Sugus Blues

 Trigger warning: Mental health, suicide.

“If an evil has been pondered beforehand, the blow is gentle when it comes. To the fool, however, and to him who trusts in fortune, each event as it arrives, ‘comes in a new and sudden form,’ and a large part of evil, to the inexperienced, consists in its novelty.”

Seneca

Sugus Blues

Premeditatio Malorum, if I were a Stoic. Or in modern parlance, emotional vaccination, preemptively imagining hardships and preparing for them before they occur. Like how a vaccine works, introducing our immune system to a low dosage of the virus that one day it might have to combat.

*****

Early morning light floods through the bedside window, shedding a faded yellow clean-cut geometrical tilt of light. Sitting on my bed, shoulders slumped and half naked, with my feet flat on the cool floor surface, a deeply hidden thought surfaces. If I died, it wouldn’t really matter. I’d be ok with it.

Not that I’d be an active participant in the whole death plot but, if it happened, I wouldn’t cling on for dear life. I shake my head in disbelief, for the millionth time. Again, that feeling of the rug being pulled from under me leaves me floating with angst on thin air.

A side glance at the empty opposite side of the bed is a grim reminder that yesterday was different. Today’s world feels foreign, inhospitable, and downright empty. A few warm tears give my helplessness an outlet. My life, as I knew it, ended.

*****

Early morning light floods through the upper window of the basement kindergarten classroom, creating a sharp geometrical slant of washed-out yellow light. Interrupting the teacher’s indistinct lesson, on shapes or colors, most likely, out of nowhere, the Principal slips her head through the door ajar and calls out, “Can Nuska please step outside?”

My name had been called out, conveying a sense of status in front of all my minuscule classmates. Beaming with pride, I rushed out of the classroom, itching to know what merited my sudden stardom.

“Hello Nuska,” I catch sight of my aunt peering from behind the Principal, her eyes far too sympathetic, her smile far too warm. Bewildered, as it was a Monday morning, I stared back in question with undisguised misapprehension.

“We are leaving. Say goodbye to your friends. I brought you some candies so you can give them to your friends as a goodbye present,” my aunt, sweetly yet matter-of-factly said.

My eyes raced back and forth between my aunt and the Principal, in search of something more, a clue, an explanation, anything to help decode what had just been said. In silent answer, sympathetic and pitiful eyes look my way.

Feeling a soldier-like mask slip on, I get a hold of the oversized bag of Sugus candies. My favorite were the ones with the blue wrapper, pineapple flavored. I’d save the blue ones for me.

I filed through the unusually quiet classroom with little palms successively extending before me as I handed out the imposed parting present, a piece per kid. In return, commiserating eyes as thank you.

Unsure what to do next with a bag of candies still full to the brim, I suddenly wanted nothing to do with it. Handing the poisoned chalice to the classroom teacher, I related my parting instructions, “Please give these candies to my classmates.” The teacher, with an all too-knowing glance, nods back as I leave the classroom for the very last time. My life, as I knew it, had ended.

*****

Pleading with myself to stop replaying yesterday’s conversation with him, I forcefully get out of bed. What’s on the agenda for me today? Just a few days ago, my days were jampacked and all was smooth sailing, my business, my relationship, and myself. Or so I thought.

His adamant “This is not going to work”--short code for ‘I found someone else’-- was the intruder to my thoughts, validating my perennial fears of abandonment. And his parting words were echoes on a loop, “I am leaving you the coffee machine, I know how you get headaches when you don’t have coffee first thing in the morning.”

Oh how very considerate of him, leaving the coffee machine behind. Coffee – a blue Sugus candy of sorts – to appease me. Coffee, tea but not me.

That familiar feeling shrouds me once more. The unsavory cocktail of confirmed fears of abandonment, assuaged by a farewell coffee-flavored token, all served with a shot of the rug being pulled from underneath me.

*****

I look down at my red and white checkered summer dress and my brown leather sandals. They are new. All of my clothes are new since we’ve moved to this strange place. It took us a whole day to fly here, my father, sister, and I.

We had moved to a hot and humid tropical country and were now living at my grandmother’s. She seemed like a nice lady. And that’s as far as the adult league would let me in on things.

“You start in a new school soon”, I hear my mother remind me.

“But mamá, how can I? I don’t even understand a word anyone is saying! And I don’t have any friends in this country. What are we doing here anyway?”

“You’re a sponge, you’ll learn the language fast enough. And you’ll make new friends soon, Nuska,” she sternly assures, leaving me to play on my own, in our new dwellings, with my new clothes.

Kids are sponges but they have feelings too.

*****

My phone dings with a new email notification.

Ralph Lusso

Re: Resignation

To: Nuska Gallardo

We received your letter with much regret and surprise. I am personally very saddened by your decision as I thought we had reached an agreement on the restructuring of the business to save costs.

Please give me time to process what this will mean for the business and we will get back to you with the next steps for your exit from the company. We will compensate you for the equipment you contributed as assets to the company.

Thank you for all the hard work and dedication,

Ralph 

Seriously, Ralph, you pulled the wool over my eyes, what did you expect? Although my resignation was the right thing to do, it did not remove the sting of betrayal and of that damn recurring pattern, the blue Sugus in Ralph’s email, a compensation to soothe the betrayal.

A week ago I was a partner to this exciting business that gave consumers top-notch frozen cooked meals at knock-off prices and today, I wandered aimlessly, riddled with anxiety and asking myself, now what?

My frazzled thoughts are interrupted as my phone screen lights up.

“Hey mamá. How are…”

“Your dad told me about the whole resignation business. Hija, I’m so sorry all this happened. If anyone deserves better, it’s you.”

“I have that feeling again, like I’m always unprepared for the biggies, the shockers, like when we moved to this country with no further explanation. I was only five years old you know and I cried myself to sleep every single night”, tears sliding down my face, not just in my memories.

“Oh mi amor, I’m so sorry. I feel like in part, this is all my fault.”

“I’m sorry too, I did not mean to take this out on you. That’s not fair. I’m just so affected by everything, plus Vik left me yesterday. I am almost certain, he’s back with her.”

“What?! Ese hijo de la gran…”

“It’s ok mamá, yes, he’s a son of a bitch but I know that deep down he’s done me a favor, a big one. I wouldn’t have had the cojones to let him go.” I cut her off before she went off on a hate tirade.

Breathing deeply in, I finally get it out of my chest, “Mamá… I need to ask you something.”

“Nuska… anything.”

“Why did we leave Spain all those years ago?” In response, we both hear the shrills of the kids playing down the street.

“Ayyy Dios mío. I suppose you’re old enough to know the truth, hija mía.”

“Old enough?! I’m nearly forty mamá!” She chuckles.

“I’m sorry if us adults mishandled everything. It now seems so insensitive of us. But you’ve got to understand that I, we, did the best we could.

“You see, when you were just kids, mis niñas…”, she struggled to continue.

“Go on, mamá, please. I need this.”

“I caught your father having an affair with an old girlfriend of his, and it wasn’t the first time he did it. And I suspected there were many others before her. It broke us. So, I left and went back home to the Philippines.”

“But how come nobody ever told us about this? It would have explained so much mamá,” I whined in exasperation.

“Your father and I were both so young when this happened, éramos niños. He decided to follow me, save our marriage, and moved you all here.”

*****

What if the adults from the adult league had stepped up and given the five-year-old me a timely explanation instead of a bag full of Sugus, instilling in her a sense of love and security and not a life-long sense dread of abandonment?

What if the adults in the room had prepared that kid for the unraveling difficulties, giving her some emotional tools to soften life’s blows instead of a path of long endurance?