wake up call

Wake up, wake up, it is there, don't make it wait, just wake up...

Li burst from his bed, his body all filled up with adrenaline, thinking for a moment he was about to explode or something, but good news, he didn't.Shadow was right beside his bed, staring at him, looking like he wanted to ask what the hell was wrong with him.Well, my dear shadow, the answer would be everything.

'What are you looking at?' in all his confusion mixed with one huge amount of adrenaline, li found shadow's face funny and got out of bed in order to go downstairs and feed his beloved companion.This was the first thing he had to do when it came to morning routine, after that he could think about himself.What a shame dogs can't communicate with us though.Shadow was li's dear shiba, best friend, family, all the package and the story of how they met is quiet interesting.

Some years ago, on a warm night of july when li came home from work, the weather was nice and he decided to drink his glass of whiskey on the house porch.It was, indeed, the perfect place for those summer nights that were calling you to stay outside and breath the fresh air while fulfilling your hunger for knowledge through the constant scrolling and jumping from one blog through another.

His house was not close to the city, but not far either.It was a place he found on the internet in a pretty dark time of his life, but it was what he wished for and even more.He took it two days after and to this day li couldn't have been happier about this decision.It was one really needed win in his life at that point.

There was this forest placed between him and the rest of the world, something he didn't mind at all because silence represented something he has been always very fond of and an easy 15 minutes ride with the car and you would be back in the middle of the civilization.However, there were cars he could hear from the immediate highway, coming and going back and forth, but that was a detail he really liked and took it as a reminder that the rest of the world was still there and he was not far away from them, but at the same time well-hidden and far enough from everybody to be satisfied about the situation.It was, in the end, a win-win situation.Li was aware of the fact that it was better for everybody if the amount of time that he would have to spend amongst people was a limitated one.It simply was for the better that way.

Same as those cars, he could as well go back and forth wherever and whenever he wanted.He did that mostly for his job, but you got the point.

Li's distributive attentention was a high-level one but that night it was not and out of nowhere he found himself with this dog standing next to him and it seemed he was waiting for a reaction of some sort.

'Talking about random things, who are you buddy?' the unexpected friend gave him a happy woof or at least it seemed like one.

'A good boy, huh?' this time was an approval woof.

Lost or not lost, li decided to look around town and ask at work for his potential owner but deep down he hoped the dog didn't have one, because some company wouldn't mind him and as a bonus, the company wasn't a human so it was the ideal one.The dog didn't have a leash after all, so he didn't know what to expect.Li gave him some food and the dog ate it all and then came next to him again and they sat in silence, li with his reading and drinking and the dog with his dog thoughts, let's assume.It was a silent dog, li thought and by doing that he knew he had to name it shadow, because he was literally acting like one.In the next couple of days, the mission of finding the owner didn't succeed and this is how he ended up with the best thing he could possibly end up with, shadow.

That day, li went on with his life, going to work, even if it was summer and everyone was on vacation or was about to go into one.However, li was in none of these categories.

From his point of view, summer was overrated and he did just fine without feeling the desperation of going into some overly expensive place, all just for the sake of taking some photographies of him pretending to have fun and then proudly affirm that it was the best holiday ever.

Adjusting to these social norms that had the obvious tendency to tell you more or less directly that if you don't go to parties, or on the beach, or if you don't get wasted every night, of course while you are on the beach at some odd party, was not noted in his agenda.

The backyard he proudly owned and took care of every day was the ideal holiday destination he was not yet planning to take.Maybe in a couple of days, weeks, nothing was sure; what was though was that he didn't invest in that yard so much just to look at it and it was indeed a pretty amazing one.Gardening and designing were two of his guilty not so guilty pleasures, altough li preferred to consider them forms of therapy.

He was himself a pretty popular therapist around this area, being known as a man who really enjoyed his job and his clients, as he liked to name them, were having just positive words to say about him.

From an outsider's perspective, his life was good, undoubtely, but you can never know what is hiding there when the house door closes and the dark comes.In most of the cases, not even the owner.

That afternoon li and shadow were playing outside.Li was a lonely wolf, he was very aware of his situation, but also he didn't felt any wrong things about it and the need to occupy those empty spaces from his life and from his soul with the company of a human being was long gone.It was true that sometimes he would feel a lack of interaction in his life and those empty spaces were growing inside him, but with the passing of time, he realised that this is how it was supposed to be for him.

After a three hours session of running and hiding and exploring the woods thet were both exhausted and decided it was time to go inside.That was his story and sometimes stories can have plot twists.Shadow was li's when he realised the amount of fulfillment this creature came with.

Li sat in the kitchen with himself more than he was supposed to, while thinking about forbiddened subjects, hidden inside a box that wasn't supposed to be opened, especially opened by him.The body was in the kitchen, but the mind was long gone, away in his past, a place in which he wasn't welcomed anymore, so dark and unwelcoming.

There they were, still alive, feeling so present once you entered into their place where the triad past, present, future didn't exist, all his memories, some he remembered and some he didn't.The laughter and the smiles were also there, the town he grew up in, his friends, his parents and there she was his dear sister, seeming like she was waiting for something.Was she waiting for him?He had no idea, but she didn't look very happy, nor do sad, there was the girl that played the piano, his friend from childhood...look!It was him the one he was playing with.There was life in his eyes, there was life in everyone's eyes.Why does the past always looks so good?it is because of the changes, because of the new?there were so many plausible answers...he hated these memories, in particular the good ones.This was all he has, his only possessions, but he didn't know how to deal with those images, heartbreakingly beautiful views of the past.

These images of his past were his most precious possessions he wasn't allowed to look at for so long, he was afraid he wouldn't be able to escape from them if he did so.Even from the worst pieces he had, the price that had to be paid for obtaining those was something that can never come back.they were all stored there, in the warehouse of his mind.

Everything there was starting to become empty, straight to the path of transforming into nothing.It was like that every time he ended up in this palace of blindness.These were all just projections, lies he created about his past, at first so pure and beautiful, looking like the ideal life we are all dreaming about.All until the moment when his path decided to take a dark turn and destroy everything he enjoyed about his minuscule existence in this endless universe and in this place of dark and beauty he would relive those times over and over again.That was his corner stone, his curse, but also his blessing.

Suddenly, the deadly silence came upon the mind.An explosion was about to happen but those moments before felt like an endless distance away.A war was about to start, a battle that waited there, in the unconscious, gathering the energy that was needed and now more powerful than ever, it was trying to take the wheel again.

There were countless thoughts inside, fearless soldiers, some were violent and some so bright they were blinding his vision and their urge to come outside was overwhelming.They were not willing to stay in line and wait for their time, so much anger and thirst for revenge came with them, he was not able to fight with them for long.His mind was turning against him again.

He felt them like a sword, stabing him in the stomach without a single drop of blood coming out of him, it was just the pain and that made everything worse.

These are the most difficult wounds to deal with, because the process of their healing doesn't depend on you; all you can contribute with it's patience and hope that in the end the pain will stop, but for now his being was continuously stabbed.A wound with no continuity, with no chance to bleed the pain away.

He was trapped in this painting that was giving him the chance to pretend.He could pretend he had the possibility to choose, he could fake his way through every minute of his life, pretending everything was fine and the world was beautiful just the way it was.Most important of all, he could pretend he was in control.

Playing tricks and mocking him, laughing at his lack of power, everytime was worse than the last and it was growing inside and without him.He was somewhere left behind, unable to reach it, no matter the effort.Remember the dark, the silence and its beauty, remember you don't have to surrender.the sun will be the next to come, remember.He knew what surrendering would lead him to, he had to remember the sun will come, he couldn't surrender.

The what ifs and the maybes were destoying the leftovers of his mind.He looked at shadow, hoping he will hear his screams, but the dog was sleeping and his screams were happening at an internal level.If they were aloud, this would become real and he was willing to do whatever it was necessary for this to be anything but real.You could say it was an internal bleeding what was happening to him, but that can be stopped with the right knowledge.This is something humans don't know about much, it is all just a sea of assumptions.

There is a method for everything, it had to be one for his madness.Then he saw that the bottle was there, waiting with its fine whiskey that was screaming to be consumed.Li waited the right moment for so long to open it, who would have thought that such disaster was needed?After all, this was also a moment too and everything was made out of such things, so in the end does the right one really exists?

The answer didn't matter, not the quality of that particular drink, nothing was important.All he was able to see in that bottle was an escape, so he grabbed it from the table and drank all its content from two sips, he knew it had to stop but he couldn't until it was finished, just a few moments before he fainted and fell on the floor.In the end, he remained just with the screams.

'Wake me up, before you go, go...'

A song was playing from an unidentified source when li was trying to open his eyes.It was probably the radio, he thought.it was definetly that, he forgot he turned that on.When considering to call the office and announce he was sick or something, which was not far away from the truth, maybe he will take off a week or two after all, his phone started to ring.

'Oh, no.' this was the first time when the mood to hear about work wasn't there at all, but of course that the call was from there.Sometimes, li thought the universe was watching and would give you exactly what you absolutely don't want at the moment, just because it could do that.He answered.

'You are being summoned.' it was paul speaking, his coworker.He heard a laughter after and he couldn't help it but smile a little.He had to admit that paul was spreading positive vibes all the time, even when you were talking on the phone, miles away from each other.

'I was just thinking about taking some weeks off.' and especially some time as far as possible from the city, li continued in his mind.

'I didn't intend to hear your voice these days either, but we have a situation.' and his tone was serious this time.

'Details.' unpleasant situation have these tendency to appear one after another, so it made sense.

'It's a girl here who is very eager to talk to you as soon as possible and she won't leave until she sees you so please come so i could finally have my days off, too.'

Li didn't expect that and he almost forgot about last night.If there was something that could occupy his hyperactive mind, something different than himself, that was the description of an ideal holiday for him.Also reading in his garden, but that is another story.The clients he had to counsel on a daily basis didn't have the most interesting stories so at times it could become boring and sometimes difficult for li to say the same things and listen to the same problems.Anyway, he was happy he had the ability to help the ones in need, although a change wouldn't have minded him at all.This call gave him hope.

'Coming.' despite the common belief that he and paul didn't get along with each other, they were actually good friends and their friendship was based on mocking.They didn't know much about each other and they needn't to because that would came along with emotional openness, creating in their minds an unmotivated feel of responsability, something present in every relationship of any sort and also one of the main reasons that would lead to the destruction of it.This friendship didn't require work and it was perfect that way and they were not having in plan to ruin the mystery of not knowing who the one standing next to you really is.Obviously, he assured himself paul was not a murderer or someone searched by the police.That was an important thing to know about, but the rest wasn't.

He jumped on the car and found himself in front of the building in a couple of minutes.The road was empty, many people were out of town and this place was also the last one in which someone would choose to spend the holiday in.Another plus for living in maybe the most non-touristically area of them all.When he entered the waiting room there was this tiny human being that saw him as soon as he opened the door and went straight right to him.

'I want you to be my therapist.' well, finally a girl who knew her priorities.Li gave her a smile, but she didn't return it.

'If you could come back in a few weeks...or of it is an urgent matter I can recommend you other great therapists.I have the responsability to tell you that right now I am not in good position to coun...'

'No.I don't care.'

'So be it, see you next monday?'

2.  There is this story I shall tell you about one particular someone, who was in the possesion of such an unique type of a mind controlled by an unexplored mechanism I was myself at first cautious to discover.

I didn't want to trigger the unwanted because I was aware of the multiple consequences that this might have caused.

If you look around you can easily notice this detail, present in everything around us, that allows nothing to be just one of a somethingl; a glow can be found even in the darkest nights, just like shadows could came after you in the brighter ones.There isn't just black, there isn't just white, it's all a matter of gray and the space between the opposites represents, as I like to look at, life with all its possibilites.This need of balance protects us from the danger of falling into either of the extremities.

She was one of those somebodies who couldn't find the equilibrium.One day it was black, one day it was white.Inside her Universe was an unceasing trying of creating balance, but without any luck.These two didn't want cooperation and in order to resist, the girl had to become so many others, except herself.

This is the point where she got lost.

Think about one forthcoming storm and the feeling that comes with it.

Quietness with fear all over it, one classic recipe and no matter the consequences, it always is a rare emotion we are all secretly hoping it will never end.

When the wind starts growing into intensity, slowly until the moment when it will transform into the howl of a thousands hounds, then the thunders, feeling like cries of help of those locked in the prison of the sky, giving away the illusion that they will crack the sky in the end, in order to come back on earth and the lightning, the only one to brighten our way through the darkness, the hope that appears when you expect it the least.

She was like that, spreading around peacefulness before destruction, one disturbed state of the nature that was also strengthening you for what will come.I felt that from the first moment I entered the room she was waiting me in.

Never in my career of being a therapist have I seen such complexity, all hiding in such a tiny material under the form of a human being.

Her name was Claude, a common at surface but as you were exploring into the depths of her being, she was becoming a particular.

She was a low height girl with a smile that was more of a polite kind of thing, rather than something true.Her short hair was as black as coal and her eyes, there was nothing ordinary about those eyes, painted in a breathtaking type of blue, so fascinating you could easily get lost into if you didn't pay attention.

Those eyes were making me feel like I was looking at two tumultuos oceans, with waves falling against the shore, full of secrets that wanted get out of there, to be discovered and explored by unknown adventurers.

'I am what confuses me the most and I can't stop thinking about that I might be the enemt in this equation I am trying so hard to solve.One day, I would love to be this ship decorated with pink flowers, floating above an undisturbed by the weather sea, without a care in the universe.instead, I am in a little poorly constructed boat, hoping to find the land before the storm will destroy me along with the boat.I am falling into the muddy waters again and again and it never stops, but you get used to it, you repair the boat and the cycle never ends.'

'From what i understand from your saying, you are talking about a wheel and I've always been a strong supporter of the idea that everything can be destroyed.'

'Will you contribute to this particular destruction?'

'It is my intention, yes.'

We sat there in silence for some time, not quite thinking about something, at least i know I didn't, before we continue our session.at the end of it, when I was about to go, she asked my if she was the enemy and because I don't agree with creating hope, especially a false kind of one, I simply said yes.

I don't truly know how to fell about admitting this, but her madness was my gift.Every hour of this so called therapy sessions I had to attend with this girl increased step by step my belief of something I had in mind for as long as I could remember; this world of ours was not just wars and cruelties, there were not just huamans lead by selfishness and the desire to have more, no matter the circumstances.

Maybe I am stil foolish to assume that I know it represents so much more than these appearances that are just at surface.This universe also had this pure soul, a drop of magic that could give a little color to this dark place.

This soul was also a damned one, cursed to be the only white flower in a field full of animals and without the proper care, she could be dead before the sunrise.She managed to see many sunrises, because being doomed creates a more enchanted life, if that makes sense.Realising you will never be where you are now, that you will never live what you are living now, it is, I think, reconstructive.

I continue to counsel her for months and with every conversation, I was starting to ask myself questions I never had the courage to ask and establish conclusions about myself and at the same time, managing to calm the angry sea inside her.

This situation create the chance to resolve two complicated things at the same time.

'I am in this toxic relationship I can't manage to fix and i need my mind in order to function but at the same time this is the main enemy I have to confront on a daily basis...am I the enemy here?'

It was a moonless night and everything was covered in darkness, a black diamond type of one.hearing nothing, seeing nothing, it was peaceful.I felt like I have finally found the space to think about whatever was coming into my mind without the inexplicable fear of someone that might have hear me, not even the moon.I was dead, but conscious.

However, it did not last as much as I would like it to last because the phone rang and I had to come back from where I was.

I was informed that claude had a crisis and she wouldn't talk to anybody but me.

In that lightless night, the storm decided to come.I thought the timing was interesting.

'It was screaming at me and I've panicked because I hate screams and I lost it, I am sorry.'

'It is not a problem, I'm glad you are fine.May I ask what it was saying to you?'

'It said i must stop try find it.'

'Find what, my dear?'

'The light fro the end, this is where my voice is.'

Runing after the something I could never have, I thought.Now she was in the same situation.

'Now it is just something I could never have.'

I said yes and stayed there until she fell asleep.

I feel like a helpless spectator, in a theatre I don't want to be, watching a play I don't want to see and the irony is that I am in that play, 

I am the main character but no matter how much I try, I am also the outsider, the one who has to watch its own self going through life and I 

can't seem to have a word in this process.Everytime I try to do something there is this voice I have that reminds me I am in no control.

There comes like something so natural, this process of finding this voice of yours, but is it?

Me, such a well-constructed methapor, feeding to the world out there even a more well-constructed lie, something that is there for centuries and

few were the ones who dared to question.As I said, 'me' is a lie because I'm the result of what I can remember this 'me' being, but what if my memory is wrong.My mind will always play tricks with me and so could my memory...so I'm asking, who is this me?Am I the enemy or not?

'When i am going to toss my fingers you will wake up.' she nodded and I continue with my words.

'Now you are in a place you have never been, tell me what you see.'

'Strange...a strange something.'

'Can you be more specific?'

'Dark, a strange darkness I don't...a light.' claude smiled and I could see in that moment something that looked like hope and hope looked beautiful on 

her delicate face but at a blink of an eye, it was gone as she opened her eyes and I got panicked because I never got to do the wake up call.Her blue 

eyes looked right into my soul with a stone figure and simply said: 

'Now it is just something I can never have.' 

Li went to bad early that night.

After all the conversations we had, she gave me one true smile before she said what will hunt me from now until I will be long gone.

'I don't know, I think I am lost.'

'I think you are finally capable to escape this prison.' claude smiled again as she got up and exit the room, making me a sign to follow her.

'I don't know, i think i am lost.'

In the final frame, I was the forester who, after so many years of trying, finally succeeded to cut the old tree, something that would have been 

destroyed sooner or later by the storm and ruin every chance for him to save what he had managed to plant so far.Time stopped and the forester was

finally able to see himself detached from the old that it was once so hard to separate from.

When you think about the fact that 'once' was just a few seconds ago...and now the man was another.

This is when I woke up.