The Beautiful Mess

  He stood by the open wide doors. The doors -he knew best- weren't welcoming at all – not appealing at least. He stood behind that line where tiles change their design. He recognized that the room had a special smell. It smelled like the woods.

  His steps were like babies' that day – slow, quiet and full of discovery. He stepped on the line and observed. The window spread the light into the room, and let the shades fall on the right spots. The light crawled from the floor to the bed. The light was everywhere, but the brightest focus was on her, and her eye's focus was on it.

  The rays penetrated her eyes to expose the shades of hazelnut color in them. He couldn't decide if he missed them or not. He had known them like the palm of his hand. He decided not to look to those eyes. He knew their power exceeded Medusa's.

  However that place had contained his childhood and memories, all he could feel was that he wanted to get over with this as soon as possible, so he finally crossed the line. He finally entered the room. His shoes made noises as he walked in; and crossed the room to the opposing wall, to the generous window which triggered the wide open eyes to him.

  "Finally, you are here!" Her voice barely made it through the air.

  He didn't look at her. His eyes powerlessly avoided her. His eyes seemed cold…. bored. He walked with regular paces to the window whose rays highlighted the particles swinging in the air – the dispersed memories of an old room. He looked out of the window as if he missed nothing. As if he was looking at a blank page.

  "You came to check on your mother, or came to let her see you as a phantom?" Her voice cracked at the final words.

  "My man," she breathed, "there is no time left for me to blame you on your icy merciless heart. I called for you to see you. To see your face.

"I am sure after I am gone, you will see me, and feel my existence. Typical to my feeling when you were something making my belly bulge, without a face to recall, nor a touch to miss. You were absent, but your soul…. anonymously hung there inside of me. This feeling isn't restricted to motherhood! I believe the cycle of life is fair enough to channel this feeling to you after I am gone. After I am nothing to be seen nor heard," she gasped for air.

  His back stood still before her, blocking some of the light. He stood like an obstacle between her and the hope to see her son's face. She had studied the back of the suit as if she was its tailor. It fit him perfectly that she smiled at how his muscles got big to get in this big suit.

  "Dear, it's your future. I have never designed it for you. I'd always given you the choice. You chose it! I don't know why you have been treating me that coldly… treat me! Huh!" She said sarcastically, "you didn't 'deal' with me since you got to university. It's my right before I die to know what I have ever done wrong to you."

  His eyes closed during her speech. His thoughts sparked its way to his mouth, but his desire to keep them a secret sealed his lips. He knew it anyway. He knew she would make him cross this distance towards her… near her. Her plans had always worked. She always had this way of "it's your decision anyway;" but his decision ends up to be identical to hers, and opposing to his own. His heart would be heavy, his brain would be exploding, but his satisfaction is partially pleased.

  "Dear, you're now better than any mother would wish her son to be. You chose it, right? I know if you didn't want to be a doctor, you wouldn't have succeeded so far, would you?" She sent her sighs to the quiet atmosphere she was trapped in. She had never felt as cold as she did that moment; she had stayed in this room alone all the past time though.

  "Speak to me! You have never been that…. That….," she fell silent, sinking into despair.

  He spun his feet in fine movement 180 degrees. His shiny shoes played percussion to outline his steps. Slow and regular. She closed her eyes. She feared those steps were stepping to the door, not to her. He walked to the bed, unbuttoned his jacket and kneeled steadily to hold her hand. He measured her pulse as tears escaped her closed eyes. He put her hand gently down, and with the same regular steps went back to the corner, and carried a chair to put it closer to her bed.

  He interlocked his fingers, looked slowly up from his feet to her face. She slowly opened her eyes and rolled them down from the ceiling, like she was saying her prayers before she looked at him. There. Eye contact. It lasted for short duration. Very short. He broke it as fast as her eyes pierced his. He looked to the corner of the room where he was standing that day when his dad was soaked in blood on the same bed. When the world war wasn't something to blame for responsibility's burdens on the youngsters, and obligatory death sentences on the patriots.

  "You came here to analyze my mental status?" She asked to steal him from flashbacks, and insisted to remain silent till the answer came.

  He took a deep breath. His mouth open and closed several times making no voice at all. His eyes went back to her chest where he made sure she was still breathing. He felt he didn't care about her death, but his aim was clear. He wanted to get over with the conversation as fast as possible.

  "I am here, because you asked me to." He replied with steady voice as if he had never hesitated about saying anything that day.

  "That's cold."

  "That's an answer."

  "Why are you a psychiatrist?"

  "I am a doctor."

  "Why psychiatry? Not like I am wondering why. I knew you would go for it anyway."

  He laughed in disbelief "really? Even the only thing I have chosen to break all my rules, you had expected it? You must be a fortuneteller." Finally his eyes met hers and froze. His lips curled, and the stare took a long time in cold silence.

  "I am a mother!"

  "This is not a justification. This is irrelevant to logic."

  "You are speaking logic now!" she smiled.

  "I have always spoken logic." He replied in steady voice.

  "You have always spoken passion, dear. And finally, 'passion' got you into trouble."

  His eyes sparked anger "trouble? Huh. The only trouble I have ever suffered from is coming over here. Now. Here!"

  "You didn't love your dad that much, and we know it; so don't act like this room resembles any sadness to you."

  "There is nothing called love."

  "Love got you in trouble."

  "I thought you said passion got me in trouble," his voice indicated his boredom to keep bouncing the argument to nothingness.

  "I know. I know you will blame me on your educational choices-"

  "I had already-" he interrupted her in a confident voice.

  "Listen!" she shouted "you didn't want to study when you had the choice to get to university. You wanted to be a wanderer. Gypsy! The son of the finest families in the neighborhood, the son of a military hero wanted to be…. A meditator if there is any job called so!

  "You were passionate about life. Do you know what this means? It means you would never accept the rule of gravity. You would never accept the rule of death and grief. You would always impersonate everything into an object. Do you know how illogical this is? And you call it passion? Art?

  "You loved everything. You loved flesh, skin and blood. You took each separately, not to connect them, but to tear them apart and create an inert alien. You were crazy! You loved drawing, writing, reading and traveling. You were the core of the earth! Burning lava with every content which God knows how they eventually grow out of this earth. You didn't know who you are! It was my job as a mother to advise you!"

  "You said something about trouble. I have no clue about what trouble I am in," with all calmness he had, he went on with the conversation.

  "Psychiatry. That's your trouble. You think you're all stiff and emotionless, but you are easily swept off your feet. Passion which got you to psychiatry will get you to trouble."

  "I think you have no right to care."

  "No right?!" She said breathlessly.

  "You have no right! At all! From the start! You minimized my options, I had a way out, and now you want me to feel bad about it? To retreat? You have to stop being bossy, hiding your control-freak behind the so-called mother care!" he shouted.

  "So you got it off your chest finally?" Her voice was shaking, revealing how fragile this conversation made her.

  "Not even close," he said in flat voice.

  "You haven't called me 'mom' since you got in here."

  "Cause I doubt it," he stood up and walked out of the room in fast steps – without looking back, with all satisfaction and zero guilt. His head was held high as if he had just won a battlefield.

  If she dies, I won't feel sorry. I won't regret this. I should have done it long ago and I finally did it. I won't regret it. I won't regret it, he kept telling himself.

  But she was right, and he knew it. His passion was black paint, out of all brightest colors mixed up. He knew he was a storm. A storm in a desert where no one is hurt. A storm in an enclosed skull where the sand grains of thoughts keep swirling around, hurting his brain, scarring his skull. His talk to himself worked hard to force him to stop feeling defeat.

  On his way back to the hospital, his head felt empty which was a new feeling. He loved new. He had to focus on his empire. The hospital was his empire. He was the psychiatrist responsible for all the mentally disturbed cases in the women's unit.

  He considered the 27 patients were mentally ill, except one. The one who spoke logic to his disturbed interlacing thoughts. He trusted her. He could diagnose her. She wasn't a sociopath, and that was the reason why he listened to her. She was diagnosed as borderline personality disorder, but he was an exception to her anger attacks. He was her drug.

  She was insecure enough not to manipulate him, and she was stable enough to keep up a normal conversation with him. Her emotions were hurt by her parents who abandoned her as soon as she checked into rehab to give up her drug addiction, but her brain was intact as an intelligent experienced old scientist. He knew she was normal. She was sane.

  He ran to his office, wore the white coat as fast as he could. He went to the dining room to watch the patients. Every doctor would swear that the dining room was a dramatic crime scene, but for him and only him, it was paradise.

  He was a doctor who believed in the theory of "you're healthy, you just want to know if someone cares in case you weren't." He knew that theory of his own was incomplete and childishly naïve, but he believed in it.

  She sat there, his special patient, watching the TV. His eyes scanned the place after he made sure she was there. He was relieved to notice that she broke her bad habit for two consecutive days; that she wasn't punished for screaming at the top of her lungs for the millionth time emphasizing that she wasn't crazy.

  He headed back to his office when after moments she followed. She closed the door and stood by it for moments. They had the understanding of eye's art. They admired the lashes, and the folds of eyelids. The wrinkles and its motion with every single expression exposing what's beyond words. That language was their saluting.

  "So…" she breathed.

  "It went as I want. Finally," he smiled. She motioned a silent cheer.

  "So…" he looked down to his papers. He knew how to make her speak. He knew what she wanted was a simple recorder in the form of a human being – someone to listen and recalls what she said. And he was more than happy to know how to deal with her. She was the only one in the world he could control.

  "I drew," the words soaked in uncertainty escaped her mouth. His pen dropped as she said it. He looked up with astonishment to her and she sheepishly looked to the desk instead of who sat behind it.

  "Can I see it?" he was almost fainting in his chair.

  It was a miracle that she started translating her feelings to what she is passionate about. The thing that her parents stole from her and torn before her eyes to force her to focus on being a lawyer. The thing she breathed in; and once it was taken away from her, she smoked, swallowed and injected herself with drugs. The drawing is a proof. A proof that she is back to her sane. At least from his own perspective.

  She pulled the paper from her dress's pocket; and as soon as she unfolded it, he was there right in front of her. She could feel his breaths on her smooth skin. He snapped it out of her hands, and walked around the room studying the drawing while she was looking at him praying for any sign of admiration.

  He walked back to his desk and sank into his chair. He stared at the drawing, and followed every line. His brain had always processed differently. He didn't like straight answers. He followed the lines and as his eyes moved, he felt like morphine was injected into his veins. He could see the picture now. A picture of someone he had never seen, flooded him with joy.

  "Why?" he said to himself audibly that she thought it was addressed to her. He could ask her directly, but he wanted to create his own theory first. Why was such talent pushed aside and tossed into oblivion? Why did they bury such art and deny its presence and power over solidified bodies with fragile souls?

  "Art isn't practical enough?" she wondered out loud. He nodded and looked at her to find her where she had been standing since she entered the room.

  He jumped off the chair excitedly and a broad smile was shown on his face. His muscles never felt that sure of its motion before. It was a new feeling and he loved new. He walked towards her. With every step he got closer to her, he reminded himself that his sane confirmed multiple times before that he wasn't in love with her, and he hadn't made her fall in love with him.

  He took her as a friend, and she took him as a friend. Both were left behind for their passion, but worse: they were forced to change routes of what their heart demanded the most, even favored it over blood. To seem normal to the world, they had to kill themselves and survive as a zombie.

  In that room, they hadn't had to act anymore. Their thoughts feared to be spoken as people fear to get naked and scarred by multiple viewers' eye radiations – radiations of undeniable excitement, pleasure and admiration, but with erosive minimal charges of hatred and unjustified disapproval. But in this room, their thoughts weren't afraid.

  As the distance between them equaled the length of their shoes meeting, he folded the paper and gave it to her. She put it back to her pocket and looked to his eyes which were comforting in comparison with her eyes which were filled up with terror and tears.

  He wrapped his arms around her waist slowly as he was aware that she might be too sensitive not to accept it. Her arms climbed his shoulders and crawled its way around his neck. He held her like a rare dream.

  You will always impersonate everything into an object, his mother's words echoed in his head. That's when he recognized that was him for real, and this was the only missing puzzle he needed, to end his suffering with his unidentified identity. He knew he held her in his arms, because she was his experiment.

  His arms got tighter around her to ensure himself that she was real – the only one in this world who didn't fight his passion. The only one who refused business-based practical world. The only one who offered him what he truly liked: the art which can never stuff a doughnut.

  She held on his neck as she felt he was the only one who saw her sinking. The only one who loved her kicks, screams and submerging him when all he wanted was to keep her alive. He was the only one who listened to her "nonsense," and found a lot of things in common with.

  Those common passions weren't identical, and that was the secret of the magical trick. How different they were from each other made their world complete and balanced. It wasn't all dark. It wasn't all bright. It wasn't all poetic. It wasn't all informative. It wasn't all unrelated to reality. It was just balanced and fine.

  Minutes passed and each was using the other to glue the cracks of their hearts without having the other's permission. They radiated their incomprehensible anger and frustration to the quietness surrounding them.

  He didn't want to feel up her body. She didn't crave for a kiss. They wanted to stay like that till the end of time for no reason. Each felt his weight was about to crash the other, but they didn't care. They meant no harm to each other, but they loved the mutual share of something they couldn't explain.

  "Did you draw?" she said and her hands were still tightly holding on the back of his neck and her head resting on his shoulder.

  "Speaking with my mother is your drawing."

  "We are even again."

  "Progress with the same pace."

  She let go and he did too at the same moment as if they read each other's mind. He didn't move a step. She moved to his side and walked to the desk. He looked to the door which he was facing now and took several breaths.

  I did it, he said to himself. I broke my only passion free which has never seen the light - the only son of my own which couldn't be killed as soon as it sent its first cries. Maybe it's all about truth? My drawings, my writings are all an alternative route to my main passion: speech. It's finally free. But mom, he looked to the ceiling, mom… you can't be right. I am not using my patient as a thing. I will prove you wrong. I am proving you wrong.

  In his smooth manner, he rotated 180 degrees counting on steady heels. He looked from the floor to the desk, and slowly he walked to it – his eyes magnetized to hers.

  "Go to your room. Do whatever you like. Now," he sent his cornered smile – the secret message of 'do what you have been banned from doing.'

  That smile had always started chaos at the hospital. The least dangerous incidence was when she went to the garden, and dug a hole where she laid down naked and slept. When they found her and carried her out, she kept crying. She kept screaming "I am just experimenting! It's the only place I can carry out my experiment. I was just rolling in my own structure! It's science. It's not craziness! Don't treat me like a maniac! Stop!"

  This time, the whole day went on peacefully which disappointed him. A whole night passed, and he wasn't paged for emergency. He slept in his chair hopeless. He even dreamt about what he did wrong which wasn't clear for her. Was liberating her talent a plot twist in the diagnosis, treatment and predictions? Had she been transformed to someone he had to study all over again?

  "Doctor Winston?" The nurse called softly, but was rocking him aggressively.

  "Oh, yes!" he jumped, almost disoriented. He didn't know if his dream was a worry or his accomplishment, and meeting his mom had all been illusion or not.

  The nurse gasped "I am so sorry, doctor, but you have to watch what Claire –" He smiled and reached the hallway in no time that he didn't care for the nurse to finish her sentence. As soon as her name was said, he knew he was living the dream.

  He knew he was few steps away from the final result of his hypothesis: whether she was crazy and he had been wrong all along, or he had successfully saved a soul – a soul who suffered as much as he did, someone who couldn't be saved except by an experienced victim. He saved someone with passion by passion for the sake of passion – if it ever made sense to him at that moment.

  He was few steps from the door, his heart beats were faster; and as he opened the door, his heart sank. He expected something like that, but not exactly that. The surprise made him forget the scenario, the plan he had put to finish his rescue – as after all, he was proven to be right.

  She drew herself. Paintings on the four wide walls of herself and every other patient, about every day she survived in that hospital, a diary was illustrated in fine details, except the hug. Except yesterday's events. They were all drawn by… the medications…. crushed tablets… crushed as a powder and dispersed on the wall with God knows what she used.

  He planned that he would act as if he was angry, but he hadn't expected such masterpiece which would make her a special case study. Anyway, he quickly collected his wits and followed the plan.

  He frowned and asked the nurse to bring her to his own car. He claimed that Claire had crossed all the bearable lines and her therapy for this crime she had committed would be in another institution temporarily.

  No one was sure that his decision was correct. He could never take a patient under his personal watch and switch her to another hospital without consents nor the hospital's chief knowing about it. In the end, no one argued. It was 5:30 AM and no one had enough power to keep up with the shocking events.

  Since he got to the room till he got to the car where she was tied up and sleeping in the back seat, he hadn't looked at her. Not a peek. He nailed the act of furious doctor though.

  As he drove on, victory showered him. On the road he had doubts if his main passion was altered. That his mother could control him, and he became passionate about psychological medicine. But he was a winner, and no throbbing annoying thought would steal that from him.

  He kept driving. He drove out of the village. He drove out of the city. He got away to the capital of the country – to the place where she had been thriving on losing herself in. To Rome.

  He headed to a hotel where she became lucid as he parked the car. She looked around her; and as she found his face in the darkness, she enjoyed the silence. He explained to her what was happening.

  As they got to the booked room he stopped by the door and handed her a dress, smiling "we are living in the happy era. Everybody is overjoyed and dancing to Jazz. No more wars! Happy days! Everything here is a natural bewildered beautiful mess, like we want it."

  He looked into her sparkling blue eyes which was matching the dress he chose for her. He felt like he was about to cry. He held her shoulders tightly. He didn't know what to do or what to say. He pressed a kiss on her forehead quickly, and asked her to get dressed. He said he was going to show her the world.

  He stood outside feeling guilty about the kiss. The only thing he didn't search for its resemblance in the world of facts and theories. He didn't know if he felt guilty for kissing her, or he kissed her for feeling guilty.

  Was his passion about using others? Did he doubt himself? Would he end up with killing himself to stop the voices of accusations? Was it the society and the laws of normality pushed him to pray for not following his passion? Was he right or wrong? Did even passion exist where he stood?

  The headache stopped as she stepped out of the room. A whole new person. Claire with a smile was a girl he had never seen before. A smile, he believed, could cure the worst cases ever known in medicine. After all, he was not in love with her. He also decided that he didn't feel guilty for embracing her as a part of his messed up mind. He might feel grateful. Just grateful. Simply grateful that he wasn't an alien. There a whole lot more like himself and he had just saved one from hopelessness.

  They wandered in the streets silently. Only did the trumpet's tunes swayed in the air. Their steps weren't of dancing, but their hips were moving with the beat. They didn't recognize they loved the music. They just loved left being undiagnosed.

   It's all about passion. It's in the air. He had followed it and she did too. The world had battled them in a way or another. Conservative policy or incomprehensible obligations from unknown source, is to be blamed? We will never know. We will never know what holds back passion, but we all know that passion is like an idea. You can't just bury it and call its time of death. You live it, channel it, or/and search for it to witness its miraculous magic. It's worth the fight. The satisfaction and the enjoyment couldn't be expressed in words. You have to experience passion.