Dating : The Scream Inside

Joy is here, at last, as is crushing disappointment. Both things can happen at the same time in the house of love.

“Don’t tell me the good news!” I say and she nods. We both jump over and over again in different rooms and then finally meet each other. A kiss is made by one of us and then the lovemaking begins. But not the carnal one, but the one transmitted with words and simple caresses.

“One day, everything will be theirs,” he says and I nod in agreement because I love them already, whatever they is, whatever they decide to be, I will love them forever. I won’t always support them, though. “It is a beautiful blotch of happiness in a sea of awfulness.”

“Don’t be sad. In fact, don’t ever think about it because then they will grow up and resent you. I will know…”

“No, I don’t know. Explain it.”

“I still can feel it. The day my parents fought for the first time. I was but an embryo back then but I could feel it. After I was born, it never got any better. Not once. My father blamed me… as it often happens…”

“I remember now, your sad story. It is terrifying, don’t talk about it anymore,” he says and we both go to bed, happy and desperate. How long is it going to take for they to be born? Will it grow to love us or will it grow to be successful? How will we ever understand what is going through? How much are we going to mess them up and will it ever be enough?

In the middle of the night, I hear him crying but instead of consoling him, I do what I always do, and pretend that I am still asleep. It is always the same. One of us has to stay strong but if we both join in the crying, there won’t be any stopping. He has done the same, for I have felt his gaze in my moments of weakness.

The next few weeks are spent inside the house in a constant cycle of fear and happiness, drowsiness and worry, as we talk about what was going to happen to us and then, realizing what we are saying, separate into different rooms to collect our thoughts. They is growing day by day, night by night, and we love them with as much love as they are capable of receiving.

One day, the first sign of life arrives and it is what we always imagined. A scream. A howling of screeches, followed by the blunt drums of weights and claws. Whoever they will be, it will make a name for themselves. They have to remember us at least, I think, the ones who carried them for a million minutes.

“It is my turn,” he says thoughtfully and begins to develop the embryo to his pleasure. I let him, of course, but I am sure he has more hope than myself. He thinks he can change its true nature if he avoids what happened to him. What a wonderful being he is, I am so lucky, and so unlucky, that he is locked in with me.

The screams become stronger and stronger the longer times goes on and the more we love, the sadder we become. He says it will be fine, so I say the same, but we both know the truth deep down: that the stronger the love is, the harder it will be for both of us in the end.

The weeks turn into months, and those months make the scream become rough and deep, as if a vacuum was ready to burst towards the nothingness.

“You will give it back to me, like we agreed, right?” I say and he nods but I can tell he is not telling the truth. “You are going to make me take it from you by force, you stupid jerk. This is not what we agreed on!”

“Enough. I’ve made my choice. You chose to give it to me knowing that…”

“Knowing that I trust you,” I say. They scream again and it drowns our discussion. Love, of course, only love and no fights. That’s the only way. That’s the only way. “That’s the only way, right? If we show them love… if we show them love…”

“Yes, I hope,” he says and he tenses, eyes bulging and tearing, as they scream again, as if ready to claw out, teeth and venom spitting out, bones splintering, blood spilling, organs sucked in from the body of a father to his most beautiful creation, out of anger and fury. I prepare, as I always have been, to cry rivers and clean up after and to love them, and hate them, for the rest of the life.

But the scream silences and nothing happens. I come close to him and a kiss is made again.

“Love is enough,” he says, this time crying in front me as I hold him. They grumble a sharpening sound that, if I may so in the middle of desperation, seems less intense, as if we were being comforted by a soft purr.