A comment from a fellow Tweep triggered in me the need to talk about the opening monologue in the first volume of the Manicheans.
Time. I wrote this monologue without knowing I would write a entire series dedicated to the world of pain, my world of pain, The Manicheans. It was a little over a year ago, when I was hitting a dark time in my life. I knew my marriage was going downhill, and I did not know what to do to save it. I fought for my dream as hard as I could, while suffering deeply from an obvious lack of love… I got depressed, even thought about suicide a few times. But I had my goal, you know, the light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t want to sound like a whining victim, the one who suffered all along and was a saint. I was not a saint. I made mistakes too. I hurt him as much as he hurt me. I made him cry, I made him hate me. In the end, all the love we had for each other became so toxic that we behaved like wild animals, constantly fighting and cursing at each other.
The last memory I have before I left is of me sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at my hands, crying so hard that I was almost choking, and I thought: “I need to leave. I need to go. Things will be ok for me if I’m out of here.” And, of course, I worried about my immigration status, but at this point, I was almost done with everything. I just needed to file one last batch of documents and then, fate would take care of the rest. I knew from a legal standpoint that I would be ok. No matter what happened, I could stay here but, you know, everything depended on how much more legal fees I had to pay and how much more paperwork I had to fill out until everything would be settled. Being a foreigner in this country is hard. Everything the immigration services makes you go through is sickening. But you have to do it if you wanna stay. There’s no other way.
You know, when I think of it now, everything worked out for the best. Despite all the struggle, and the pain, this motherf***ing pain that never left me every second of the journey, I made it. I survived. I reached a new point in my life where I can look back and say: this is me now, the new me, the Manichean who will succeed in everything I undertake.
Time. This marked the beginning of the Manicheans, Volume 1. I opened the story with a very simple message : “It feels like time has passed but I actually don’t feel any older. It’s just bliss, an emotion, a feeling of having grown up without noticing that time has slowly marked my face, leaving me with memories and pains that I am unable to forget. Time did not teach me patience but impatience.”
I looked at the world from where I stood, the disheartened wife and foreigner who felt unhappy in her life and wanted control back. I wanted to leave and scream at the top of my lungs how hurt I felt. I wanted the world to know how much I hated him, how much I was wasting my time with him. The pain grew, deeper, stronger, invading my space like a sickening smell, never leaving me alone, never letting me rest. I prayed for it to stop, but it stayed right next to me.
I created characters who I could use to convey everything I felt. My life played before my eyes as I was shaping them and when they finally became realistic enough, they continued the story for me. I did not need to tell them what to do, they knew where to take me. The pain transformed itself and became beauty, the most delicate flower I was gifted to received as a thank you from God or whoever is up there. I knew at that exact moment that I was meant to continue the journey, no matter what it took. I did not give up. I fought and persevered until the last draw. And I won.
Time was never my enemy. It was never my ally either. Time is what we make of it. If we want to take it slow, or fast, time will not change. We change. We evolve and grow, learn and improve ourselves, and we always have control even when we think we don’t. We live to suffer, but without that pain, we would not exist. Being human is all about that. I’ll be at peace when I’m dead.
The Manicheans 