She’s crying.
I go outside and find her crying.
As she sees me approach, the crying turns into swearing.
The swearing is not addressed to me.
I don’t even know who is it addressed to, since there is only me and her standing at the pool.

I don’t know her, nor do I know her problem.
But I have a feeling about it.
I have a feeling about her problem.
Even if I don’t know who she is.

“I knew it’s not the solution.”
She says in russian and continues to nervously smoke her cigarette.
“I knew that escaping it’s wasn’t the solution.”
There is a slight pause.
“I don’t care about the sun and the sea, I don’t even care about snorkeling. I used to love snorkeling. Not now. Nothing can take my mind off it now.”
She takes another drag of her cigarette.
“Nothing helps. Not even cigarettes. I shouldn’t be smoking. And I definitely shouldn’t be drinking. I thought it was going to be different. I thought – we will come here and we will forget everything. But it doesnt work.”

I feel an urge to hug her, to lessen her distress, as I do with my three year old daughter. But it doesnt work with her. Obviously. She is not a three year old girl, so she hesitantly moves away from my embrace.
“Where are you from?” – she asks, as if she’s only just realised I’m here.

“Lithuania.”
I answer, as I have answered to so many people in these last few days. Some of them get confused, trying to place it on the map, some others – nod their head and burst into a Lithuanian “Labas”. But she … She definitely knows. Not that it makes a difference.

“Lithuania… Well, I am from Ukraine.”
Her sentence comes as a validation for my feeling. I want to say : “I know”, but silence feels more important.

“Our husbands can’t leave. We came here with a girlfriend, but everything is different. Nothing is the same as the last time we were here. It doesn’t feel right. I told her – it won’t work. To run. We can’t escape it.”

As more and more mist covers her beautiful extended eye-lashes, she goes back into her mantra from before. The mantra that has no begining and no end. An endless monologue of torment without a glimpse of consolation.
“We will not solve the problem if we run. We just cannot escape it…”
And for her – I am not there anymore. Not me and not anyone esle. Only suffering. Between me and her stands the wall of suffering that no one can accommodate. No one can willingly take it all in.

***

As the moon rises over the palm trees at out swimming pool, I only take one snapshot of it because it feels pointless to try and capture the beauty of the golden hour tonight. Everything seems pointless. With my thoughts silenced by the feelings of sorrow, guilt, but most of all – hopelesness – I embrace her.
And we both dissapear Into the dephts of sea.

(Because life under water is better).