working title and new emotions

One 

The air grew heavy at the nursing home. People come in and out. The sound of the wheelchairs being spread and folded, footsteps and chatter. This air of movement and chaos never bothered me before, but on this particular day it was unbearable. My head was spinning, my throat felt warm and I had never long for the pricking ice cold air from winter. I thought I was coming down with something; a virus, the appendix, my brain has finally exploded with all my thinking. 

I entered my boss's office and she greeted me with the usual aloofness and a tired smile. I wanted to crack my head open at that point. I am sure that I would have collapsed on the spot if it wasn’t for his voice, that strange voice that would become so familiar to me, almost intimate. 

My boss looked past me greeting the stranger that just spoke with a wide, polite smile.

“Oh, good, you are here.” she said. She introduced me to him as I turned to face him. I was expecting another older college student, over-polite, unattractive, uninterested or with-the-hopes to learn attitude with the means to just come one day and never show his face again. 

But no. 

He had perfect, brown-bright eyes, charming smile, curly hair and was handsomely built. Relax and confident in his manner of speaking like he already knows this water from like the back of his hand. 

People described the feeling of falling in love as a ground-breaking revelation of one's own soul. Where your mind, body, heart and soul are in accordance with each other for the first time. This was not my case. I have never cared for love, real love. I long for a romance only novels could understand and poets can describe but never quite grasp it. 

So, the first time I laid eyes on him, my experience was quite rude. My body lost its sense of direction, a clash of matter had exploded and I was staring at the eye of a hurricane. My heart was excited, my mind was baffled and my soul was already willing for anything. 

“Hello,” he said to me and everything came to a halt. 

“Hi..” I said back, managing a smile. 

Tranquility came and I could breath now, the butterflies in my stomach gave a pleasant feeling and my heart beat a bit slower and I shamelessly beam at him. I went from chaos to now enjoying the calm soft rain of infatuation.

That day I spent it daydreaming, staring at this perfect stranger that our crew calls, Joe. There is this tightness in my chest everytime I see him, as if my heart is trying to suppress its beats to hear him clearly, the sound of his voice, low and soothing. My soul is with him and my mind commits to memories every single line of his face and back. I am in bliss and I don’t want to come out of it. He gives me a polite smile, we talk and nod at each other. I am twelve years old again fawning over the new kid.

I am a creature of emotions, feelings, and romance. I enjoy literature, novels, and movies. I write poetry when I’m sad and write my life like one big scandal to feel that I have a life. People think I was a wild child, and a wilder teenager, with many stories and adventures and many conquests of guys and girls, since I am so “passionate” about life.

Ha ha ha! No. 

I am a Peruvian older daughter of people that left their families behind for my education and success, pressure to be nothing less than perfect. I’ll spare you the details of my very protected childhood, just know that my upbringing was necessary, because it is not always safe in Peru, and worse to young girls to be left alone and without supervision. I am grateful to my parents, I love them with all my heart, I would die for them, I understand them and I forgive them. 

I had learned to live for others, for my mother, for my father, for my brother. I was not allowed boyfriends, or parties, always told to mistrust your friends and embrace your family. I obeyed, and it became all that I am, it became my identity and I was happy. I was satisfied with the life that was set for me. 

Romance became something that only happens in movies and books, that the feelings of having butterfly in your stomach was just indigestion, and everytime I saw couples walking around holding hands and showing affection, I never saw myself that situation. It was not for me. I believed to be wire differently, but I guess I am just as helpless like other girls, and he was different, perfectly different.

Until we came to America, and our life changed drastically. My parents needed it from me less and less. My brother did not ask for my help anymore. One day, as I talked with my parents I was told. “You are a good daughter. Go live your life.” and what he meant got lost in translation and all I heard was, “we don't need you anymore.”

Their rules, their teachings, their limits were deep rooted into me that at the moment of freedom I did not know what to do. I felt useless, with no purpose, nothing to work for, no one to care for. 

I felt like an old woman, alone and without direction after saying goodbye to her last child. I have lived for others for so long that I had to re-learned how to walk, how to breathe on my own. 

And then it hit me and it put me in such an excruciating state of despair, that I could barely bear it; IT was loneliness. 

No friends, not one stubborn romance, not one memorable friend or lover. No best friends or confidants. No one. 

All this was new. He was new. 

Oh, he was perfectly new.