A friend told me: “Come here for a week, or you’ll be sitting there like a pet dog.” I wasn’t thrilled that she thought I was a pet bug, but I was. The last five years of my life had been very difficult, and now, at thirty-two, I was on the train to her country house, or rather, her family’s ancestral home, where she lived.
On the phone, she told me that it was a paradise. Sometimes she sent me photos from there, and I saw that there was a vast area almost on the seashore, and there was a forest nearby.
I didn’t really care what kind of house they had, I just wanted to get out of there and not think about anything. I would love to live in a wooden shed, too, if they promised me that they would cut off the dark roads from my forest for this time, where I was lost and lost hope of ever getting out to people.
Avena volunteered to meet me at the train station. She said she was coming to pick me up in her car. This was a good thing, because I had a vague idea how to get to their ancestral nest on my own. In order for me to go to her, I had to say exactly those words that she said: “I’ll come and pick you up at the train station.” So I quickly bought a one-way ticket, but I didn’t buy a return ticket, so that I could have the freedom to choose when to leave there. It may well be that I will be so uncomfortable and decide to leave earlier. Although I was uncomfortable everywhere primarily because I was uncomfortable with myself.
To be honest, the psychological state in which I lived left much to be desired. I was too depressed, and when I was offered to work remotely at work a year ago, I gladly accepted, and for the last few months I didn’t leave the house at all. So now I needed a change of scenery, and I was very happy to accept Avena’s invitation. To change the situation, to leave my seclusion altogether, was a way out for me, even if it was purely geographical. I had planned that a couple of weeks spent elsewhere would also take me away from the much bigger evil of the Internet, the virtual space I was stuck in. “Where are you? I’m online. That is, in nowhere.” I was too tired to be where I had never been, in this “nowhere”, and constantly, that is, online. I thought I’d rather lie on the beach or wander in a real forest. It’s much better to be in the forest than online, because it seems that a little more and you can find a way out, that is, reach out to your old self, who had something more than a nickname and an account.
***
Avena and I used to work together. Everyone was surprised that she came in a premium car and worked on a salary that would not have been enough for her to buy such a car herself in ten years of savings. Our employees called her rich and didn’t like her very much, but I didn’t care. I was too caught up in my career and personal life to gossip or be jealous, I just didn’t have the time. At that time, everything was going very well for me, and I had no doubt that it would continue to be just as wonderful. I always studied well, worked well, met my man, we began to live together, and all this for love. As they say, nothing foreshadowed…
I can’t say that Avena and I were very close friends, I treated her the same way as others. She made me stand out. We enjoyed chatting together during lunch. I never asked her anything personal, which was kind of inappropriate, considering that I was soon going to be the head of our customer relations department and she was going to be my subordinate. She was five years older than me, and our birthdays were almost exactly the same-my fifth of May, her third. We once agreed that we would celebrate them together one day, but it never came to that.
***
I was lucky on the train, I was alone in the compartment, so I could do whatever I wanted. But I didn’t want anything. I just lay on my back and stared at the ceiling, which was milky in color and divided into squares. I counted the squares on the ceiling that made up it. The light in the compartment flickered frequently, and then went out altogether, leaving me alone with my thoughts. They were taking me back to the past again. It was strange to think that only five years ago things were different.
I thought back to that moment when everything went downhill at an incredible speed. I didn’t try to find an excuse for my bad luck, but this fragment of my life was clearly visible in my mind’s eye when I thought about why I was stuck in despair.
That was five years ago. I think it was still March. It’s not snowing yet. I stayed late at work because I was always very efficient and wanted to do more. A workaholic? I don’t think so, I just always did what I liked, and I liked working. I enjoyed my work, and I wanted to enjoy it as much as possible. Other areas of my life were not displaced by work, on the contrary, I received positive emotions from work in order to fill my personal life with them. And my personal life inspired me to work. I kept up with everything and didn’t really think about how I was doing it, because it just happened naturally.
