Relapse

I was 22. She looked like she was in her mid twenties.

Somehow, I found myself sitting with this woman. Although she was so familiar, we had never met. I had seen her a dozen times on TV, but that didn’t phase me. We were casual, as if we had been long time friends, yet I was aware this was the first time we were meeting. She was battling her inner demons, and I could see it. She was lost and I would soon be helping her find her way.

Tonight, she was to get on stage and perform her bubbly kids show as she had always done. Goofy humor, poorly produced stunts and a musical performance that rivaled Nikki Minaj as usual. Something compelled me to help her. To speak a few select words that would alter her course that night. Insignificant thoughts that would have ultimate repercussions.

As she sat at her desk, contemplating how she got where she is and where she was going, I made a passing suggestion that she try acapella and forget all the rehearsals she had labored through. She looked at me in shock. As if I had just sacrificed a baby lamb over that very same desk. Unknowingly, I had done something just as big.

The lights came on and the studio audience, spread across red theater chairs, cheered. She made her entrance on to the stage calmly, her bubbly persona had evaporated. Her show began and instruments rested on the stage without their musicians. Her voice pierced through the applause and all went silent. Unsure of how to feel or handle the alter ego they were witnessing, the crowd, one by one, made their way on to the stage and began to improvise. While one young girl took a seat at the drums, another picked up a tambourine.

At the end of the show, once that red on air sign finally dimmed, she made her way back to the desk she left me at. She had an odd look in her eyes, one that I had never seen before. There was a spark of curiosity, a glimmer of fear and… hope. It arose in me a burning fire that blurred my common sense and pushed me to invite her to a park table where she would meet my close friend. Overwhelmed by the feelings generated by the performance, she accepted and we made our way to a picnic table lodged between to large maple trees. She brought her best friend along, the one she had worked with for so many years. Beside me sat my friend, a tall, slender 25 year old who had the wisdom of a 200 yr old. She mistakenly thanked me for my advice as the four of us sat on the splintered table beneath those trees. She asked me who I was and I could only reply that I was a fan. She looked perplexed but accepted it as a fair answer. I told her I had watched the show for 5 years when I was younger. No response. Something was wrong. She started scribbling on the table. Her math wasn’t adding up. I glanced down. Through the chaos of numbers, I noticed that none exceeded 1991. I looked up, stared in to her eyes as if I could find the answer for her, buried deep in to her mind. I found nothing. I asked for the date. She answered 1991. It made no sense yet I did not need to question it. I had learned through an eccentric writer that time is not linear. That both past and present is fought in the present. My brain raced. If it was 1991, I thought to myself, and this woman is already in her twenties, then she was born in the 70s. Simple. However, if I was able to see her past at my present, perhaps I could see her future and provide her with the help her soul begged for.

I needn’t say anything; a simple look in his direction communicated it all. I knew it was wrong and so did her. Yet with a gentle smile on his face, he slowly opened his canvas and leather bound notebook. In it, pale blue lines stretched from West to East carrying grey scribbles, which until now had remained illegible to me. This was the first time its coded messages had revealed themselves to me. He opened it to one page, then another. He stopped and lay his finger on to a particular line about 8 rows down. It was broken down in to columns with years at the top. He pointed to the first: 2012. The corresponding cell contained two exclamation marks and a small pencil drawing of a turnip. The next held three exclamation marks and a drawing of a chili pepper. As if I had understood this code all my life, I dragged the book closer to me, and looked up at this woman. I could not describe what was about to happen. Some have called it an Aleph. I just closed my eyes.

Success had vanished years ago and she had not since walked across a stage. I had warned her against using a particular oil, one that I had not yet heard of. I told her she confide in her closest friend when she discovered it as she could easily lose herself. She was as perplexed as was I.

I was transported to the coffee shop where she sat with the very same best friend that was there that day under the maples. They were older; probably in their 40s. She told her friend about her experience with the oil. The feelings that rushed through her heart and body. The things it made her do. She spoke about how she explored her body, how her mind shifted, how she no longer dreamed of being in a relationship. For a split second, she glanced over in my direction, as if I had been there all along providing moral support. But there was nothing I could say. This was not my place. Her life shifted after I had helped her see what she called future. What felt like seconds for me was years for her. She stood in a dark and dingy room with an older man. He held a child in his arms as tears rolled down his cheeks. He was at the end of his. The wrinkles on his face were scars of a lifetime of hard work, survival through pain and suffering. There he stood, his skin no longer able to absorb the pain that had become a neuce around his heart. For a moment I hovered, confused and unsure of what I was seeing. The woman was back. Her hairline had receded and her rich black locks had been painted grey with age. Her eyes that once sparkled with curiosity, fear and hope, mimicked the swollen eyes of recently caught snapper: large and void of emotion.

A piercing pain spread from my heart, filling every cavity of my body, enveloping my lungs and making it hard to breathe. I had known her for merely and hour in my time. But the hurt was enough to last a lifetime. It was not pity that drove me to interject. It was a far greater force, once that exploded out of my subconscious and paralyzed my logical thinking.

Words with such conviction that they felt as if they were being spoken by someone else, expelled from my mouth. The words were for her. My arms, as if being manipulated by a puppeteer’s line, reached out. I grasped the child and held him out to this woman who no longer looked anything like the woman I had seen on TV. I looked in to her mellow, faded eyes and told her to kiss the child. She didn’t understand. To kiss him like she had never kissed anyone before. To pour her love in to this small being as if this will be the last time she will ever love anyone again. Clumsily, she stared down in to its brown eyes and brushed her face against his. Louder, I yelled at her to kiss him as if we only had seconds to spare.

Moments later, I was back at the rickety picnic table surrounded by my three friends with a canvas and leather bound notebook under my arm. What I had seen, moments ago, was much more than the future of this woman sitting across from me. I caught a glimpse of us.