Ballerina

by Jimmy Esmaeili

  Sometimes we have to lift up our eyes to possibilities! It’s likely that we know a number of people who don’t have the hope or imagination that something awful happen! Keeping my focus to realizing before anyone makes a big leap forward, they need to hold the idea in their mind! So, in this case, what kind of possibilities Sandra was looking for? She knew this was not a possibility! That was a game to win or lose! When comes money in between an argument, it is likely playing with lion’s tail. You’ll be killed or swallow by that power of greed! Still I’m confused. Why on the earth, Amy didn’t sell that thing? She knew she was in a danger of death! So, why she was risking her life? I was talking to myself while I was in the walking-closet and putting some clothes on. Sandra still was standing by the window and smoking cigarette. Sandra: “who you were talking to back in there”?

  I experience this lot in my life. I always had a craving for talking to myself even when there are people all around me I sometimes tend to say a random sentence or two. Talking to you can have advantages. When you hear something verbally, it is processed by the brain and depending on its value, committed to memory. There is a lot of literature dedicated to exploring the “inner depth” of the self as a cultural construct which is something to keep in mind while searching for the “purpose” and “utility” for why we have these psychological effects. Sandra: “Did you know your father was blackmailed and was been track down for many years by Ray? He managed to track him down for smuggling drugs into the prison. Imagine, a lawyer with his wife smuggled drugs into prison and then she gets jail term! Amy said after all, she was “coerced” by a feared underworld figure smuggling drugs into the prison together with your father. I am speculating, what kind of circumstance should have a woman compare to her man? In spite of their success in the genre, many women followed, whether by choice, circumstance or pressure, whatever their men demanding! Actually, that was Amy surely taking the drugs into the prison by help of your father. She said I was at my wit’s end not knowing what to do! On the eve of prison visit, we packed the cigarette packets contained with drugs and smuggled into the prison to those whistleblower. That was smart of her to say after all, her reason was impaired through [mental] illness. That would have been entirely different if she was capable of proper thought and reason. Otherwise, she should be in prison for quiet long time! Anyways, during Amy was in the jail, Ray was blackmailing your father. He was after the ring, diamond-ring. Why go dumb yourself down into a shallow state of mind! It’s an insult to your humanity and what intelligence you might have. He would be so dumb to hook up and have a party with some drug-dealer whom was blackmailing him. He took advantage of his situation and sure enough, putting some of that Diphenhydramine HCL (which is Benadryl) in his drink in high doses that caused him certainly hallucination. Ray put almost eight of those pills in his drink that night. Then your father came home too drunk and whole his body filled with that drug, and started to mess with you. “You remember that night! Do you”? I was so confused and I didn’t want to remember nothing about that night. Probably, now, least for a moment, I feel I was humiliated. This is not a fun circumstance to giggle to that fool memory of that night!

  Distance is a simple letter, between to see and not to see.

  Memory is a fool word, between to forget and not to remember.

  Sandra got embarrassed to remind me that incident. She got me in her arms and whispered something into my ears: “Our mind is our biggest critic. Remember, past doesn’t exist anywhere except in our minds; I want you forget the incident and not think about it anymore. So, let’s go out and get something to eat. I feel my stomach is growling”.

  I when young did

  eagerly frequent.

  Doctor and saint,

  And heard great argument

  About it and about;

  But evermore

  Came out by the same

  Door as in I went

  A week went by and still, any time I think to that conversation (I and Sandra) about drugs and stuff like that, I feel my head getting throbbing, my skin feels like sandpaper, and my mouth would tastes like the entire Russian army retreated through it on its way back to Moscow! I was really tired but I couldn’t sleep. Just before going to sleep, I went to look outside the window to check a sound I had heard. Any small voice could make me easily panic. I heard the voices but guess what? I realized later that was only the smell of cold carried by wind mixing the green color of grass with the purity of dew drops knocking on the window. My life might be in a different perspective afterwards! The highest protection we can provide for ourselves is a solid sense of love and compassion for ourselves and others. Sometimes, when you have a problem, it can seem like you are all alone with no-one to talk to. Some people find so lace in the bottom of a glass, others turn to music and me, I thought I’m so smarter than anyone, without to know there should be smarter than me anyhow! I have a lot of anger and cannot stand that jerk who feels smarter than me. Nobody is perfect. Every of us have a different problem; need to say, problems with a big S! I really feel so miserable and suffering from severe depression. I am so tired; but I put on a front all the time to make people think that I am just so happy when really I cry myself to sleep every night. Despite all these issues; I am interested to find out, who could have really killed Amy? Let’s take a look to what happened through these weeks! It said in the papers, the guy who arrested by FEDS, he didn’t confess yet that he murdered her!

  But however, he has been denied parole from a 30-yers-to-life prison term he’s been serving for killing a woman. Somebody is dead, and everybody is trying to ignore the fact of accusation! Two armed robbers were waiting for me in the parking lot. At gunpoint, I was forced back into house, forced to turn off the alarm. Then they forced me to the floor of my home. The memory of the gun barrel shoved into the back of my head, as I lay on the floor face down, remains firmly impressed on my mind. Thankfully, they did not fulfill their threat to blow my brains out. One of them searching step by step the house and the other one had the gun into the back of my head. In the grueling hours that followed, filled with police tape, fingerprint dust, and endless questions about the evening’s events, I was asked not once, not twice, but four separate times if those robbers had harmed me in any way! “No, no. they just checked the house looking for something. I’m not really sure what the hell they were looking for either! Before that incident, Ray wanted to meet me at his house, asking me about the ring! Saying; wants to talk some important things! Well, Sandra was in the interrogation-office and has been questioned by FBI. I wonder if Sandra would realize how much insecurity and anger she revealed in a matter of minutes! And I don’t know if her words were meant as a passive-aggressive attack against the federals, as regards, she should be clueless to the fact that she had made a generalization, slapping of tape labeled “boring”! The case to Amy’s murdering got more complicated that I could imagine! Thinking how to put him down! I was worry about that all the time. I have to focusing on that particular thing that today it manifests me in this way. Worry is a prayer for something that I don’t want it. I have to avoid undesirable out coming. This is sad consolation to discover that someone else is riding on me! Ray and I, we just began as friends, and we are now working our way towards something more. Such a dream to think to have that ring in my hand! It is already started off plainly enough I was squeezing in my thought. But the question here is what I’m going to do with that? No, it is just a dumb idea! But I have to do something at least that Ray doesn’t put his finger on it. I have to manipulating him to his situation, and certainly in the meantime looking for a way out of my small time to protect my benefits. Prepare to adapt my really sort of tactics to make him to forget about it. That ring belonged to my mother not my father. That is a memento of my maternal ancestors and a gift to my dignity. When I think back to my younger days, it’s not unlike the way how my life should started into the oceans of desire of purposes. We are formless. We are the very di
scipline and morality that invoke so often and how can anyone hope to eliminate us. Every one grows up being told the same thing just beat out the competition but it’s obvious from the start that only few can succeed all rhetoric to avoid conflict and protect each other from hurt. I feel sometimes, myself in every stranger’s eyes. In faces blurred by rubber stamps, and in smile of new-born child. Sandra is more intense and obviously is much motivated by hatred and revenge, but on the contrary, I am aware that my emotions are very weak and beside I don’t want to change my personality to make some mistake. I could get angry and saying something bullshit, but in my inner, I am whole difference.

  Unfortunately, I had to drop my education, because of too much pain and stress. Many people have difference opinions about why to finish a school? Some people think that if you can’t make it in a normal high school, you can’t make it in the real world! Background information: like most kids, I grew up flying straight so to speak because I had been blessed with one hard working woman (Sandra), after my mother passed away, who only wanted the best for me. I used to be a straight best student up until the age of 16. Then I went depression from losing contact and growing apart from all my friends. “To blame a bad choice of friends, you can blame weak willpower, you can blame other unfortunate choices, but you have to remember that they are all CHOICES. If you want to choice a bunch of looser, druggie friends, is certainly happens to be another mistake and problem. So, cut them loose and find yourself friends who function”. Those words which Sandra was always whispered in my ears. She was who trying to navigate my life to a perfect result. Sometimes the shortest and best path to making a decision or solving a problem is to ask for insights from a wise person. I am very happy to have Sandra as a best advisor in my entire life. Words are cheap, and love speaks the volumes that we need to make our hearts grow weak. I and Sandra decided take a trip to Africa. I had an extremely anxiety to see the crowd since I was just a little girl. Now I am glancing around the crowded airport at all the views and parents already shedding tears, holding tightly to their young children and grandchildren’s hands. The anxiety is killing me. Everybody has a unique point, an impressive trait place it can yank you out to get you impressed. For me Africa was an impressive trait place, and that is my ever-reliable catch cry, a phrase able to penetrate the interest of any new acquaintance. Our trip up north hasn’t been nearly as exotic as our eight-week adventure across southern and eastern Africa; at least it’s added another weapon to my artillery. Since we returned home, I must have unintentionally spurted out these words hundreds of Times, each time on my way to recounting a memory with a tenuous link to the topic at hand! During our trip, sometimes I was feeling really nauseous, increased heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature (Hyperthermia), and sweating. When we returned home, I have contacted one of my best friends from my earlier college. Fatimah is an Egyptian girl. She is Muslim and very faithful. She said: “This psychomotor stimulant can enhance one’s behavioral performances is widespread. Once you use it, it will stimulate your central nervous system. Drugs are chemicals or substances that change the way our bodies work. When you put them into your body (Often by swallowing, inhaling, or injecting them), drugs find their way into your bloodstream and are transported to parts of your body, such as your brain. In the brain, drugs may intensify or dull your senses, alter your sense of alertness, and sometimes decrease physical pain. Many first try drugs out of curiosity, to have a good time because friends are doing it, or in an effort to improve athletic performance and ease another problem such as stress, anxiety, or depression. So, please try not using it anymore and if someone offers you under any circumstances, be smart and avoid it. Tell me, how you’ve been? How was Africa? Did you enjoy your trip”? “Yes. As matter fact I was lost in the crowd. Gully; there were too many people and such the wonderful harmony among them! But confessing to this; the planet was boiling, some people were dying, starving and fainting from the hotness”.

  Thankfully, Sandra considerately trying not to show any reaction to my particular situation, and that would certainly worry me! Anyways, good to be back home, sweet home. Well, after all those terrible years into my life, and figured how I was wrapped up in my little own world, I assumed I needed some peaceful times along with Sandra! I am not a silly, a naïve 24 years old girl. I simply value justice and don’t accept discrimination and I aim for change in everything I do. I have a vision of a better world and that’s what keeps me going. When I was around those people in Africa, I saw the meaning of the life in some part of them; it didn’t show any reality to carry the purpose of existence! How can you be okay with discrimination and injustice? If you’re oblivious and don’t care! How can you watch the world fall apart and be fine with it? I say you are guilty and have no excuse, if you believe that your children have an inherent right to food and education, how can you take part of denying those rights to other children? If you are religious and think that it is god’s job, I say if anything all religions have in common is preaching justice and equality! Things have gone real well for us, mainly because we’ve been creating our own opportunities and our chances to see new world and new people after all. That day, I and Sandra, we were walking in the shopping mall and watching the clothes behind the glasses, looking for a perfect dress for her. Strangely I wore a faded and baggy jeans and the large t-shirt that was stained with some faded substance, reached below my knees. Sandra weird started with a single sneer teasing me. I have noticed three black guys were following us. I could see them clearly through the stores glasses how they were with a skeptical look watching us.

  I took a long look at their weapons under their coats with my squishy eyes. As we stepped out of the mall onto the street, they started to walk to the sidewalk on the other side of street. As a Lexus black car goes by, I cast my mind’s eyes; one of those guys looked up and proceeded at a brisk pace toward Main Street. He reached the bridge about two hundred feet from there, he broke and ran, and I lost sight of him. After he disappeared, I saw the other one running out from there and cross to the lower side of street, and then suddenly bang, bang, bang. Three shots were fired almost simultaneously and Sandra suddenly fell to the ground and unconscious. I was freaking out so much that I thought I was going to pass out in a matter of time. I put my finger on her pules to feel still beating.

  She was breathing heavily. I tried to yell with force for help I only got a whisper to come out. Her head leaned on my lap I just shocked looking at her. Time was tickling and her eyes were still shut as she lay on my lap motionless. I was scared out of my mind. An increasing reliance by ambulance trusts on fast-response cars means some ambulances taking longer to reach seriously ill patients! Praise the lord, the ambulance finally arrived, paramedics, assessing her condition, to take potentially life-saving and finally they took her into the ambulance and ……

  The Feds said, a dude was arrested in connection with Thursday afternoon shooting of a woman who was shut in the back. The witness said to the FBI, he was walking to the home of his friend. He heard shooting and reported immediately by his cellular phone and definitely after some interrogations he recognized the killer was a black guy in age of 18. The killer was charged with breach of peace, second-degree reckless endangerment and illegal discharged of a firearm. He also charged with interfering with police. That was strange, how he was released after posting $3000 bond. Who put the bond on him? I didn’t know why, I should suspect that entire incident to Ray? Have you ever woken up to find yourself so paralyzed that you could only move your eyes? Is it caused by a normal medically/ scientifically explained body function? Or is it a paranormal phenomenon caused by something more sinister? After a bit I calmed down and I decided to play it cool and hoped that the whole thing would blow over. I didn’t go out in the week… Well, there was no Sandra, was there? I am just alone, whole by myself. I have a rare genetic disorder that existed within me since birth, but didn’t affect my life until I was 10 years old. This created a lot of problems since I was at a
very pivotal age in growth and development. It also made me a lot more aware of what was happening to me and I remember most everything I went through. Being a young child and suddenly being ambushed with a life threatening illness was very intense, and in some way I would say worse than if I were to have gone through as a baby since you usually don’t remember things from such a small age. I have times when being alone is scared. To have the solitude to think and reflect on life’s path for me or the direction I need to go. Somehow, sometimes I have this delicate balance going on between hating being alone and sometimes loving it! Sometimes I feel as if I were born a twin but lost my carbon copy on the way. A person who could possibly quench my need for my acceptance and get inside this head of mine, poor Sandra has struggled to come to terms with the death of her mother in many years. She believed the seeds for her decision to live had been sawn when she lost her mother. She sacrificed everything she cared for me. Her life, her reputation and her love for to be as a mother for me. For three nights in a row I was so overcome by emotion that I cried myself to sleep. Sometimes, even if the sadness I feel is like the weight of the entire world on my shoulders, a malignant combination of cultural brainwash like women don’t cry and this trauma has sealed to my feelings, and the tears simply refuse to flow despite the soul-crushing grief I am bearing. Life is sometimes disgusting, something I have lost myself in! I don’t know if I’m heading in the right direction and I’m scared I’ll fail miserably! I’m not afraid of heights I’m afraid of falling. I’m not scared of the dark; I’m scared of what’s in it. I’m afraid this species of horror has amused me to death. Since Sandra is in the coma, I’m afraid my heart broken one too many times. A lot of the pain I am experiencing right now is actually feared. Fear of things being different than how I like them. Fear of having to fill my time differently. I really missed her. I love her because she was all I ever needed to care about me. Love is the only true thing in life. When you tell someone you love them and you miss them, and you mean it, you give them a part of you no one else can receive. A part of you that is more precious than anything in the world. You give them your heart. And what they do with it is their choice entirely. And that’s scary, especially when your heart is as clueless as you are. I’ve tried to visit her so often I could. When my home phone rang, I was messing on the internet looking up news. Well, the home phone is still ringing and I thought it’s better to let the answering machine to pick it up. I looked on the caller ID it said “private”, but for some reason I answered the phone anyway and I said “Hello?” A very weak and sick but clear woman’s voice answered back and asked me, “Jennifer How are you doing”? I answered the call back and said: “I’m doing fine”. And suspiciously asked her: “Who is this?” The weak sickly voice answered back in Hmong-my language, (my ethnicity is Hmong), and said: “This is Tina, you remember me?” Right then and there I recognized the voice. All of sudden I felt this cold chill and I felt scared and immediately responded: “What is it you want now”? “I am at train-station. I need to talk to you. Would you come over here please”? This phone conversation continued back and forth this way for a few more minutes, with me wanting to know what was wrong and Tina told me she was having some complications and she needed to talk to me about it. I was at a dead end. My heart was racing, and I felt cold and numb. Was she trying to pull a trick on me? I put the phone back up to my ear and with a very skeptical voice I said to her that I come there just for a short time, is that clear? And then I hung up the phone. Tina spent most of her time trying to get out from under the shadow of her recognition for her own talents and assets. I don’t know much about her, but I’m pretty sure whose hanging with a drug-dealer will be sucked down into dark spiral of gangland killings, violent crime and growing lawlessness whatsoever. For crying out loud, the liberals are whining about executing murderers. If we do this great and noble act, they will cry for sure. Part of me was thrilled to meet her, maybe I lacked confidence! Or better to say I was in the nerve-wracking situation of meeting her! By the time I pulled over into the parking-lot, I looked in my rearview mirror and saw her creeping out of there. I just took a deep breath and stayed calm on my seat. Then she knocked on the passenger window to unlocked the door for her. Her heart was pounding hard, some like she was escaping from the cops! I was just flabbergasting watching her, confused; weird I asked her; what was wrong! Is somebody after you? You look too pale! She started to say something, kind of softly or almost mumbling. I thought she was talking to me but she wasn’t. She was talking to herself…… out load, stuff like; where did I put it! Where is my damn cellular phone! Then she turned her face to me and wanted me to take her to my home. She started begging me to not leave her there alone. While I was driving the car, I could clearly see how her hands were shaking. I tried to get her home as fast as I could. When we got home, she sat on the couch and opened her purse. Pulled up a needle and put it on the table. She wrapped a plastic on her arm hard and then slowly she inserted the needle into her arm, where she sees the vein bulging, all the way through the vein and pops out the other side spilling blood under the skin and then pops in the stuff in the needle. I was sitting beside her and looking her in the eyes. She was flying fucking high. She leaned back in the couch and lighted a cigarette. Then she started to talk that it (the drug), keeps you real and moving, keeps you grinding and shining. It makes you to some you are a wise woman; to some you are a fool. But you need a lilt something to keep you cool. I sleep with the sun and I rise with the moon. And I feel all right with my needle and spoon. “Well, that was a nice poem, ha, ha, ha. I am impressed”! I was laughing and saying to her. She just with a serious voice said that wasn’t a poem that was real. You got to try and feel it, insert a needle deep into your body, and find out how it feels! Then she grabbed me by my hand and took me to the kitchen. Took a spoon, put some stuff on it and then lighter ……under……………