The darkest hour…
The unexamined life is not worth living!

It is strange how some things just stand out, just jump out at you. You read a phrase and it means little to you; but days later, even years maybe, and the same casts your reality in a new light. The simple words I read somewhere did just that and stayed with me for a long time. In the back of my mind it lingered –always lingered –provoking me to thought.

I thought of a lot of things that April. I thought about life; I thought about the transient job that I held dear, but was becoming increasingly strange to me.

Strange, not because it was difficult, but because it seemed to demand more of me. Something I loved – love – and did with ease now drained me and required an upheaval of emotion each day.

I thought about my future and I thought about family and faith and trust. I thought about love.

“Maybe I am distracted…Yes maybe that is it. The last few months have been stressful.”

I laughed just then as I tried to explain away thoughts that boggled my mind. I was always told that some people talk to themselves but the worrying part was when they started to answer back.

“I answered back.” I laughed again.

Laughing at my reflection in the mirror, I stretched out across my bed and stared at the person there.

At 24-years-old, I, Melissa Eli, was in a new place. My old, routine life was just that – routine, scheduled and organized.

That was my life.

That WAS my life until three months ago, until April came and brought with it a series of incidents that ‘turned my world turtle’ and left an unfamiliar lilt that caused a conundrum of sorts.

One that left me to ponder on many a thing…

April winds meant kite flying in most parts of Guyana and in my part of Anna Catherina, on the West Coast of Demerara, regardless of age, you caught the Easter spirit as fast as the winds could catch your hair.

Seven days before Easter Monday (I was on leave from work) the winds did manage to catch my hair and sent it everywhere –quite uncontrollably at that. At the sea walls that Wednesday afternoon, the winds coming off the Atlantic were intent on affecting me with a look that resembled something quite wretched.

I went livid just then because he passed and threw a smile in my direction.

I’d known him – Evan George, for just about two years, but each time I did see him he had some flashy thing hooked on his arm. It never did bother me much, but that Wednesday was different somehow.

The strong winds, the fading sunlight, the total absurdity of the situation added something – something – to that day, I think.

Needless to say, he passed my way again and it was a night that seemed to pull me back from an unconscious edge, an edge that I seemed close to slipping over.

The entire evening was cliché really, and left me thinking this is so going to end as soon as I blink. Still it was nice for the time and I settled down to enjoy his company. We had so much in common and it seemed like the classic romance – boy meets girl, they take to each other, but, there is always a ‘but’.

No one would approve our match. That we knew for sure. Coming from a conventional family our coupling was everything but traditional.

Regardless, that week we had fun and lots of it. It was uncanny really, the way I was comfortable with him and how easy it was to be his friend.

“Definitely uncanny,” I said to my reflection and floated back into my reverie.

I felt a knot in my stomach just then –butterflies I called it.

Just after Easter I ignored all the signs that said ‘DO NOT DO SOMETHING YOU WILL REGRET!’

I spent the night with Evan and while I did not regret it in the morning, I did wonder at what I had gotten myself into.

At what price did I win the affection of a man?

We were made for each other – and yet not, it seemed. It was a contradiction –quite complicated.

Still we continued to see each other and it proved to be moments that words fail me to describe.

Soon after our third week together, I returned to work and that was a nightmare to say the least. Or maybe I was distracted?

Either way, I needed to do something and do it fast.  At a meeting one day I found myself cringing throughout the entire ordeal. I found myself returning to the dream I lost myself in and wanted to stay there.

The dream was exciting but I could not risk everything for it!

That thought kept me from work today. That and another that jumped out at me –the unexamined life is not worth living.

I stared at the person in the mirror for hours, and still do sometimes. Yet I am no closer to a decision than when I began this process of reflection.

The dream was exciting, but could I risk everything for it?

It would seem that I awoke in the darkest hour.

An hour that found me battling  a growing restlessness I recognized with dread. An hour where I found  that there were many truths existing, not just one. An hour that made clear that nothing could function properly without some standard accepted definitions. An hour that behoved one to be decisive and see reason. An hour that brought to the fore something I had eluded long enough. An hour that brought together a tragic romantic with a free thinking view of life and a stickler for routine.

A dark hour for me indeed – the darkest hour.