Believing It May Just Get Better

If she has something to tell, she will. And if not, I'm not even interested.

My notice time was over and still no job. I have to register for unemployment aid. We do have some savings, but even if Sophie makes more from next moth, we can't risk me not having insurance. If anything happens to me, we'll lose everything. So I take a big breath and off to the interwebs: I read everything in the topic. I carefully download and fill in all the forms to the best of my knowledge. I would need some help, as even though it's in Hungarian, it's a tough job to know the answer to all questions. I dig in the laws until I finally put the whole portfolio together. I gather all the hundred and twenty more I.D.'s, certifications, tax receipts, just in case I even add the kids' birth certificates and the dog's vaccination record too, so I won't be left ashore because of those. Our marriage certificate gets in my hand too. I pat it, smell it, in my head I run over all the happy moments together. There's not much of those in the past few weeks, but the old ones are more than enough. I don't let myself get desperate, I chase away the thoughts of Sophie and her boss. I decide I won't bother her with questions when she comes home. If she has something to tell, she will.and if not, I'm not even interested. That's the only way I can validate for myself not going in to check what she's doing in the hotel.
I deal with this unemployment aid, then I will search for jobs more intensely until I finally find one. I'll call even those of whom I didn't want to beg for a job.
When I have a job, I'll show Sophie we have a future together. His sneaky snake of a wanton boss I will just erase out of her life.
She found me in that mood when she got home. I was happy to see I must be on the right path as she was so nice with me as she hasn't been in quite a while. Of course in my brain the alarm started to ring immediately that she only wants to compensate for what she did. But I was strong, I ripped out the clapper from that damned alarm bell.

I rather just had her look through the paper to move on to neutral territories. She also thought it was all right, but it so wasn't...

In the morning she reassured me how sorry she was that I have to apply for unemployment aid. She even offered to look if we can get insurance for me in any other way.
I didn't accept it. I got in this situation, I have to crawl out myself, even if it's uncomfortable or humiliating. And then I didn't even guess how much so it is. They made me wait for three hours, out of which a full hour was on the street, outside the office, then they shoved a portfolio full of the same papers that I took there filled out, stamped them then they told me to come back in two weeks. I tried to explain that I have everything on me at the moment, we could just do the registration now, the woman just phlegmatically told me: nope, this is not how the case is supposed to go. I should go back in two weeks, I have the time anyways, no?

Sophie only has a short entry in her diary of this time:

"After the corporate weekend a new Peter was waiting for me at home. I barely even recognized him. He was sweet, ready to work, we almost jumped in bed immediately, which hasn't happened in a long time. I think he was afraid of failure, that if he doesn't go through his hard-built, paper thin confidence may just crush. I didn't force him, I found it more important that I started to believe it may just all get right again for us. I wanted to believe."

What really happened at the hotel she wrote quite later. When she didn't believe in them again.

First Love

What would you do for it?

You would think it's just freak chance that she was the first. After all, this is no more than a chronological order, usually the first one has nothing to do with the true one. Love is the emphasis here, first is just an ordinal, followed by more and more until you find that true one, your mate - if you find it at all.

But it's not like that. The first one will follow you all your life, no matter how it was or how it ended. The first one will take a piece of you along, if you're lucky, it will go nicely gift-wrapped with a ribbon and a bow, if your fate is not that, bitten, ripped out, tearing a big chunk out from the living flesh.

For years I don't even think of Sophie, then she just pops to my mind from something small, a straw tipping out of the glass or a drop of rain rolling down the window glass.
It wasn't an easy break up, we both got our share of injuries, we didn't even talk for long months afterwards. Then one day - you would think it's by chance, but believe it, it's not - we ran into each other at Moscow Square. Maybe if we notice each other earlier than the last moment before literally bumping into each other, maybe if we have some time to prepare ourselves, take a deep breath and decide, everything would've been different: most likely we would've just hung our heads down and get out of each other's sight.
But this way we were just standing there, stammering and stuttering, and of course the old and well-practiced move swept our faces together, a superficial, accidental - but of course! - kiss on the lips, that of course made everything even more difficult. Then slowly we start to chat, question after question, even the fifth tram leaves us. When we freeze through, we continue the talk in a nearby coffee shop.
We were surprisingly honest, and even though I did think of how good the familiar touch would feel - just like in the old times, after a long and nice talk ending up in each other's arms, but somehow it didn't fit into our re-dimensioned, reborn relationship. I just wanted to talk, complain, laugh, play without a mask on.
It was already dark when she realized she had to run, we quickly exchanged phone numbers, agreed that we won't lose sight of each other this time. And then and there we were absolutely serious about it - not so much the next day.

Years passed by. I heard that she got married, from an old girlfriend of hers I heard she was happy.
Then she came to the opening night of my first book.
She waited through the official part, got her copy signed and told me smiling that in one of my heroines, Soph, she recognized herself. I tried to say it was just coincidence, she just flicked her hand. "Nothing is coincidental" - she said with a mysterious face. I get the shivers if I think that she may have sensed it then, what will happen to her, them, us...
Altough I invited her to the banquet, she didn't come. She gave me her number and we agreed to stay in touch.

Another two and a half years passed, so I was absolutely shocked when I heard her voice over the phone. She asked me to meet for a talk. She said she was afraid.
We met four our five times, I'll tell about those later.
I felt she was exaggerating. But if I paid more attention then... (Three cheap, stupid dots - like if it solved anything that I swallow the end of it, like if I could make all of it never happened, all that I messed up so bad.)
I will be honest, in this blog I want to atone, I want to pay honors to the woman who - now I know - was not the first in my life just by freak chance.

The first is always a reference point. Not just for you, also for your later lovers who want to own your past, they want the selfless, giving flame, the flame that was high in you before you first got yourself burnt, so you dared to, you wanted to fly close to the fire, you weren't worried about your personality, you opened up, you melted, you gave. And no one is capable of doing it again spontaneously. Maybe consciously, learning to make yourself believe you do, but if you look deep inside you, it's just acting, miming to give up your stances.
It's hard to tell your partner that you're meeting your first lover. He knows it too, but you know it too, that you're searching for your past, going back to the springs, you want to relive the irreversible past armed with all the knowledge you have since then. Like if you could go back in time and change your fate.
Of course, it's a dead end to think it can succeed.
I don't believe that. That's why I never looked for her. But now she came to me, she asked for my help. And she didn't want to just hang on to me, she didn't want to rewrite the past to redefine herself. She wanted to save her marriage, and I didn't help her in that, but in the meantime we swerved onto dangerous paths where it's easy to lose your way. And maybe we did...

Her girlfriend looked me up a few weeks ago, she told me what happened. She gave me a CD and asked me to write the hell Sophie lived through, because she deserves to be seen as the victim, not the cause of the events.

The disc had a single document on it. My first lover's secret diary. I decided that, no matter how much it hurts, I will make it public. Just as I will publish her husband's blog too, that I found online. Crisis Manager - that's how Peter called himself. Irony of fate:

After two weeks I even started to think of suicide. I can't fulfill my duty of supporting my family, so why live. But I do love Sophie. Do I love Sophie? Everything's value changed. In one moment, you work for a cool company, in the media to top it off, and in the next instance you're on the street. I sent my resume to everyone, and the first answers came in. We are sorry, but it's a recession... I called a few acquaintances in the media business, but all they kept saying was that it's hard times for them too, they fight for their jobs day to day too. And all our friends, when I mentioned it, just thought I wanted to borrow money, so they shook me off quickly. The noose started to tighten, and I was left there alone.

I found no mentions of this period in Sophie's diary. Perhaps then she didn't quite sense how grave the problems are.