Carry Me Back to Whole

The violence of thudding thoughts swells in the mind after you have killed someone. At least for Aniya, it seems the grueling pounding of her heart is struggling to replace the emptiness she feels inside.



"Ticket" gruffs the inspector. One word summons her hand forward. She turns over the crumbling blue pass stamped Frankfurt One-way Express.

People shuffle past her in regretful haste. The conductor signals passengers to take their seats. Aniya is still searching for her own. 

Incoherent with grief, her eyes jet back and forth between her ticketed seat number and the rows before her. She passes her seat and moves onto another passenger car. Each step forward down the aisle comes as if she is on auto-pilot. Grief will do that to a person. It numbs the body and controls the thinker.

A hand lays gently atop of Aniya's shoulder. "Ma'am, do you need help with anything?" asks a young red-haired woman. Aniya snaps to and glances at the woman's crew tag. She mutters her name, "Griselda?". 

"Yes, can I do anything for you?"

"My seat. I can't find it." 

Griselda guides Aniya back to her passenger car and offers her further assistance, but Aniya makes a failing attempt to make out what the girl says. Finally, she finds her seat. Finally, she can sit with her sorrow. 

She places her hand on the folding tray in front of her. Another hand firmly grips the pouch of skin below her belly button. She closes her eyes and each breath shortens and sharpens. The stabbing pains come in intervals and her breathing remains interrupted. She can't remember what comes first, to exhale or to inhale? 

After seven years of marriage, Aniya arrived at a gripping truth. She had never been in love with her husband. Two weeks before coming to such a sinking revelation, she had gone to see a psychic for an in-depth tarot reading. With every draw of a card, the psychic laid out a spread full of doubt, disbelief, regret, and hopelessness.

The following weeks after, Aniya tried her best to resist what she had repressed over the years. Sadly, nothing can remedy self-inflicted heartbreak.

Trips to the gym resulted in hour-long crying sessions in her parked car. Whiskey replaced her green smoothies and bathtime became long periods of escape. She stewed in the browning of herself until everything inside of her went cold like the water she sat in. With every passing second, she was dying. That is what happens when the mind is flooded by past regrets. It dies with every recount and with the longing for it all to simply go away. There was no undoing what had been done. 

Kurt was a decent man. He was a large dull impassive man, but decent. There was only one thing he liked a lot about himself and that was his predictability. Aniya liked his predictability too, but for separate reasons. For her, his faithfulness was guaranteed. Kurt never strayed from his work schedule throughout the week. He visited the bar every Thursday and left having the same three beers and two shots each time. On the weekends he worked on his model airplanes and would never leave the house unless requested by Aniya. Being with Kurt was easy, but never was it enjoyable.

Marriage is security. Security wraps itself around the heart like a thin veil of passionate protection, but for Aniya and Kurt, there was never any passion.

Before meeting Kurt, Aniya spontaneously backpacked across Europe every chance she got. She taught herself how to crochet and took up cooking classes to learn how to cook popular German dishes like Schnitzel and Sauerbraten. She was anything but predictable and what drew Kurt to Aniya is everything that he later began to despise about her.

Aniya falls back into her seat as the train pulls forward away from the station. It is here in Rostock where she slipped out of the life she had come to accept for herself and laid it before the welcome mat of a house she will no longer consider home. 

That is how you kill someone. Particularly, that is how you kill yourself. Each option is a sort of death; to walk away into an unknown life or to stay in a known one that bears no fruit. Both options come with their periods of unhappiness.

Aniya couldn't find the perfect moment to tell Kurt what she had been experiencing over the years, so she wrote it all in a letter and left it under the saucer he uses every morning with his cup of coffee. 

Kurt,

We have been married for several years now and neither of us knows the other. I have tried to be the wife you envisioned. I ask you about your model planes, because I know those things spark your enthusiasm. I talk with you about the new breweries in town and plan dates out together because I know you like a good drink from time to time. I leave the coffee out to steep because I know you like a strong cup. I tuck in your socks to hold them together because I know you hate searching for a matching pair. But, I don't know what scares you. I don't know what brings you great joy. I don't know what your favorite pastime was when you were a kid or what gift you set your heart on many, many, Christmas' ago. And, you don't know any of those things about me. I have tried to show you what is important to me. I have tried to accept what you don't find important to yourself. Somewhere in between trying and failing, I have given up. Yesterday, I asked you to sign the remortgaging papers for the house. The papers I handed you were divorce papers. Kurt, I can no longer make the choice to love you. I have chosen to leave instead. I want nothing. Everything that once wasn't in your name now is. 

Goodbye, Kurt.  

The train carries on and so does Aniya.