And then suddenly, I am here talking to Caroline, Karolina and Carol. It is 3.20 am.
And she is crying.
Out of nowhere, she is crying.
Her fragile hardness and conversation of council politics broke into tears that against her will conquered her pale cheek.
Tears born out of the unborn.
The pain of childlessness, and the loneliness of loss in a human’s life. In the lives of two beings, together, alone, alone together.
She seems to cry on behalf of all the big hurts of humans all over the world, in a myriad of ways.
The hurt of human pain in war.
Crying in the dark hours of the night during endless conversations makes nothing better.
Drink and pain weave a dark shroud over us.
We grieve together alone, alone together. As she cried I grieved myself in her.
I grieve her within me. In all of us.
I cry her pain inside myself. In me. The me in you.
One being, being alone.
I can only ever see myself in the other. Looking into the other for an image that matches.
The idea or experience that matches that pain I know in myself, so I may feel with you.
So I may cry and clean with you, so I may dance the crying of women, at night, out of nowhere, in the dark, at airports all over the world.
Caroline is gone.
She flies at dawn to the endpoint of Afrika.
I move.
I walk.
I go to the bathroom.
I cry.
I calm down.
I walk.
It’s cold.
A shiver of cold shoots up my back like a steal arrow.
Why do the seats have to be made of metal, so uncomfortable?
As if it is not enough that you were stranded, you need to be uncomfortable too. What for?
So that you buy, so that you consume, so that you can’t sleep.
I sit down.
I sit down and I am high on adrenalin, high on loss and shock.
They speak.
The voices tensed with trouble. Tensed with containment.
It is already in the air, lingering slowly, moving like a very confident small little snake, listening attentively with his heart.
The pain is here.
In some foreign languages, I can’t understand.
It begins with the grandmother’s encouraging words.
Soon the heartbreak pours out, the explanation of the pain, salted with tears and short breaths.
I do not understand a word.
I do not understand, but I stand under.
I stand under your tears and I am washed. Through my back, they float.
They drench me and they are bitter.
Bitter tears of loss and misunderstanding. Misunderstanding and loss.
I am scared of you.
I do not know how to react.
The grandmother looks around, just as we do, not bothered really, just as a social marker for the people around the crying woman to say, I am sorry, but I am sorry for her and for you.
You also have to grieve with us now. Right now, even if just a little.
The air turns cold. We all feel it around us. I know she knows, and there is no stopping.
There will be control, but once the crying is already in the air.
Sipping into us like the cold of winter days in old houses, sneaking in through the floorboards and badly insulated windows.
The crying of women stays around this way. In the air.
Even when they left a long time ago.
They have gone, but the bitter tears of pain linger, cooling the passage through space.
I am spent now.
Yet I belong.
I belong to this tribe of the female.
The ones who through their tears carry us all home.
Follow online:
- Karoliina k PhD: Twitter, Instagram, facebook. Linktree. (2024, August 28). https://linktr.ee/karoliina_k
- X.com. X (formerly Twitter). (2024). https://x.com/EmbodimentwithK
