July 9th, 1947
Life has returned to some semblance of normal. I make a few rounds to regular patients, I
visit the brothel every other day, I visit the market, Cyrus goes out and finds
lost objects, we have dinner together and then we bed down to make love.
The routine is somewhat soothing and being able to expect
things to occur in a certain order has allowed me time to mend. Of course, I am not really ‘whole’ after
losing that tiny street urchin boy. I
wonder if I ever shall be again.
The last two days I have been awoken by my lover with me in the
throws of fevered fits. To say that it
is embarrassing being shaken while calling out for my mother is an
understatement. Both he and I are no
strangers to the fits, but still. These
ones have been especially difficult to cope with. I cannot recall anything too specific; I just
remember my mother’s flower garden and the roses covered in blood.
I think I have been dreaming of being small and unable to do
anything about things that occur around me.
It would make sense considering I just lost someone I was caring
for. The feeling of helplessness is like
being a child and watching the world unfold. As we grow and become adults, there is that
penchant for believing we have gained a manner of control over what happens to
us. The Nazis taught me I was not the master of myself, not really. Such notions of power over your own destiny were just illusions, drifting from one situation to the next, grasping at whatever
imaginary hand-hold possible.
People look at the way I carry myself and call me
‘neurotic.’ I wash my hands a little too
often, fold my clothes as if I am still in the war, and make certain my steps are
sharp and always perfectly shoulder width apart. They see someone that is compulsory and
rigid, but they give no thought to why I would act in such a way. People judge without ever having known what
it is like, to be helpless, powerless, to realize there is so little that we
have control over.
When I wake in the morning, I know that my shirt will be
waiting for me, clean and pressed because I am the one to make certain it was
done thus. I have control over that
action and very little else in this world.
This is what people on the outside looking in can never understand.
I think my Cyrus understands me. I believe that he understood me the moment we
laid eyes upon one another. I have trouble putting it in words, but when he burst through the
barricade I had erected in the lab, he just stopped and stared at me. I had a gun at the ready, but he knew I was
not going to fire upon him. I had no
control over the situation that I was placed in because I was squaring off with
a vampire.
Instead of taking more power away from me as my captors had
done for the years I spent in that terrible place, he took me by the hand and
led me away. I did not understand much
English at the time, but as I look back at it now, I remember him apologizing
to me in the train car that we escaped upon.
Slowly over the years he has returned to me power over my
surroundings. He always asks me what I
want for dinner, or what side of the bed I wish to take.
Some might see the way he pushes me and think he is
over-bearing or too dominant, but the opposite is true. I can always tell him to stop and he would
jerk back like I had struck him. Between
us I have power and I am not helpless, despite being only human. Alas, that is thing that I fear most each
time I stare into the face of the dying.
I am only human.
Only human.
But perhaps with knowledge, dedication and the longevity
given to me by my beloved Cyrus, I can still make a difference.
Goodbye for now, Journal.
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