the use of recent world events considered

[city_love]

"Of course it’s survivable, it must be survivable, but feelings lie and this is a big lie, the feeling you get walking under the windows of the apartment you used to live in that you no longer have the keys to-the lights are on, the drapes are closed, she’s inside and you don’t have a key anymore and it feels like you’ll die any second but it’s survivable, it must be survivable, people survive worse things all the time-they lose fingers, they lose limbs, they lose children, they lose spouses, and here you are, quoting Elizabeth Bishop, so how bad can it be, really? The art of losing isn’t hard to master, even though it may feel like (say it) you lost your spouse, but at least she’s not dead; she’s still alive, and if she doesn’t see you or talk to you, at least she’s breathing somewhere-so this isn’t the apocalypse, this isn’t World War 2, it’s not even Granada, for god’s sake, but how dare you compare your pain from the end of a relationship with the carnage wrought by warfare or the end of the world? How insensitive-how could you-you-with a stable job and a roof over your head, you don’t even have real problems-here you are, going on about the light in her windows when you have your own damned doors and windows, you just want to be inside hers, but you’re not welcome. Get over it. You want problems? Here’s a real problem: In the paper today, there was a story about a little girl who was born unable to sense pain. She can feel things, she just can’t sense pain, so as a baby, she scratched her cornea terribly and didn’t know it, bit clear through her tongue as a toddler, came up to mommy with a mouthful of blood and a tongue stub, scratched her arm till it was bloody, stuck her hand against a furnace until it was puffy with mushroom-sized blisters, so you see there’s a problem, be grateful for your pain as you walk down the street, that pain, it shows you you’re alive-and you’re most certainly alive so be grateful for what the pain is telling you, ripping through you like a chainsaw and making you wish you were dead instead. Sooner or later, seeing her windows lit from the inside, knowing she’s home, you’ll feel dead about it, meaning you’ll feel nothing, honest, it’ll feel better, it will. And I know you don’t want to hear this right now, but someday, all this will feel better and you’ll wake up one day and hear the birds singing again and you’ll notice the sunshine and there will be small animals frolicking on the grass ha ha ha and don’t tell me to shut up I realize it’s still too soon for all this but maybe even though it’s not right now you can hold out for the promises of the spring flowers like crocus and those little tiny daisies next April or May even though right now inside you it’s October, that season not for flowers but for gourds, lying like desperate organs on the ground then rotting as the earth hardens and frosts and the leaves fall to their deaths one after the other, that season of despairing, and it’s dark almost all the time, October, and the dark closes in at you from either end of the day and here you are in early November, a white girl at the Dia de Los Muertos, black dress and marigolds, photos and liquor. This isn’t for you at all, but you’ve got nowhere else to go and you’re walking through the streets, turning your back that place that used to be your home, surrounded by skeletons, you’re all walking together, you’re turning your back to the place that was home. The lighted glass is staring at you through the night. You turn away and one instant later, from somewhere inside, someone you loved flips a switch and the light in the windows is gone."

-Daphne Gottlieb