Sonya's Story

A rainy day, though not as much rainy as the threat of rain permeating the atmosphere.  Once in a while you will hear a little pattering on the concrete, but mostly just a feeling in the air of wetness and worms and a slight chill, causing you to turn around and fetch your rain jacket.  At once, I hear a sound of thunder in the far distance, more of a threat rather than imminent danger, like a man walking behind you on a dark night, with his pace suddenly quickening, his breath getting closer, so close as to almost feel it on the nape of your neck. 

            The streets are empty at last.  Some peace and quiet reign within my surroundings.  Finally, I get a chance to hear my own thoughts, rather than those meaningless mutterings of others as they attempt to get through their own sort of day.  There is something to be said about living within one’s own tranquility, completely alone—nothing to encroach or disrupt the peace, far away from the living breathing mass of humanity and its amoeba-like formation of a thousand different cries for help.  If we could only stop humanity for a split second to gaze on what is really happening, it would be like the voyeurs who visit present day Pompeii in order to see the momentary terror that these ashen forms of the Ancients were engulfed within.  Our present day faces would be momentarily frozen in terror too, only not because of any imminent danger.  The faces of our contemporaries would be frozen, terrified of getting older, terrified of admitting that they too are human, and will get old, then frail, then eventually pass away into nothingness.

            Oh, what a sin!  To be human…to have feelings, emotions, and imperfections.  To need to struggle to survive with what is available at the time, to work, and to experience heartache, distress, and loneliness.  To be human, to be a being with a need to love and be loved, a being with the need to be happy.

            Relinquishing this unique trait of being human relinquishes everything but what the remaining marble statues left by the ancients have.  Yes, these statues are immortal, but why be immortal if you are not allowed thoughts and feelings, mistakes and losses, deaths and births, love and loving, and having the ability to really see true beauty, not society’s perception of beauty.

2

She is still searching, searching for that person whose eyes will give her that glimpse of true sincerity.  She was created with that unique ability to always comprehend what lies behind those eyes, behind the glance or the polite phrase or gesture.  She can always have a sense of a person’s pain or loss or insecurity, and she sometimes feels these feelings as if they were her own.  This causes confusion, anxiety, over and over again, for her.  She has tried chemicals and heightened experience in order to cope, but this is always only temporary.  She must find a way to take her strange intuitions and put them to good use, without causing damage to herself.

            “Why am I this way? It just is not fair! I wish I didn’t know these things, then I could trust people and make friends like normal people.  I could just relax and be at peace.   I would never feel that threat of danger arriving in the near distance.  People would see me as being happy and pure, untouched.”

  We cannot fight who we are, though.  Somewhere in everything we possess lies a gift waiting patiently for us to find it.

3

I am startled.  How dare someone tap her rudely on the shoulder!  I turn around ready to snap in an instant.  Standing there is a woman without any arms.  Well, maybe half arms, it’s hard to tell.  (How could she have tapped me on the shoulder after all?) Now, I feel embarrassed for getting angry at this apparently disabled lady.  “Hello there! I just wanted to say Hello.  I see you walking here everyday.”  She wears a bright smile as if nothing in the world could be wrong today.  “I was wondering if you’d like to talk some time, anytime.  I usually come here in the afternoon, and I always see you walkin’.  You know, I like to walk too!”  I can’t say that I have ever seen her here.  After all, wouldn’t I notice someone without arms?   What she doesn’t understand is that I come here to be alone.  I come here because it’s the only place I can feel at peace and feel silence.  The last thing I want to do is to talk.

A few moments pass and this time, more quietly, she says, “My mother just passed away, and so I come here to try to deal with it. You know, it feels good to see other people who are alive, like me.  To get away from all the pain and anger at home…um..do you think you would like to sit and talk sometime?”  She starts to get choked up and weepy.  “My name is Fran.”  She does not hold out her hand.