Saudade

Nobody ever tells you something's wrong until it's too late. Then you blame them. It wasn't your fault, somebody should have told you.

At first it was little things, trivial things, a phone bill quietly mounting up because the phone company never told me that I'd exceeded my price plan for the month. Then, when I get the bill, I stare in disbelief and think; Why didn't anybody tell me?

The bank had done it to me before, I asked them; Why don't you let me know when I'm going past my overdraft limit?

I'd cynically sneer that it was because they wanted money, it's greed. That's how I'd justify it.

When it's gone, when the bill comes, when the bank charges, you're so helpless and you waddle, metaphorical cap in hand, and hope for kindness, for a change of heart. "But they were legitimate charges," they say, and you know they're right. Why are you so incapable of looking after yourself?

I've been sad for years and I've never come to terms with it. I'm waiting for everything to change, and things to go back to how they were before. Because I know it's possible, that's what we were trying to do, we were trying to change the world.

She had stepped into the coccoon, closed the hatch and blew me a kiss.

Then the machine was propelled into the sky and somewhere, up in the atmosphere, I saw it evaporate, sent on its journey through time.

We had calibrated the machine to send her back to the 1960s, a time where we knew she would be able to find the means to return. Where she could find open-minded and understanding people who wouldn't lock her up in some ward, a loony with wild ideas. It was the safest destination for a test drive.

And it worked.

I saw her in a photograph, looking through a book called Brighton In The 1960s, there were images from a student protest in June 1968 and she was there, smiling into the camera, as if smiling out at me, a knowing look that confirmed; "I've made it! It worked!"

Even though she probably knew the outcome of the protest she was still there, still holding a placard, fighting for their rights. Is it worth fighting a battle that's already been won? I wondered.

At the same time I reflected upon the now; that every day I was seeing things I cared about slip away, the malevolence of their disappearing only evident by its silence. As the government tip-toed in and gradually, quietly, dismantled that which made us great. Yet I sat wallowing, thinking it'll all work out, I mean, if it was really going to be bad somebody would tell me, right? Somebody would give me that slap around the chops, warn me.

She never held back from me, that's why I loved her. She'd call me out on every bit of apathetic complacency I seemed to couch upon. Snuggling into ignorance, like a wrongly convicted prisoner who's given up and grown so used to their corner of the jail that - with revolution raging outside - they don't trust a suddenly open cell door and miss their chance to escape. Then, when the revolution has passed, they find themselves - with no fanfare - locked away to be forgotten. A victim of cowardice.

That's why I let her volunteer, we were both capable of manning the craft, both capable of operating the controls. But I was afraid, ultimately selfish, that something would go wrong and I would be hurt. How cruel of me, how cowardly.

Yet how wrong I was. If anything the success has been worse. Knowing she's out there, somewhere in time, and she doesn't want to come back, because if she did she'd be back by now.

And I cannot accept it, even though it has happened, I don't feel like this is what I deserve, this debt, this pain, this loss, even though I earned it by stepping back and doing nothing. I never loved her enough. I only loved myself.

Maybe, in that photograph, she does know that I can see her, but maybe she's smiling because she doesn't have to see me?

We cannot get something back when it's gone. We thought we could go back and change things, undo the mistakes we had made in our lives. In a sense that is what she did, and left me to pay the price for my own.