Sudden decisions

57 - Saving oneself

Sanem

It is dark and cold, or perhaps the chill I feel in my bones is nothing more than a reflection of the emptiness in my heart. I have been standing here on the rocks for hours trying to build a retaining wall around emotions that I know were not meant to be released.
Stupid Sanem.
After the way he had treated me, I promised myself I would lock up every emotion even though I knew that in doing so I would be killing the real Sanem every day, the one who wanted to live the world in colour and life full of light, but I knew it was what was right to do. Instead, foolishly, I pretended to want to dream a different life for a few hours, the existence I would have loved to live, and now I find myself having to pick up the thousand pieces of that rainbow of emotions that I let go and that shattered on contact with a reality that is not that of one's childhood dreams.

I stand up hugging myself to fight the chill inside me and the cold wind blowing from the Bosphorus on these early spring evenings. I call a taxi to return to the house once more, turn off all the lights and lock myself in my room, letting myself fall on the bed with my gaze fixed on the ceiling for hours until I hear him come back in. It's one o'clock in the morning, I don't want to wonder right now where he's been all this time and especially with whom. I turn in bed and pull the quilt to cover my head so as not to hear his footsteps for the last time and the sound of his bedroom door closing behind him and on our story.

I can't sleep a single minute, I just think that Can is there, a few steps away from me when he couldn't be further away.
His absence was a clear message, his way of letting me know that the pretence is over, that we are done playing the love couple and that it is time to get back to reality. Is he such a coward that he can't find the courage to face me and tell me straight?
OK Can Divit, got it, loud and clear.
At dawn I hear him leave the house and that slowly closing door sanctions the end of our marriage as far as I am concerned. I get up immediately and it doesn't take me long to gather my few belongings, I have become an expert on moving and packing in recent times. I leave a note for him on the living room table and for one last time I go out into the garden to look at that world outside, which seen from here is an enchantment of shades of sea and sky, roofs and hills.
An image that I will carry with me forever.
Before leaving I leave the keys on the entrance cabinet, this is no longer my home, or more precisely, it has never been and never will be.
A taxi takes me to the old city of Istanbul, in the district of Sultanahmet, where I take a room in a small hotel from which the minarets of the Blue Mosque and Ayasofya can be seen in the distance.
I have always loved this part of the city and it is from here that I want to start my life again today. I send a message to Mrs Pinar who agrees to meet me immediately for breakfast together not far from where I am staying. As always it is a pleasure to spend time with this woman who is also too witty for my taste. "How come you changed your mind so suddenly Sanem? Did something happen?" I blink to chase away tears and try to reassure her. "No, it's just that I resolved the loose ends I had earlier than expected and decided to start now, I'm looking forward to it."
She looks at me in silence for a long time before asking the question I was expecting.
"And Can, how do you feel about the fact that you will be away for so long with only a few weeks left before your wedding?"
I shrug, trying to play it down.
"It's not a problem, he'll come to see me as soon as he can and I'll be able to come on weekends, we'll manage to arrange it, after all Gölcük is less than two hours' drive from Istanbul." Her expression does not seem convinced, but in the end she decides to let it go and we agree to sign the contract as early as the next day so that I can leave as soon as possible. Leaving the club I bid her a fond farewell and decide to lose myself in the alleys of the most beautiful district in the world, or at least that is what it has always been in my eyes. I sit on a bench in the large Sultanahmet square watching the passers-by and the Blue Mosque on a beautiful spring day. After so many days at home alone I need to see life vibrating around me and so I stay lost in thought for a long time until I decide to take out my diary and those thoughts I stop them in pages and pages of emotions that need to be expressed and indelibly fixed on paper.