There I was one sunny afternoon in May, riding my pink bike and listening to Pedro Pascal read an essay about love. He wasn't reading it to me. I was aware of the many layers between his voice and my ears, the many recordings it must have taken to get a take worth using. I imagine the editing room, where a technician had to splice his good takes and input the canned ads that are needed to make money out of a podcast.
As I listened to Pedro whisper in his soft yet powerful voice-fully aware of the distance between my ears and his lips-I still found myself lost in a world outside my own. Lost in the maze of cul-de-sacs and identical houses where I once wished I had lived.
***
Suburbia seems so peaceful. A gated community guarded by apathetic men in black and white uniforms. Houses dressed with well-trimmed bushes in the shape of flamingos and their gardens littered with faded gnomes and fake mushrooms.
Whenever we drove past these places--pretentiously named after European cities like Venice or Madrid, I can't help but imagine what it would be like to live in one of those houses.
Waking up at 5 AM to get the kids ready for school. Wishing the husband goodbye as he drives to work at 6 AM. Watching an endless stream of shows from the morning talk shows to the soap operas in the early afternoon.
Greeting the kids as they lug trolleys as big as their own bodies, across the garden which I have tended to after having breakfast and coffee that morning. Hounding them to do their homework and interrupting them with the dinner already set on the table.
Waiting 2 more hours before the husband pulls in from the garage. Hoping that he tells me about his day and what it's like to be with other adults as he sips from the cold bottle of beer he is nursing between his fingers, choosing instead to be quiet and eat his dinner in front of the TV.
Then getting ready for bed picking up a novel and falling asleep without finishing a chapter, before waking up to start this cycle the next day.
The promising life of a Stepford wife or whatever is the equivalent of one in this country.
***
I continued riding my bike that afternoon. Dangerously using only one hand to steer as I clenched my chest with the other. The essay I was listening to ended with Pedro dramatizing a painful "I love you" to portray the struggle of the person he was reading as.
It hurt.
Not because I felt the pain of what the author was going through but because I was afraid I would never know what it's like to have the same pain. "It's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all," they say. And sadly I fear I am one of those who will never love or be loved.
This is probably why I allow myself to even consider the life of a woman trapped within the suburban gates because at least she has loved and lost. I, on the other hand, have never loved and I am lost.
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