Ashes to Ashes

She angrily stubs the cigarette into her already-full ashtray and lights up yet another one. The sound of it fizzling to life comforts her. She inhales deeply and ponders on her perpetual situation in life. Will things ever change for her? She exhales in frustration.

(Men. The enigma that perpetually continues to puzzle women over the years. The time and the place change, yet the situation remains the same. Why do women continue to be oppressed and left vulnerable by men who are never worth their tears?) She suppresses the urge to visit his Facebook page for what must be the forty-seventh time that day. She violently flicks her cigarette ash into the overflowing ceramic bowl.

The delicious smell of the cigarette empowers her. She wants to talk to him, to be with him, to scream at him and to kiss him. These conflicting emotions and desires instil a sense of uneasiness in her. She gives in and visits his page. Alas, nothing has changed in the eleven minutes that have elapsed since her last visit. The thought of his warm, uncaring touch sends little shocks over her entire body. But why should she be feeling these feelings?

She knows things would end badly, she had known this from the start. It was her masochism, combined with the lust for companionship and sex that had fuelled her to succumb to him. He was a decent guy, but then, most of them appear to be so in the beginning. She never thought that he, of all people, would hurt her. It’s not like she was in love with him – certainly not! – she’d never allow her mind to wander those dangerous waters; it was the joy of being wanted again, needed even, even though it was her body he craved, and not her love.

Her mind wanders and she thinks about the previous night, the night he had made her feel like all other men did before him. She felt like a used tissue paper; needed for the situation at hand, but crumpled and thrown away after having fulfilled her purpose. She lights up another cigarette and panics upon noticing that her packet would soon run out. She craves alcohol, food and sex – anything to get her mind off things. Her hedonistic urges disgust her and she feels like falling into a perpetual, dreamless sleep. But she wasn’t lucky enough for something like that to ever happen to her. Nothing special has happened, and nothing special ever will, she resignedly thinks.

Her life has been a generic one, with maybe a few out-of-the-ordinary situations happening to her, but then again, she definitely wasn’t the first one to experience those. She longs to leave her mark on the world; to finally achieve something that no person has ever achieved before. It angers her to think that she will live a generic life and die like so many others have – without accomplishments and without love.

Love is the only thing a person needs to be happy. Unfortunately, not everybody is entitled to it, and ironically it is those who are least deserving of it that experience it. She yields to her id – Freud would have a field day if he could trudge through the dark corners of her mind, she sardonically thinks – and lights up another one.

The wind makes the trees shiver. If only I could live as a tree; and live and die without the emotions that plague most human beings. The rumbling of her stomach distracts her line of thought. I must never eat again, she thinks, if I were thinner everything would be better. Deep down she knew her thoughts were foolish, yet she needed some grounds to explain as to why the tissue-paper situation keeps happening. She does not want to face the thought that it’s her character that’s driving him away, she prides too much on herself being a perfectionist and shudders at the thought that there must be some sort of flaw in her mannerisms and thoughts that make up her character.

She sees that he’s online and wills for him to write to her. He doesn’t. She opens up a chat box and starts typing, then deletes her sentence, letter by letter. Click, click, click. Why isn’t he talking to her? So much for the power of positive thinking – why this masochism? So much for him being busy for the whole day and night; he’s been online for most of the day!

She wrenches herself away from the Facebook page and stubs out her cigarette. She then opens it again. The popcorn-like smell of the nicotine on the second finger of her left hand arouses her perpetual craving, yet again. What’s the harm in it if we’re all going to die anyway? Dying seems like an easier alternative than facing the pain. Alas, she doesn’t have the energy or the courage needed to kill herself. Fatal grains of hope still plague her; surely she can’t be that unlucky as to never find her great love?

But why all this jilting? This is the question that has plagued women for years, yet we still descend to masochism and return to the object of our affections again and again, all the while knowing the truth.

This situation is like a cigarette. It only lasts a short while, not long enough to satisfy one’s needs completely. It leaves a person feeling dirty, yet still needy. It makes one feel cheap, yet satisfied in a seedy, fleeting manner, and we all still do it – be it with cigarettes, sex, food or other addictions – even though we know it will leave a bitter taste in our mouths and will slowly kill us.

She stubs out her twenty third cigarette of the day and lights another up.

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