Flying in the cloud

At the moment, they have been simply enjoying each other and couldn’t break away from each other. It was the best period of their relationship, it was absolute happiness!

However, his constant presence in Nina’s life soon became a great inconvenience for her.

Firstly, she wanted to be alone sometimes, just listen to music, read the news online, chat with friends, and secondly, her husband was completely abandoned, she almost didn’t talk to him at all. If they did talk, it was only something about everyday things, and Nina was thinking about the boy at the same time.

The boy caught her online as soon as she came on. Nina soon realized that this couldn’t go on anymore. She told him that they needed to cut down on their communication, due to how her constant presence on the Internet aggravated her relationship with her husband.

All in all, they can’t be together because of a significant age gap, so it’s better not to get used to each other.

He was surprised and offended. It was the first stumbling stone between them, which triggered an avalanche of rapid deterioration of their relationship.

Cloudless happiness, openness and sincerity ended forever. Their paradise of love collapsed. What started was a period of alienation, pain, insults and then forgiveness, rapprochement and a short happiness of love, yet now with a touch of resentment and tears. It went on and on in a new round of tormenting each other.

They both were in constant tension. However, without this voltage, all of that would have probably stopped long ago, being boring and monotonous. The tension arose from the detachment and subsequent rapprochement. It was a long cycle of alienation and a short one of happiness of being together again.

Then the cycle repeated itself. It was only that the detachment was growing longer with each cycle, and happiness would shorten…

What was that detachment, and why did it occur?

Boris

Nina had a long-time friend Boris, her former colleague. They’d met fifteen years ago at the school where he worked as a teacher of the Russian language, and Nina then organized children’s holidays. Their paths have been different since those times.

Nina started working in a different field, and Boris stayed. However, despite this, they kept in touch in social networks and their communication has recently become more active because of the theme of detachment, which worried them both.

Boris had been long married and had a teenage daughter. Nina was familiar with his wife and believed their alliance to be very strong. Yet recently, she was surprised to find out that he had divorced.

Nina wanted to express sympathy, but Boris told her that he was happy and had found new love. He gave Nina a hint that she’ll be among one of the first to be invited to his wedding. So little by little, they started talking and their chats became more frequent and trustful.

Boris was a very interesting and enthusiastic person. He enjoyed “living history” and was a member of a historical reconstruction club, which focused on the Medieval Russia of X – XIII centuries. The members of this club reconstructed the lifestyle, art, and craft of Medieval Russia.

They were crafting leather, fabric, making authentic costumes and decorations, and utensils, weapons, musical instruments. They were learning ancient languages, sang hymns and epics.

They went to different places and festivals, where members of similar clubs from other cities and even other countries gathered. They lived in tents there, cooked over a fire, danced and sang.

In this club, Boris met his new love, Nadia. She was an accountant, and used to sing old songs in a vocal ensemble in the club. She was forty years old; she was the same age as Boris.

Nevertheless, if Boris had already been experienced in family life, Nadia had never been married. She had plenty of unsuccessful love affairs in her life, as well as no children. A spark ran between Nadia and Boris immediately, and they fell in love with each other.

They started dating, spent time together in the club and outside of it, and couldn’t live without each other. Boris was in seventh heaven, it seemed to him that he had found his destiny and he soon proposed to Nadia.

However, Nadia rejected his proposal and suddenly distanced herself from him. She didn’t explain anything, just stopped talking to him, didn’t respond to his messages and calls. If they had been inseparable before, they now went home separately, not even looking at each other.

Boris didn’t know what to think. He couldn’t talk to Nadia, since she avoided him and didn’t even let him near. Darkness came into his life, as if black clouds had covered the sun forever.

A week had passed, another one, and Nadia suddenly smiled at him when they met and was the first to speak to him. Then it went on as if there had not been such alienation. She was, just as before, laughing at his jokes, taking his hand, and they were walking home together after the rehearsal at the club.

Boris decided not to try talking about it again, he was too afraid to frighten off this state of happiness, as a patient, who just got rid of his sharp pain, tries not to make any sudden moves and walks with caution, fearing that the pain may return again.

They soon went with the club to a festival of martial arts. There Nadia was inseparable with Boris, looked after him and literally fed him with her hands. Boris was happy. In that manner, two months of non-stop communication had passed.

In the days when they didn’t see each other, they were like teenagers, constantly exchanging messages. Nadia was indeed like a little girl, and Boris protected her and took care of her.

She could call him late in the evening and say: “Tell me a story!” And he wrote her fairy tales until she fell asleep…

However, that happiness didn’t last long. For no reason, Nadia distanced herself once more from him. And the avoidance and his despair began again.

Therefore, two years passed with periods of flaming passion and then of chilling cold.

Nadia used to distance herself about once in two or three months, suddenly ceasing to speak, write, call, and pushed Boris away. He used to wonder, why? Even she couldn’t explain her behaviour at that time.

“I don’t know,” she said. Boris reacted in different ways, depending on how she did it. He either tried to be near, or kept his distance and endured.

“I know now,” he told Nina, “that, in the end, it will be over… But I’m bloody afraid that one day she may never come back…”

“Have you asked her how she feels in such moments?” asked Nina. She was worried about this topic because, she too, had a similar experience with the boy and wanted to know at least something about it, even though another person’s experience.

“Nadia feels deep loneliness,” replied Boris, “and I become a stranger to her. It’s painful for her. She suffers and cries into the pillow at night…”

“What do you think, why is she doing this?” Nina asked.

“Try to understand, people used to hurt her a lot…” began Boris, “this is understandable, she’s scared, she’s scared that I’ll leave her. Besides, she was used to living alone…”

“It’s clear that nothing is clear,” thought Nina.

“But I don’t lose hope… After all, she’s my hope!” he finished.

The Hell of love

“No, my boy has something else,” thought Nina. “Some inner pain gnaws at him and he splashes it out on me, hurting me”.

Nina didn’t understand what was wrong with her boy, what was going on in his life. Why was he experiencing such pain, that to reduce it, he had to hurt others?

He cruelly insulted her a few times. Once, during one of the next intimacy and happiness periods, when they were caressing each other with words of love and when their conversation took an erotic turn, the boy asked Nina to send him photos of her naked breasts.

Nina was furious and exploded with anger. However, he was asking for it, like a man, dying of thirst in the desert, asks for a sip of water, and Nina gave up.

She took a picture in front of the mirror, covering herself with a flowing sheer fabric and revealing a part of her breast. He liked the photo; he complimented her and calmed down for some time.

But then he started asking and then demanding more and more of them. Nina had to uncover larger areas of her body. However, he had never sent his intimate photos. Nina decided to end that injustice. She told him that either she would stop sending him photos, or he had to send his in return.

He protested, saying that he couldn’t take that kind of pictures because his parents could enter the room at any moment. Then Nina refused to send her photos and ceased to answer his calls and messages.

After a pause, that took a couple of days, she entered the chat and found a very offensive message from him. He called her an old whore and wrote many other offensive words. Nina thought she was blind when she read the message.

A black dagger of betrayal pierced her back, and the earth opened up under her feet, as she fell into the abyss. She felt like a candle burning under an open sky and an evil wind had put it’s flames out, so that there was only darkness.

It felt like death… If even such a close and beloved man could betray, who and what could she believe? What could she rely on? She wanted to write him something in response, not knowing what to say yet, but was unable to open the page. He had blocked her!