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June 2024 · Christian Ives Solis
RECORD XXVI — June 2024: living as three
In June, living as three completely reorganized the breathing of the home. Deborah adored Estela. Camilo and Estela connected through immediate recognition. The house acquired a third internal rhythm.
The simple fact that Estela was there changed our pauses. The sound of water running out of sync, or the creak of Estela’s door in the early hours, sent me straight back into the hypervigilance of Claudio’s flat. I lowered the volume. I began to measure tone and timing.
And that rhythm installed surveillance.
The body understood before the mind did that there was now one more presence to read, another listening point altering the way a couple argues, goes silent, and repairs itself. There were arguments that could no longer grow. Silences that became longer because the body preferred to contain anger rather than expose itself to a witness. When I swallowed a sentence, a physical knot would form in my neck. The cup of tea stayed cold in my hands, untouched on the table. No one drank it. That effort to seem proportionate left me with no strength for the basics.
At the same time, my job stability entered familiar terrain: contracts ending, bosses promising continuity that never came. That old feeling of hanging from the edge of the table. My mind shifted into operational mode: if this job ends, there is unemployment. If there is unemployment, request the employment history. If there is a new contract, attach it to the PDF. The file holds.
Camilo watched all this from the other side with a bitter mixture. There was empathy. Camilo could see I was at my limit. But there was also something irreconcilable: even at the limit, I had Daniel on the other side of email, resolving my life with a case number. Camilo did not. And that opened up a frozen distance. Two people living the same precarity from similar, but not equivalent, positions: I had a number. Camilo had waiting.
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NOTE
The house was no longer just a couple. It was a shared rhythm with a witness. And the body, instead of resting, kept learning how to absorb.
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RULE 07: The third body does not decide; it regulates the volume.
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