Do it to Julia! Not me!

The whole thing feels like a film. Like if you were watching it on a huge flat TV screen or through the eyes of someone else. The white vehicle speeding up next to you, the loud arrhythmic siren muting any other noise in the street, the light of it reflecting on every surface on the walls: blue, red, blue again. You feel some kind of unwholesome curiosity as you see it get through your neighbourhood and let your mind erratically rumble through other corners of your mind when it gets out of sight.

Then, when you approach the house just to see the ambulance parked right in front of it, its back doors wide open, the dream starts. And you will later remember thinking of it as a dream because it was even more ethereal than before, a little weird voice inside your head screaming it couldn't be true all the time. You will also have the impression that you didn't walk but float because your brain was so busy registering new information that the sound of your steps or the feel of your feet on the ground won't be recorded in your memory.

Then you prayed to gods you didn't know you could think existed. To all. To no one in particular. You pray to yourself it's not your floor, not your door, not your flat. And again you fly, upstairs this time, and you know that whatever the end of the fantasy is, no matter if your life is being fucked up right now or not, you will feel a very real pain in your stomach when the pressure leaves you. And you may vomit, and you may cry, and you may need to hold onto something because you are about to faint.

And it gets worse because your door is open. And you can hear noises and the paramedics shout although you cannot understand their words. Everything is spinning and some weird darkness enters your body through the corners of your eyes. But you cannot let the world go and you shake it out of your head. You have to stay firm and stand.

You will survive now. It's not difficult given the chaos and the confusion. But you realise tomorrow things will somehow calm down and fall into their places. The day after, if not. And at some point people will expect you to perform normal activities such as answering the phone or even breathing and to leave the pain behind. Your suffering and its reasons won't be mentioned on the newspapers and the subway and trains will keep on running. Nothing will have changed for the rest while nothing will be the same for you again and you will hate random men and women and kids in the street for their ability to smile.

It cannot be you. It was never you before. You should be one of the others, on the side where the grass is greener and the sun always shines and birds sing like a perfectly harmonious choir. That has always been your role in the theatre of life. You master your lines, you make the right comments and, like you had been rehearsing for it, you pat people on their backs when it's expected. That's why you prayed it wasn't you. Because that is fair. Because drama is what happens at least one door away.