind?” I ask.
   “That you are way too hungry to be spending this much time looking for keys and we should just crash at the dumpster tonight for christ’s sake? Maybe order some pizza?” She replied, clearly fed up to give a shit but doing her best not to break my heart.
   But I was too numb to care, and responded,
   “No, I was thinking about Bovary. Did you feed her this week?”
   “Of course I did, what? If I didn’t papa would come back to life and beat my ass. He loves these fucking cats more than me.”
    She finds the keys after a while, but not before the manager comes down to check what was going on and open the door for us. 

   Today was one of those rare days I let myself inside an elevator, but not willingly, not at all, just out of sheer necessity. My whole body was heavy, and the few minutes I had to walk coming from the hospital exhausted me like running a marathon. The feeling was of having a ball on chain shackled to my legs, and two baby elephants on my shoulders; taking as many flights of stairs as I did everyday was now an impossible task, and the five minutes that took me to go from the elevator to the apartment door only gave more reason for my caretaker’s reprimands of, “Anastasia, I’m not gonna spend the whole night helping you up this shit ton of stairs!” and “Don’t ask me that... You know I won’t let you go on your own, what the hell?”
   On the other side of the door, Madame Bovary meowed what were very clearly cat insults, while Priscilla at the corridor, having once more lost the keys, murmured what were very clearly human insults. But as the door opened and the switch flipped there was a general sigh of relief; all three of us were happy to see each other, and the rest of the night was of snacks, blankets and cartoons.
   But when the morning came, so did the misery. 

   Awake earlier than the rest of the building — as says the malediction —, my body presented me with a new kind of extreme discomfort. It was like every bone was cracked, and every tendon was completely frozen in place. I could move my arms, barely, but every attempt was met with indescribable pain. After some time that very well felt like an eternity, I managed to get up, with a face covered in tears and a pillow completely soaked.
   Couldn’t bother to check the clock that morning, the traffic and the bright sun shining outside my window told me everything I wanted to know, everything I needed to know to certify me of the mess I made, the mess I had become. The tears only stopped when there were no more to cry, when my body ran out of resources to deal with the situation at hand. I tried to eat an apple but the sensitivity of my teeth made it a torture device, tried to drink some coffee but my arms failed to hold the cup; being also too weak to use the mop, I sat back in the armchair, watching the forever gray of my big city sky. 

   When I came back to my senses she was shaking me; face of clear worry, the voice on repeat, “Snap out of it, Annie! Come on!”, over and over. But I heard the first time, only lacking on words to respond. So I hold her wrist and tried my best to show a smile, and that’s when things started to clarify.
   “Why did you not wake me up? You were supposed to take your pills hours ago!” But the tone that started loud and frantic, turned down into an apprehensive question, “Are you ok? Can you speak?”
   And no, I couldn’t.
   Despite feeling deep down that my voice was there somewhere, there simply was no will to open my mouth and let it out. Then, thinking back I realized that, to that point in the morning I had not made a single sound. Had not sang my morning songs, had not cursed the sunlight, had not even spoke to my cat; all because I could not want to.
    “jesus christ, this is all my fault...” She whispered, with a hand on the forehead. “Did you eat anything? Answer me somehow.”
   And I shook my head to say no.
   “Can you even make it to the table alone?”
   I wanted to, but my arms wouldn’t move to help me out of that chair. Nothing would move. I was like a doll, lifeless, and depended on her to get to the table just a few meters afar. Fed scrambled eggs and pancakes, some mango juice; took my pills. After twenty minutes I started writing. After an hour I started talking. After two hours I started working. 

   “Are you sure you don’t want help with that?” She asked.
   “No, I’m fine.” I lied, stuck on the same paragraph, unable to get any progress in almost an hour. And she knew I was lying, like she knew always.
   “Annie, just stop. Why don’t we do something else? Movies maybe?”
   I did not want to watch movies, I did not want do anything else but work, but feel like I could be of importance and aid my colleagues, but it wasn’t the time for that. Prospect of pity for the near future, I finally understood and accepted the position I was in, of wallowing in misery and letting go of my time; of letting myself be cared for, of tasting the senility I’ve always feared to see on me — having seen it on so many I cared for. My time had come early and I couldn’t do anything about it. 

***

   “What are you writing about?” She asked.
   “This past couple days. If anybody asks I don’t want to respond, this will be an answer for all,” I replied.
   “You know, when you were at the hospital I wrote a bunch of stuff you were blabbing about. Maybe you could use it as content for the blog.”
   “Anything good for the naughtytreeroot?”
   “Nah... Too metaphysical, too nonsensical. They’re better on the other one.”