Questa è Enida

Time for the truth is never better than now.
And now, I finally feel like telling.

The truth is… I like it here. I like the land of the Tsars. I like it… physically. It was the most perfect time to arrive – mid April. Within less than three weeks, we have seen three seasons. Where else can you experience that other than, of course, in Calgary. In fact, it was deja vu seeing all the blacks and browns around. It was raining when we landed, which you don’t see much in Alberta. Love the rains in Malaysia though, no matter what season!

There were no leafy trees to see or speak of, the Saturday morning we were transported from Domodedovo Airport to this Taman Bukit Pokrovsky. Nyet! Our first Tuesday in town, winter reappeared. So we let it snow. And then spring sprang just two days after that. Now it is as warm as the coolest nights in Kuala Lumpur, circa 25 degrees Celcius. And that, in Russian thermometer, means summer. How’s that?

That’s truth nomer a’deen (numero uno). Yes, the more I hear it, the more similar Russian is to Italian – the rhythm of the language, that is.

The truth is… physically speaking, I can live here for many years to come. The Russians don’t scare me any more than those China Police interrogating me at Beijing Airport last December. After all, not many of them have a superpower like the one I have watching me from above the Russian clouds.

The other truth is… truth nomer dva, if emotions come from the heart, I need a heart transplant. Desperately! The one I have now is not functioning anymore. It bled love not long ago. Now though it’s still bleeding, nothing trickles out from it. Not blood, not air, not even emotion. Love? What’s that? I keep getting confused between love and practicality. Love doesn’t come from the heart anyway, does it?

The only time this heart comes close to functioning is when the two oxygen bubbles (aka Monchies) come home from school. Other times… I would just gasp like a fish with lungs wondering why the very thing that makes me alive suffocates me. I long and yearn for something to hold on to. But I honestly don’t know what that something should be. A person? A marriage? A future? Or is it just an idea? A make-believe that time heals everything? What if I don’t have time? Or a heart anymore to go on?

The truth is… I gave my heart and time last October to forgive this imperfect little me. I forgave Enida for being so busy with everything else that didn’t matter much to her relationship with her other half. There! I was not available for many years. Though I honestly think that a good fraction of the negligence came from the post childbearing period, I was profoundly at fault for not reaching out for help. I thought we were okay.

The truth is… we were not okay. There was already a huge gap physically and emotionally when we decided to go for a rotational job – him being in a Godforsaken workplace for supposedly 4 weeks at a time, and home 4 weeks at a time. But we thought the 4 weeks home would do us good. Apparently it never went as long as 4 weeks at work for him. It was 6 weeks and longer. And at one point, we only had 2 weeks together. It killed us. And on August 6, 2008… after only a year of being the rotational wife, I died just from reading an email.

The truth is… people fall in and out of love. We gave our love too much time and too many miles away from each other. So when love didn’t come back to Malaysia in September 2008, it went to Spain for a few good weeks. Weeks when he thought he had found a soulmate but instead had a violent truth staring right back at him, scaring him away and reminding him of what exactly he ran away from, years before we met.

The truth is… love lives, and infatuation short-lives. And when Bali happened, I was convinced that love at last found his way home. We talked like we always did before the year of 2002 BC (Before Children), we spent time being honest to each other, crying in each others’ arms, worrying like two warts that will never go away no matter what. And in the whole process we accepted each other as two imperfect humans trying to make do and best in this short life together.

The truth is… we are no good apart. And in less than six weeks between March 6 and April 18 of not being together, faithfulness left our door again. This time in exchange of $200 per hour going rate. The key that I just found and brought home has been thrown away again, and I am expected to go find it again. I will go and I will find it again I am sure. But will I bring it back to where home is, time will tell. In the meantime, if I seem lost between trust, fidelity, practicality, and this love and relationship business… well, I am.

The truth is… people say, the truth will set you free. Maybe I am not lost. Maybe I am just free.