Ode to Normality, But Not As They Mean It
- Mar 18, 2020
- 3 min read
by Mileva Anastasiadou
At first, the earth is cut into pieces. As if it were a steak hard to chew. That certainly takes you by surprise, you and everyone else, and feels surreal, like living in a dystopic film, a film you may enjoy viewing, yet the remote is stuck, you can’t change channels. You aren’t your usual self, after you turn into a tiny molecule of that tiny piece, only some pieces are bigger than others, safer than others, and you look around, seeing other tiny molecules, unimportant molecules and you think, that’s my people, we’re safe here, only no one’s safe, we’ll be the last pieces to be swallowed which feels comforting at first, but not for long. You hear a scream, we’re in the right piece, yells someone and you feel proud, but not for long, you want out, no escape in sight, like in a constant nightmare, where you’re a rat in a cage, like living in a movie you didn’t want to watch, not even commercials in between, oh how you long for breaks, only there aren’t any, your only chance at peace is through sleep which doesn’t come easily. Not anymore. Living in a disaster movie is worse than only watching it.
*
Then people are split in two. Or three or more pieces. Amputated limbs thrown all over. Once we were one whole body. But not for long. Instead of fighting as one, we attack each other. Like the arm attacking the leg, the hand stabbing a knife into the heart that keeps the blood flowing, like a crazy person beating themselves. You miss that time of wholeness. That time when all felt one and whole. The earth, nature, people. Invisible enemies are hard to handle. And this nightmare spreads, evolves, mutates, it spreads like greed, like a virus, like fascism, like all pestilences ever spread. But I’m still whole, you think. I’m still me. I am the arm, the leg, the eye, the tongue.
*
Then your mind is disconnected. Violently separated. From the heart and soul and feelings and everything that keeps humanity inside. You don’t care. You feel disaster burning you now that it has come so close, now that it has reached you. You miss normality, not normalcy, not like they mean it. You now hate action movies, all those dystopic films that have swallowed you and keep you trapped, only to realize it’s not a dystopia you live in, this is the real world, this is life as people have known it since the beginning of people, short intervals of safety and peace and bliss in between, but only for a few, and your reality, that past you long for is but a utopia, an illusion, a bubble that burst, a temporary gift or present, now taken back, now turned into past. And you’re frightened to death, paralyzed, immobilized, your luck ran out, fear comes in bursts, you fall apart, but constant fear desensitizes, and you laugh and dance and cry, in no particular order, as you remember that sweet feeling of wholeness, that lost sense of belonging to a whole that’s been broken but will be repaired.
Mileva Anastasiadou is a neurologist, from Athens, Greece. A Pushcart, Best of the Net and Best Small Fictions nominated writer, her work can be found in many journals, such as Gone Lawn, Litro, Jellyfish Review, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Moon Park Review, trampset, Okay Donkey and others.
