My Life in Darkness by Harrison Drake

Author:Harrison Drake [Drake, Harrison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-05-18T07:00:00+00:00

ARADA, CHAD

MARCH 20, 2034

Dear Lena,

Things are getting more and more confusing for me, and as usual I don’t know what to do. She moved in late last year, my… girlfriend. Why do I have a hard time saying that? Is it because of you, or me?

We’ve been living together for a while now, and it’s nice, but it’s weird too. I feel like the lead in Harry Chapin’s song, A Better Place to Be—I’m dating myself big time with that. Just that she and I, two people united by loneliness—it seems to me to be like a relationship of convenience. But I guess it’s not for her.

I can’t get used to not being alone. Funny how that works—I’ve been alone all my life and cursing it and now I find out that maybe I liked it all along. It makes me confused, not sure how to act at times, not sure what to say or do, not sure if I’m doing something wrong.

Maybe I just need to relax. Maybe I just need to let things progress normally and forget about everything else. She says she wants to get married. And get this, she wants kids. I told you she was younger than me. She just turned forty last year. I guess that biological clock is ticking and she wants to have a baby. But I’m fifty-five now, too old for kids. I keep telling her that but she won’t listen, she keeps mentioning it, slipping it into conversations.

I should probably break it off, but then I think about how nice it is at times to have someone, someone who cares for me in ways I never thought possible. Someone who cares for me more than I care for myself. I just worry that I’m leading her on or something, that somehow she thinks that if she stays I’ll change my mind, sweep her off her feet, marry her and give her the children she so desperately wants.

I don’t have that in me. Maybe decades ago, maybe with you, but not now.

I wish I could ask your opinion but I think I know what you would say. Look at you, standing there with your husband and kids. I bet your daughter will be bringing her own boyfriend or husband soon, what is she now? Twenty-one? And your son’s about seventeen now, right? I know how happy they make you, I can see it in your eyes when you look at them, and I know you would tell me that kids would make me happy too, that I should do things that will make me happy.

I guess that’s why I haven’t tried to talk to you about it. Not that I could anyway. It’s not like we’ve ever talked much, just a few words here and there, ‘congratulations on your kids’, ‘sorry about your mother’, that sort of thing. I still want to pick your brain one day, see what the eclipses mean to you. Maybe the darkness will bring the answers I need, maybe it’ll set me on the right path.

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