Chapter XXXV, where Adele talks about her double's thoughts

She suddenly realized she can't make decisions. She always thought she knew. Kind of like smiley happy people living in their tribes a long time ago, with their questions about life, nature, things, especially the things that had to do with nature and how natural things happen. And finding incredible answers for everything.

1. what is the best ax to kill animals we can eat? - the sharpest one, I'd say
2. if I use this thing here, will it be better than eating with my mouth? - yeah!, and let's call it 'spoon'
3. why the hell water falls from above? - it must be the doing of the god of rain, dude. Let's pray so more rain will come.

Anyway. She really has had to make some pretty tough decisions in her life. There was this drunk woman, a friend's neighbor he had never talked before with, except for the casual 'good morning' in the elevator. She ended up coming to this party we (double was there, I was there, in disguise) were having over my double's friend's. Not really a party and not really a friend. It was just a group of people discussing poetry and it was absolutely boring -and I and my double like poetry, mind you- and he was not just a friend at the time. The woman comes and tells her story: [insert the story you want, as long as it includes the words divorced, middle-aged, lonely and the fact that the only thing she *had* to do was pick up her kids at school and take them to other places, or back home]. She also took drama classes, so she could pretend to be someone else. Her youngest son, by the way, was sleeping back in her apartment (and everybody at the party and my double worried about him having been left alone). We could totally visualize a big L on the woman's forehead. Like this:

(except I didn't really imagine an L that looked like some weird leopard). If we wanted to imagine an even bigger L, all we had to do was try to imagine her naked, all the lose skin, saggy breasts, etc. All these things we shallow women care about. My double made a decision right there that she didn't want to become that woman. Ever. So she decided she didn't want to be a lawyer anymore. And I lived happily ever after. The end. Are you following the story so far?

Now she faces other difficult questions and of course she's being forced to make up her mind. You can see yourself happy in the future. Or at least the chance of being happier. But that means you have to leave your somewhat stable life behind. You:

( ) decide to go on and take the next step towards happiness;

( ) get paralyzed by fear and don't give it a shot, and you can see yourself like that character in some Clint Eastwood's movie, the one where she loves this guy but decides not to run away with him and gets stuck in her life; and when she finally decides to pursue happiness, the guy is dead, it's too late.

At some point this morning, she decided to tick the second option. She went out for cigarettes, crying and thinking and crying and thinking and feeling absolutely sad. And I could do nothing, of course. There was absolutely nothing I could do to help her. I sometimes whisper things in her head, but does she listen to me? Rarely.

After some minutes (more like hours) she came to the conclusion that she couldn't make the same kind of decisions the L-woman would make. And she changed her mind. And now she's scared.