A Magician of Heart

Tonight's the end. I gulp a whole bottle of codeine pills, and Vicodine, too, with a cheap Vodka I bought with the last pounds in my pocket. I count in my heart...

One...

Two...

Three...

In my waiting for departure I am thinking about her, the ghost who inflicts so much pain and so much joy in my life.

Four...

Five...

Never crossed my mind, that I can only love her in my defective mind. In my insanity, I found love.

Six...

Seven...


Five years have gone by since that one summer's afternoon. I can still remember the details vividly, as if it was just yesterday. The air... the room was radiant by the light of the sun that refused to step down. A flock of golden clouds sauntered slowly on the tangerine sky. I remember sitting down by the windows, on a wooden chair. It was warm inside. On the outside, some children were playing football. Some of them were cycling. None of their laughs could register to my brain. I felt bland. I felt lifeless. Yet I can flawlessly recall that day, because that day is the day she came to my life.

"How are you dear?" My mum's voice echoed from across the room. "Are you feeling well?"

"I am okay, mum."

I am okay, mum. It's just... I am not me. 

My heart dared not speak the latter sentence. I just couldn't stand the thought of me worry my mum again.

The fault in our stars have cursed our family with this defect. First, my father. A decorated sergeant who was honorably discharged in his prime time. One day, a depressive episode manifested, due to his mental illness that finally surfaced. The next day, he's probed with evaluation. Two months after, he was out of the military. The next year, he shot himself to death. Leaving a widow with measly veteran benefit and a son who inherit the same illness. Perhaps it's time for my turn.

I never expect that that afternoon carved a lasting impression, even more so since my mind is botched from a concoction of brain-suppressing medications. That afternoon... that gleaming window... about five meters from outside of the window, came her. The wind blew her short, silky-black hairs as she walked closer and closer to me. I could only caught a glimpse of her face... her eyes. She looked into my eyes - a habit that she never lost - and I swear to god I was trembling at that moment. And then she was gone, disappearing into thin air. So fast, as if the earth swallowed her in one quick swoop.

"Life is not a dream, you know." A whisper came from behind.

I jolted from my chair. And there she was, smiling menacingly.

"What the fuck... Who the fucking hell are you?!"

"Son? Are you okay? Whom are you talking to?"

"Uhh, sorry mum. I... uh, the kids outside are playing in our yards. Gonna mess your flowers so I shooed them away."

"Oh, okay, then. I am going to go downtown. You feel like coming?"

"I guess, no, mum. I am fine."
"Take care, dear."

"You too, mum."

"Liar, liar..."

That voice again. She was standing next to the door. I could now see her clearly. Her slender body leaned against the wall, with her thin legs crossed. She tilted her face to me. Her round face, her melancholic eyes, and one little mole adorning above her thin lips. Lips that smiled a beautifully cynical smile. Her face was a landscape of wonderland. She was beautiful. Perhaps the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.

"Are you an angel?"

"Maybe."

Her sweet puffy cheeks reddened as she chuckled. "You will know who I am."

Since then my life was naught but a poetic version of reality. She was a magician of heart. Her passing apparition distorted everything that is real. I saw her on my waking hours. On some night, she would even sit next to me on my bed, from dusk to dawn. Exchanging words and whispers. Commenting on my frailty body, or about this old world - the philosophers, the peacemakers, the war mongers - while having our eyes locked on each others'. Her mind was like a library of infinite books. A vastness that I could never fathom.


I didn't know her name, and she didn't tell me, either. Until one day, I saw the sky carved her name by the clouds.

Nadja. 

Nadja, the sweetest angel ever made by the immortal hands of God. The sweetest being in my life.


"You are not prepared to understand me. Everything that you see is a juxtaposition of two or more realities, including me."

I didn't understand a word she just said when I asked more about her. Since then I only knew her as an angel. A heaven-sent.


Day by day, Nadja haunted me. Even stronger. I saw her on TV. One day she was the anchor woman, and she told me a story about what happened in Middle East. But frankly I didn't care, I only cared for her voice, sung like lullabies. Like a bedtime story. On another day, she was the weatherman. The swirl pattern formed a heart shape. How sweet of her, I thought. I've never been romantically loved that much in my live.

One day - after disappearing for few days - she appeared as both the pizza delivery guy and the face on pizza box. Both of her was angry, saying I didn't miss her that much. I begged for apology to the baffled pizza guy and the pizza box. And that's when my mother noticed my illness.

My medications separated me from her. The first time I took them, Nadja taunted me. 

"You're weak. You're useless! You let those pills deteriorate your brain? You will never see me again!" 


Nadja resented me, questioned my love for her. My mum was beside Nadja, trying to contain her tears. Her body was unsteady, shivering. Her eyes were looking at me, tired, almost as if this life turns to an unending vigil. I could know that my mum was scared from the realization that the only love left for her is about to suffer like her husband. My heart was torn in dilemma. Love is not supposed to be contested, to be compared. Yet I had to choose.

Every time I took the meds, Nadja didn't come. I ached in agony. The medications robbed me of my Nadja and my willpower. I felt cold and empty. I couldn't express anything but a mask-like expression. Nadja is my bittersweet distractor. In my catatonic state I could only remember her, as if universe means nothing without her.

I missed her so much I decided to stop taking the meds, just to see her again. I expected her to be so angry with me, but she wasn't. She was as angelic as she always was.

"I miss you too."

I began to see her everywhere since I stopped taking my medication. I saw her face on the billboards alongside Cheshire Road. Her omnipresence began taking over my life. She was on everyone's faces, with all eyes towards me. Looking at times very cheerful, but sometimes also very sinister. She even wrote me messages, displayed everywhere. In newspapers, sometimes, I read a letter or poetry made by her, signed "Nadja." In other times, license plates on the street spelled her accusatory voices, like a barrage of moving angry text messages. It drove me crazy. It suffocated me.

On one rainy afternoon in the middle of August this year, well past 4 PM, I was driving my car downtown. I had to buy grocery since my mother was ill and must stay in bed. Usually, I always drank my meds in needs like this. But this time I forgot taking them, and Nadja began appearing again everywhere. I tried my best to ignore her, keeping my focus on the road. One of her was on the sidewalk, waving at me, trying to tell me something. I was too distraught by her to dodge a parked car.

Inside a car I just hit, a couple were struggling to get out. I sighed in gratitude, for such a fatal inattention almost took away several lives. I saw the man got a bloody cut in his forehead. The woman got bruises here and there. Worse, their faces gradually changed to Nadja's as they screamed and yelled and limped towards me. Soon, other people approaches me and my car. They were... all Nadja. My head hurt so much from the impact and all the illusions. I couldn't sort things out. I couldn't remember a thing afterward - except the feeling of touching my damp shirt, soaked with blood. I passed out.


I woke up at the Sacred Heart Hospital, with stitches above my left eyebrows and dislocated shoulders. Police demanded explanations, and after several inquiries, the court decided that I was too dangerous to myself and others. The court order compelled me to take medication else I would be put in mental institution. I could only imagine how sad my mother was. An agony not so subtle was hinted in her face. I didn't dare to see my mum's face afterwards.

Can you imagine lovers separated not by distance but by sanity? Maybe there is only one in this world; only Nadja and I. And now my sanity becomes an unbearable quality to have. I've dreamed of her so hard that I'd rather lose my grip on reality. I want my insanity back. I want to hear stories coming from her lips again; to sleep with her voice that is so dear to me while embracing her body as she lays next to me. I want Nadja no matter how much she caused me pain.

Eighty two...

Eighty three...

Tonight is nothing but a collection of emptiness. The empty sky deprived of star lights. The empty bottles of pills. The empty heart of a man. Soulless. Loveless. This immense feeling of bleakness permeating from my room is more comforting than ever.

Ninety...

Ninety one...

My inner clock is counting the moment. What will come after this? Will this wicked son get punished for inflicting so much sadness and disappointment to his mother?

Will I meet Nadja? 

I grin at such prospect. My vision begins to blur from tiredness and the pills. My whole limbs paralyze.

Nadja. The enigma who warped my soul and sent it in limbo. The beautiful angel who remains out of reach in reality and in my dreams. I have lost her. I no longer have her. May this death - this infinite night - bring me again to her sweet caress. May these pills be my one way ticket to ride.


Ninety nine...

I believe in everything that will bring her back to me.

One hundred...

As I close my eyes, every inch of my body screams her name.

I hear my room door creaking slowly.


-----



*) A homage to Andre Breton's book, "Nadja". Thank you, @nitnitha. :*