Life, thoughts

Reflections

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new_york_life2Her life has lost its color.

I am haunted by this concept since few days.

She asks me to go to her office. She closes the door and looks at me with her wet eyes. I feel that something is horribly wrong. I look at her without asking anything. I give her time to gather her words. She tells me that her sister-in-law passed away after being very sick. I knew she was sick and they knew she had not much time left and yet, as is always the case, her passing was a shock. The previous day, she was telling me that even if they don’t believe in god, they hope for a miracle. I told her that miracles happen mostly when people are willing to fight. I tell her that, right or wrong, I don’t believe in miracles. She continues by telling me how worried she is for her brother: “I can not imagine his life without her, she was everything to him”.

She herself lost the one that was everything to her. She tells me: “Once you loose that person, life looses its color”. The image is too dark, too sober. Her jovial nature and her ever-present smile have never let me see that underneath she was in such suffering.

She feels my sympathy and continues: “You live, you make yourself useful, but there is no joy. That little thing that makes everything worthwhile is missing”. That little thing is called sharing. She can no longer share her life with the one that counted so much to her.

I think about her life. A life filled with passion, love and disappointment. To many, she was a shameless lover of a married man. To me, and many who know her, she was the victim of a love triangle. She abandoned her husband to follow the man of her life. He was too scared to take the same step. She hence became “the other woman”, the mistress that was never known as the proud wife of a great scientist. She was criticized and judged and yet she resisted. She swallowed her pride to have her life painted as she dreamed. He colored her life in pink and blue, in orange and green. He brought her sunshine and gave her pieces of himself. He then disappeared, leaving her with what they had built for thirty years: a family. A family that allows her to continue being with him every single day.

For the four years that I have interacted with her on daily basis, I have wondered how it was to be the other woman. I also ask myself whether her life would have had its richness if she hadn’t embarked on this adventure. I do not know what I would have done at her place. Probably the same.