The seagulls are squawking above us as if saying, "Enough! Enough!" The sea breeze is trying to wake us up from the stupor of the awkwardness. I take out my camera and take a picture of her. How awkward. We aren't even speaking. The surrounding silence is as quiet as our voices, but the tension is thick enough to be cut with a knife.
I don't know why I stopped talking since she arrived last night in Boston. And now we have to continue driving to Newport and then finally to New York. I don't know if I will see her again, but a part of me just refuses to see her, to recognize the inevitable future as much as the present I am stuck in. I guess the awkwardness started before she even boarded her plane from the other side of the ocean. She told me a month ago that she was going to cross not only the ocean but this mighty big country to see about a boy who had proposed to her. It's strange that I should be so affected by that. We had a connection I hadn't experienced for a long time. There was nothing we couldn't talk about and there was nothing that required lengthy explanation. We just connected. Nothing, except, when she raised the point of having found someone who was crazy about her, enough that he actually crossed this mighty big country and the even bigger ocean to see her, to propose to her.
There was guilt. Guilt that I was not able to hear the news without disappointment, no matter how little I understood the disappointment. I wasn't able to be show congratulation, exaltation, but rather, grumbling silence. She insisted stopping by to see me, to spend some time with me, since we had never seen each other in person, and back then, when putting a picture on the Internet was an enormous, nearly impossible, undertaking, we hadn't seen each other except on blurry photographs. We had the purest form of a platonic relationship, but suddenly, when the news broke out, things stopped seeming so platonic.
But I was confused. I was quiet when she said that on the phone. Or was it Internet relay chat? I can't remember now. I am just here, feeling sorry for myself in the most quiet and punishing way possible. I don't mean it to be punishing, but it always ends up being punishing. And that sulking silence also added to the guilt. The seagulls continue their reprimand of my action, my behavior, while she sits there quietly, not truly understanding what is happening but accepting it all the same. She is undoubtedly afraid already of this trip, of this engagement that is now settled, of this huge travel, of having to leave her mother behind in a country that is just starting to see some economic prosperity. And to add to all this, the fear of losing a connection with someone she connects deeper than with anyone else. Or so I think. This much I understand with great fury. The logic seems incredibly twisted. Connection does not build a partnership. At least not this kind of connection, regardless of depth. And the last bit of the twisted logic is that I never even hoped that we would somehow have something different from a platonic relationship.
It's the fear. Fear of losing her and returning to the old life of having no one in my life to connect to. Fear of loneliness. Fear that I am not good enough for anyone, including her. It's the fear that I don't belong anywhere or to anyone. So here she is at last, after so many electronic and paper correspondences. And yet I feel enormously lonely, disconnected from the world, from my own life. I've been out of college for nearly a year now. The last year was tormentingly lonesome, and this year just made it harder when I was living all alone, without at least the anonymous crowd of my dorm.
I take a picture of her because I want to remember who it is that has made this day so complicated, so difficult. Later when I might see the picture again, maybe I will regret even more my behavior. I am pretty sure. But for now I am just feeling sorry for myself and am determined not to know more about her business, especially her wedding, if it will happen at all. I almost don't want them to get married, however important it would be for her. I want to shoot down the gawking seagulls, kill the engines of boats around me, drown the shouting sailors, and quiet the wind so I can hear my self-pity in the loudest way possible. The self-pity of who I am and where I am and that nothing is good enough for me, nothing and no one, and that I will forever be stuck in this situation, in this lonely life inside a big, uncared for apartment always so dark. My apartment is always dark, and always has only one person inside: me. There is a TV but that can only be my company long enough before I start to feel worse about my loneliness. The cheap and ugly carpet, the peeling paint, the greasy stove, but worst of all, the emptiness in all the rooms, all make me feel lost in the sea in front of me. I don't notice that the sun is shining and the sky is blue and that the seagulls are not gawking at me but just doing their own stuff. I don't notice anymore that she is sitting in front of me, feeling helpless about what to do with this thickening silence.
She is leaving to be rescued by someone else. She comes from a life mostly fatherless and mostly lonely. We connected even though we are of a different continents, different cultures, different worlds. We just want to stop being alone. And she found someone who would be her partner, who would give her a new life in a country that is full of potentials. I already live in this country and yet I see no potentials, no possibilities of leaving this dark, empty apartment. My work is abominably easy and leave me with even more lonesome time. I have no one to call and my parents are still far enough away so I don't need to talk to them that much.
All this free time for brooding. All this free time to avoid thinking happy thoughts, enjoying life, and opening up to the goodness of life. But it's not time for guilt. I don't know what it is a good time for. Here she is sitting before me. And we will drive down I-95 to New York, and then I will say good bye in some simple or theatrical manner. After that? Maybe nothing. Just like the lightless and lifeless apartment I am going to return to this evening.
