An Imagined Story and Its Two Female Protagonists

Today I wanted to write a short story, a story inspired by a real event.

It is one of the routine mornings, a Sunday, early in the morning. The shutters of the shops and the curtains of the houses have not yet been opened. Only a few cars pass through the wet streets. Building attendants carrying baskets of bread and newspapers are walking on the sidewalks. Even the sight of the cold air, the smoke from the chimneys rises into the grayness of the sky and mingles with the fog, and as the trees are shaken by the light, strong wind, the few leaves that remain on them fall to the ground. The stray dogs wander around, soaking wet, looking for a secluded corner to curl up in. 

Meanwhile, a man emerges from one of the houses on the street, walking towards his car with quick steps. At the same moment, a woman, who I think is about thirty-five or forty years old, jumps out onto the balcony of the house. She is wearing a thin nightgown, her hair is disheveled. She looks disheveled, but still has a proud stance. She runs to a corner of the balcony as if she is crazy and throws the red apples she is holding towards the man's car. The man turns back in surprise and looks at her as if wondering what will happen now. One of the apples thrown by the woman passes right past the man, explodes on the windshield of the car, and the others roll down the street one after the other. When there are no more apples to throw, the woman looks around and picks up a metal ashtray lying on the table on the balcony and throws it at the man with all her fury. The ashtray misses the automobile and falls to the ground with a clatter. The man rushes into his car and drives away, crushing the ashtray on the ground. Apparently he is afraid of the woman's wrath.

The woman shouts after him with a pained expression: "I want love, I want love, only love, nothing else!"

Meanwhile, I am watching what is happening from behind the curtain with my full attention.

It is like watching a movie. The automobile disappears. The woman collapses on one of the chairs on the balcony, ignoring the freezing wind. Her hair disheveled, she takes her head in both hands and starts sobbing. 

After a while the woman gets up. She goes inside. Then she appears on the balcony again. This time the woman you see turns into a completely different person. Her hair is short, dyed copper-colored. She's wearing jeans and a blue sweater. The earrings in her ears and the necklace around her neck are decorated with blue stones. It's a perfect harmony. 

I take the opportunity to go up to her in my imagination and she starts to tell me about herself. I am surprised when she tells me she is fifty-seven years old, although she looks forty at most. I ask her how she can stay so young. She tells me how she takes care of her life, how she always behaves like a noble woman, a woman who knows what she wants. At this point she says something that strikes me. 

"I left all the people in my life that I didn't like, and I left behind those who didn't like me, because both situations hurt me," she says. 

"But didn't leaving your loved ones hurt you more?" I ask him. 

"Of course it hurt at that moment, I carried that pain for months, my heart still aches when I remember some of them, but I would have suffered more if I had continued to live like a beggar in an environment where I could not share love," she replies. 

The woman lights a cigarette, brushes back her short, copper-colored hair with her hand and lets out a joyful laugh that fills one with joy. 

"I think I love life the most," she says, mumbling this phrase to herself. 

Meanwhile, there is a knock at the door. When the woman opens the door, she sees her day laborer standing in front of her, looking different than usual. Then she realizes something and lets out a cry of surprise. 

Because the day laborer's face is blue and bruised and her eyes are bloodshot. 

"What happened to you!" she asks. I watch these two women with bewildered eyes. They don't see me. They are talking among themselves.

The day laborer comes in crying. 

"He beat me," she says and continues sobbing. 

"He wanted to take my money, but I didn't want to give him money because I knew he was gambling in the café. When he couldn't get money from me, he beat me up!" 

"So what are you going to do, are you going to stand by this man?" the other woman asks.

"What can I do, I have nothing, nothing, no shelter, and there are children." 

At that moment, I realize that the landlady's own past flashes before her eyes, that she feels the weight of that past on her aching bones, and she takes the day laborer's hand and says; 

"Take your children with you and divorce that guy right away". 

The woman is surprised by this warm, sincere closeness, which she has never seen even from her mother, and looks gratefully into the eyes of the landlady. She feels liberated there and then, if only for a moment.

With this feeling, the day laborer asks the landlady, whom she sees as an older sister: 

"Why do I cease to be me in front of him, why do I lose all confidence in myself, why do I tremble like a little child in front of this man, why do I lose all my strength? Why do I let him hit me?" 

The hostess thinks for a moment and then answers: "Because you are in love with him! That is the only explanation." 

The day laborer's eyes fill with tears: 

"But does love mean being helpless, being miserable?" 

The other one smiles: 

"They have always scared us with God, haven't they? When we fall in love, for some reason, we take the other person as God, we see him as God!"

The day woman puts her head on her hostess's shoulder and murmurs:

"Very true, I am afraid of him. On the one hand, I'm afraid of losing him, of him not loving me and then suffering a lot, and the more I'm afraid, the weaker I am in front of him."

Here are the two lives I imagine and the two women who are the players in these lives. One is a rich woman, as free and loving as possible. She is not dependent on her husband. She is with her husband because she wants to be. The other is a laboring woman who loves her husband very much, but in her own helplessness she has to work, writhing in the pains of life. 

Yes, on a cold and rainy winter day in a thin nightgown, a woman who throws apples at the man she loves from the balcony shouts in despair: "I want love, I want love, only love, nothing else!" 

And this is me writing this article. 

Hiding behind the curtain and looking at her, I feel like opening the window and calling out to her, but I keep silent. Because I know that she will find the real love she is waiting for the day she realizes her own worth. She doesn't need my help. She only needs love.

The rain is accelerating, the smoke from the chimneys is mixing with the gray clouds in the sky, and the last leaves on the trees are falling to the ground. 

Those who manage not to fall in life know how to build a happy, loving life. Even if winter comes, they know how to live every season like spring. 

I wish every woman, even all of us, could do this...

Stay with respectful love.