Knives and Forks

Alright, it’s enough, I’m not going to fall asleep anyway, and I can’t stand another hour of staring at this ceiling. Thoughts just drift through my mind, and from all this lying around, my calves start to cramp again. At least I slept through most of yesterday. Paying that debt I built with lifestyle. That helps. With that, I can push through today until the evening, as I did so many times before. I blame her for it anyway. It was definitely her who tore me out of my dreams at half past two in the morning. She did it, and now she’s pretending that nothing happened.

The way she’s lying there now, innocently stretched across the entire bed. I drifted off for just a brief moment, and she is asleep again. Just a few minutes ago, she was mumbling something from her sleep as she often does, and now she’s just breathing loudly. She’s probably saving the snoring for later. In case I miraculously manage to fall asleep again. Either she’d throw her body on top of me and wrap herself around me like an octopus, or she’d start her trombone again. No wonder her favorite animal is an elephant — they trumpet the same way. But look at her sleeping there, all peaceful.

She was the one who, out of nowhere that one evening, told me she was worried about me. Worried that I was fading before her eyes, that she felt this job was slowly destroying me. Worried that if I stayed in this big city another year, I’d lose my mind. And I will lose my mind. She sensed it even before I admitted it to myself. But what can I do? All I know is that these rotating shifts ruined my sleep. Having to work until sunrise one week and waking up at that same hour the next. That has to take a toll on one’s health. With all that sitting at the screen and constant stress, it wears me down, trapped in this circle with no way out.

Today, during my late breakfast at five in the afternoon at the sandwich parlor, she waited for a moment. Patiently waiting, when I wasn’t gagging from that insane cough I’ve been fighting for the last few days. Between those bursts of coughing and starved bites of the caprese sub, she asked. With one of her characteristically dramatic pauses, she said: “Um… I wanted to ask… Do you maybe sometimes feel like you are depressed?” It’s something a person who’s known me for half a year can probably figure out pretty quickly, but it still pleased me. It was honest, full of fear and tenderness. The others gave up a long time ago. My mother, father, or friends. They just accepted that’s what I am now… “Oh, you know him, that is how he is, he just likes to complain about things”, but she’s new in my life, and she’s not tired of it yet. She still thinks there’s hope of saving me. I want to believe that with her.

I will let her have her peace for now. Quietly, I sneaked out of that bed and gathered my things. Her sleepy eyes blinked at me, searching for some sign or explanation. A soft kiss on the forehead and the traditional “no, don’t get up for me, sleep some more” was all she needed. My way of saying goodbye, when I have to leave earlier than her. I try not to disturb her, but she wakes up every time. In the cold, misty morning, I stop for mineral water, milk, and something for breakfast, so at least today I’ll eat something on the drive home.

I know these phases very well by now. The exhaustion eases a little at the beginning of the day, only to return in the afternoon, and when I long for it again in the early evening, it never comes. So once again, I stare blankly at the wall, and all I crave is a moment of rest, which does not come. First coffee of the day in my right hand, ready to push through another day after a night spent in the arms of insomnia.

The door lock didn’t want to let me back into my apartment again, but after a bit of persuasion, it finally gave in. The first thing that greets me in the hallway is a sharp stench — a mixture of smells coming from the kitchen. Old chicken, baking paper soaked in oil, and the stale smell of an unventilated, moldy apartment. Home.

A toilet with a broken flush, surrounded by dust, a bathroom with a half-collapsed shower stall, a washing machine that doesn’t work, and a boiler that stopped heating water some time ago. When I need to shower, I have to stick a match into the fuse box and patiently wait until there’s enough hot water. The kitchen counter is lined with piles of cutlery, pots, and plates, half-submerged in soapy water, waiting until I have the strength to deal with them. A bedroom with a creaking bed where half the slats are missing, a beanbag chair, and three black screens staring back at me. My work tools. The omnipresent bare walls are interrupted by only one small picture from an old auto repair shop, promising free coffee with a repair. The only sign of life in this world is four half-dried houseplants, kept alive solely by her care whenever she stops by.

It does not scare her off; she tries to glue this fragile place together, slowly, carefully, without invasiveness. Nibbling gently on little things, with suggestions or quiet acts of kindness. Yet that one night, when she bought a new set of knives and forks. Her idea, so we don’t have to share the one pair I have here. In that moment, something in me fully realized what I had been afraid all along. I want to give her what she gives to me. A tear rolled down my cheek as I quickly turned so she would not notice what she probably felt for some time now. That there is nothing I have to give.