Heart of Silence in the Place of Chaos

At the core of the noise of the all-awake city is a heart of silence. It throbs with stillness, radiating into the tumult, that just a short distance away is being chewed and swallowed and spit out. Until, even though it became as if it never was, the noise remains trapped in small pockets and unexpected turns.

The all-awake city of chaos never sleeps. People do sleep now and then, but the city itself stays wide-awake and bleary eyed. And tired. For newcomers to the city, it is a strangely blazing sight. Lights of different colors dancing and swaying, coloring the night sky with magic, the sounds of bubbling waters and exploding music making the world strum with excitement.

But that is a long way away from here.

She arrived at the core of silence one day, just like that, wandering, alone and confused.

“What is your name?” asked the silent trees

“I do not know,” she let them know.

“Where are you from?” the wind stirred.

“I do not know,” said she.

“Where you going?” asked the flowers.

She paused, and with a look of wonder, “I do not know,” again.

“Then live here for as long as you want,” they chorused as one, though to someone looking on, nothing stirred the silence. And she slept for a long time, soothed by the quiet, not wanting to leave ever, though at some part of her mind she knew she would have to. Her eyes spoke of something ancient. And she stayed there for a while, eating fruit offered by the trees, and the cool, clean water yielded by the springs.

And she grew stronger and stood up taller and straighter. Until one day, she announced simply, “I think I am ready now.”

The stillness around her lay, waiting.

“I come from a place of chaos,” she said, “far away from here. It is a grand place indeed. With lights and tumult and sounds. Aaah, such sounds that can steal away your soul and replace it with want and need. I miss sound here…though the silence is soothing,” she hastened to say, as if say she was not complaining.

“I still don’t know my name, can’t remember. Perhaps because if I do, I will never be able to return here, to this place.”

“Then, one day, I tried to kill someone.” The silence grew thick and clammy. Why? Why? Resonated in her head, until she felt her head would explode like a bomb, destroying the world around her.

She held out her wrists, and lifted the hair off her neck. She drew her dress up to her thighs. Her story was written on her face and body, slashed deep into her skin till her dying day. Inescapable. Unavoidable.

“She’s someone I know…someone I love and hate. Someone I pity. I wanted to kill her, out of pity you understand. Because I could not bear her pain, you see. It made her retch and cry into the nights, adding to the chaos in the city. Unable to stop once she started.”

“I pitied her. So one day I brought her some little white and red pills…and some green ones and some large white ones. And I stood over her and made her swallow them. One by one, and then by the handful, with two glasses of water. Yes, she drank two glasses of water,” she said almost wonderingly.

She sobbed silently. The silence listened and asked, why didn’t you try and help her in another way?

“There is no other way. Do you know what it’s like to be someone like that? To see someone like that?”

“She used to…tear her hair out by the handfuls until her scalp bled. Inside her was a wound. A wound so dark and treacherous, and fed by so much anger that there was no end to its depths. She cried so much that her tears dried up. And then she would retch, dry heaves of feelings that had nowhere else to go.”

“She loved a man once. He was good, a good, kind man. Fascinated by her visions and the poetry that flowed from her like rivers of blood and flowers. On her good days, between her crying, she would grab a pen and blank paper and write words, never-ending words. As if time was running out and she had to get everything out. I never understood any of it, but he seemed to. He was drawn by the mystery of her sorrow. He promised to be with her, always, forever.”

“She met him during a time she was better, holding herself together with a fragile glue. She had those phases sometimes, you know. Anyway they talked. And watched the sunset together. On dark nights, she would read him her poetry, by the fire, in bed, wherever they were. He stroked her hair and told her, she fascinated him. That he loved her. That her inner core of darkness and roiling emotions called to him.”

Her eyes gazed into the distance, glazed and unseeing, “Then one day, she started coming apart. Some little thing. Some news from home or something. It doesn’t matter though, because she always came apart, at some point or another. Always did. Suddenly all that latent darkness, that hatred, that anger, that blackly-black place within her welled up and filled all her empty places, until she was consumed from the inside out. For a while he protected and held her like he had promised. But then, one day he grew frightened and left.”

She repeated it again, “Just like that. One day, he told her he loved her but he couldn’t deal with it. Besides his parents wanted him to marry and settle down. Get help, he said to her and left. So she cried again. Bitch! What else did she know to do? He left and like the sick, pathetic weakling she was, she cried. Two months later she found out he got married to a suitable girl, bubbly and cheerful and pretty,” she spat out.

What was her name?

“Her name? What the fuck does that matter? She fell apart, fell down that twisted Alice hole until she could not see her way out. Fine! Fine! Her name was Sachita or something like that. Yes, yes, Sachita.”

Go on then.

“So I brought her some razor blades. But she never cut deeply enough to kill. Said she used them just to tell herself she could, when the time came. If she needed to do. But you know what? She was a coward. Scared of the pain. She’d sit for hours, numbing her wrists with ice water to make it easier. I showed her too, over and over again. Cut vertically, I told her, not circling the wrists, like the movies show. Cut deep and vertically to be successful. Anyway, that silly bitch just cut all over herself, enough to draw blood and scar, but enough to succeed. Never built up her courage in all those trial runs.”

What did you do then?

“What could I do? I brought her the coward’s way out, those damned pills.”

What happened then?

“I don’t remember. I really, truly don’t. I’m tired. Leave me alone. Go after her if you dare. You’d like her. Stupid bitch!”

Try.

“Ooh, no-one ever loved me. My mother used me as a whipping boy. My father was unavailable. I think he molested me, or was that just a family friend? I’ve always just had this sadness inside. No one recognized. No one helped me; no one helped me get treatment. Everyone needed to pity her. Poor, poor Sachita, ill-treated and ignored. But you and I know both know she was a slutty, stupid bitch right? Jeeze! When her parents found out she’d been living with that guy. Been having” her voice dipped conspirationally low, “having sex with him, they let her have it. Slut! They said. We are the laughing stock of the community. You bitch! Why didn’t you die instead? Living with that boy. Now he’s married and here you are, the slut we always knew you were. This is why you left home to go and work in that sinful place? To blacken our faces. Never visit us again, never call. You are dead to us.”

Her laughter was mirthful and light, echoing unnaturally in the silence. As if she had heard the funniest joke in the world.

“But still I liked her. What could I do? She wanted to obey her parents for once,” she said pityingly.

“I helped her write her note, while we waited for the medication to kick in. And you know, that great anguished poet, what gem she came up with? ‘I am sorry. I cannot go on. Tell Siddharth I will always love him.’ That’s all she could come up with. Talent, my ass. She had nothing, no great words for her farewell from the world.”

She laughed again. And it echoed throughout. Until she could not stop. And the line between laughter and tears began to blur.

She came awake suddenly, staring at the shadowed figure behind the chair. Her hands came away from her cheeks, wet with tears.

“I was crying,” she said wonderingly.

He handed her a box of tissues, watching her closely.

“It was a good session today. You remembered a lot.”

She looked at him warily, “really?”

“Yes, yes, I taped it. You can listen to it later perhaps. You remembered Siddharth, the young man, and the suicide and…quite a lot. Good, excellent really, for one session.”

She laughed wryly, “Hmmm, so that weeklong coma didn’t fry my brain. Well, no more than it was fried already huh?”

He smiled, conceding her attempt at lightening the mood.

“Well. Time for you to head back to your room, then. See you at group tomorrow. And, then, same time, same place, next week.”

She nodded.

Her green scrubs made her skin appear sallow, washed out under the fluorescent lights as she walked back slowly down the silent hall, back to the room she shared with two others. She tossed the audiotape she carried into one of the gleaming trashcans. It clattered noisily on the way down. “I don’t think I can listen to that,” she said silently, exploring the silent wonder of her long-denied tears. Tonight she planned to sleep the night through.