If hell would have a
first name, it’d be
Erica, like my aunt. She arrived last Friday yet I didn’t find the
courage to mention her in a daylog till today, sweet Tuesday. I was intending to describe how she entered my life, what history I have with her, what kind of person she is and how I
love her, yet fail to find the words to define her presence in my life now that I sit down and actually take the time to think things over. I may or may not be making sense now.
I don’t know. Others write day logs to bring order to their lives, I only cause myself
confusion. I feel like I must pass an important message to someone, but forgot what the message was and whom I had to deliver it to. Hmm, I’m definitely not making sense now.
Again, again! My aunt Erica. Born in concentration camp Bergen-Belsen, her mother died of typhoid, my grandmother took care of her, together they were transported to Auschwitz. They both survived, moved into a small house in Holland, my grandmother had some relationships, gave birth to some children (under which my mother who moved to Spain when she was 14), somehow totally lost it and committed suicide when Erica was about 25. Erica fell in love with a catholic and moved to Argentina where she got married. I didn’t hear anything from her, until recently. Last Thursday she called me up to say she was going to take the next plane to Holland, and would be staying for three months. In my house.
Now she’s here and I’m still trying to define how I feel about her. Aunt Erica. She’s like 1 m. 40 (which is tiny, almost midget-like), continuously talks to me in rapid Spanish and sometimes in Dutch, but no matter what language she speaks she just won’t shut up. Her voice is loud, she talks too fast and too nervously, I already had the first complaints from neighbors about the noise pollution. She’s obsessed with cleaning, always moving furniture. She walks half naked through my house and she makes pictures of me while I’m sleeping, eating or just reading a book. She calls my cats ‘li’l farts’ or ‘fuckies’. If this sounds absurd, that’s cause it is. Absurd, and a constant source of irritation.
I loathe her, I love her. I don’t know. There’s no doubt she’s the same aunt I’d last seen when I was a kid, but somehow there is something totally wrong with her. She frightens me and makes me emotional. I used to wear this solid mask of sarcasm which I could only get rid of when I was all alone at home, but now I’m forced to either permanently remove the mask, or become a lunatic.
Tonight while she was asleep, my boyfriend came over. In the middle of the night he hugged me and kissed me and whispered sweet nothings quiet enough for my aunt not to wake up. I don’t think I’d ever felt so safe before.
When my aunt found us sleeping in each other’s arms this morning, she made some vulgar remark, snickered and moved the couch we sat on to ‘clean up the mess we’d made’.
This is all wrong, I should not be typing this. I should be ranting about stupid coworkers and my drug selling kid neighbors. I may or may not have fucked this daylog up. I may or may not care.