Christopher Bernard’s novel “AMOR i KAOS”: Eighth Installment. (Search for earlier chapters by searching his name or the novel title on our site!)
But it doesn’t anymore. (Doesn’t what? she asked.) Happen as it used to. I remember you smiling at me. I remember me smiling at you. (I can’t say I remember either of those things. Or if they happened, they were pure reflexes. They were social smiles, meant to ward off hostility, to express harmlessness, peaceful intentions. They had no expressive meaning or intention whatsoever.) That isn’t what I remember. (You can’t trust memory. It lies.) Not always and not everywhere. (Where emotions are involved, almost always.) Then how am I to be so sure that what you say you remember is accurate either? If I have to choose between your memory and mine, thanks, but I think I’ll choose mine. First of all, because it’s more beautiful. (To you.) True: more beautiful to me. (And I choose mine because it seems more likely to be true.) No, because it’s meaner, and you think the meaner the thought, the more honest, the truer. Sometimes I’m afraid of you, you have a cruel streak, or maybe it’s just anger, and you’re looking for a reason, any reason, to fight. (You’re wrong. I don’t want to fight you, you want to fight me, everything you say is meant to provoke me. Everything you say is an attack. All you want to do is win.) No, no, no, I don’t accept your terms for this debate. (You’re trying to impose your meaning on me. I won’t have it!) I’m not trying to impose anything on you, I’m just trying to express what I feel and understand. (You won’t let this go, you’re being insistent and disrespectful.) No, I’m just not letting you win, I’m standing up to you and not letting you bully me. (You don’t hear what I’m saying! Stop this!) Stop what? Stop speaking? I can’t, I won’t. Don’t order me. (Don’t order me! You’re being selfish and childish in trying to impose your ideas and feelings on me.) I am not, that’s not what this is about. Why are we fighting? I don’t understand this, I don’t understand you. Why are you behaving like this? (What about the word stop do you not understand? You’re being violent in your insistence. I want no more communication from you. I will not listen. If you communicate with me again I will seek recourse to stronger action.)
