The sheets that usually felt soft suddenly stung me with the stray tobacco that embellished it like chocolate chips on a cookie. I was lying in his bed, somewhat groggy and somewhat shocked. Somewhat upset with what had brought me there. Wrapped in nakedness that was only skin deep, because I’m sure he didn’t see what lay under it as he glanced over me and bade me a sweet farewell.
I recognized the empty feeling in my gut immediately. I even prepared myself to fight the uncertainty in my tear glands and the surge of emotion that made me want both to wrangle him and run away at the same time. I surrendered to my reflex of reaching out for the phone and ensuring that I didn’t leave alone from experience, and suddenly realized that this had happened too many times before.
I think it was that momentary enlightenment as we drove away, (me quiet and not exactly tear ridden, my company too afraid to ask from seeing a replay of what had indeed happened too many times before) that jerked the waxing nausea out of me, only to leave me dismal, and exhausted. The leather of the seats seemed to pinch me into diffident action, and I tried to do what I always did, I sang and drew and wrote and tried to convince myself that it didn’t really matter but after the first three times I sung Jolene, which had stuck as an anthem with its traditional portrayal of the cliché I seemed to be unable to escape, it occurred to me that it did.
I sat on my own bed, covered this time, but naked to everyone who knew me well enough, somewhat lost and somewhat curious. More determined to change something, than I was submissively depressed, but that was only because I was so unendingly hopeful- naïvely so, even.
I looked into myself with my not so newfound or fortunate fortitude, and faced the fact that there was a problem with this being a regular experience. But I wondered what I could do about it- it seemed reasonable to expect people to find it in their own goodness to bring you to awareness if they are otherwise distracted, or at least not encourage the image of absolute fidelity and a resolute relationship right from the onset of it. I couldn’t see how to disregard this presupposition without the manifestation of what would seem to be neurotic insecurity.
I wondered if that was what providence intended to batter me into- because it certainly didn’t seem to be reassuring my trustfulness with any rewards. I thought about exercising due caution to ward off further pain- and not making the efforts I usually do, but I feared coming across as cold. And I looked back to see that I had tried that this time, I had waited until I was comfortable that no skeletons would fall out of closets, but they did anyway. Maybe the lesson was never to take comfort in anyone- but there you have the neurotically insecure bitch again.
I decided to step into the shower to distract me, and at least figuratively wash the chaos in my mind away. Needless to say the process remained figurative with good reason.
I’d never been in quite this much turmoil. This seemed to be the last little increment that would tip the scale. No reflection on him- how could he know the countless times this had happened before. And I supposed that it might seem fairly easy to deal with from the outside- but that inkling of doubt that this particular brand of rejection leaves on your self-confidence had turned into a well for me.
As it was with every other time, I knew the right thing to do was to seal off further pain, and like every other time, I decided instead to have faith in my own person and the appeal thereof, motivated into bleak hopefulness more by the notion of a full glass’s inability to get fuller than any real belief that I was distracting enough to distract the distracted.
Not to say that I thought I wasn’t- but perception and assumptions are ultimately what drive human desire, and as long as someone has a notion of what most stimulates and draws them, there is very little even the most attractive of people can do to offer the prodigal girl in the red dress competition.
I was still cold from the stray moisture the shower had left on me, and I decided to make the effort worthwhile by attempting to redirect my thoughts. Experience dictated this was the time to try denial and justification instead of taking facts for what they were. It also told me, more handily, to skip the scheming and games at one-upmanship.
And so I commenced trying to believe that I was taking things out of context and that I had seen enough reimbursing of sincerity to be able to disregard the ignition of disorder in question. Sure, it hadn’t been material or published; and it was only momentarily tangible most of the time (and I had seen proof of the possibility of more permanent signs of affection elsewhere), but I tried to convince myself that this was just the natural disparity one found in expression. I thought about the waning enthusiasm, and reconciled with the possibility of it being routine wear and tear (even with a clear example of how that isn’t an object in other avenues). But, somewhere, underneath it all (or far more unashamedly) was the gnawing sting that usually comes with the truth: I made a fair substitution, but the real ingredient was still available somewhere, and as long as the chef in question thought it made a better recipe, I was left, tactlessly, only where I absolutely needed to be- and if I stayed there, I would not make it to where I was in fact the centerpiece.
But he held incredible appeal with me, and I didn’t know where to go from there.
I stood at the door still, a silhouette against the bright, mirror enhanced, light inside the bathroom and dropped my towel, watching it fall in fragile curves that collected around my feet. I felt drops of water trickle down the small of my back, each one of them caressing my bare skin ever so slowly, and sending sharp shivers down my spine, and coercing me to turn to something else. I considered attempting to reminisce from there, and reached out for the technology that had pervaded my ways of knowing and remembering. The electricity lurched through my moist, naked body, and drenched feet, as if warning me of what was imminent.
As I looked through what was a mountain of data but a handful of sweet words, I noticed that the volition to appreciate seemed to be progressively diminishing, and was presently entirely absent, in my case, but not in that of the one who could presumably turn everything around. I came to the conclusion, and not too soon, that this was going to do more harm than good. I didn’t need any more signs to tell me that this was customarily the moment to walk away and take solace in over-population. I knew I wouldn’t.
He clearly held incredible appeal with me.
I fell asleep with that dilemma eating away at me; not for long, but long enough to dream a telling dream. I had been walking the length of an endless road trying to find a way to U-turn to the other side, after trying to shoot down the divider (that went a good 50 meters high and spanned the expanse of the road) keeping me from using the method of crossing I’d learned so painstakingly through the course of my waking life. I even tried to climb it, but to no avail.
Here I was on the other side of a road that would not let me cross it. And here I was obstinately insisting on my ability to reach the other side.
Suddenly, I was in paradise, hoping that the fruits of effort were not forbidden to me. I searched for them, and I found them, high up on a horned tree. If I were to portray bleak hopefulness I would have chosen this image, and I did. But ostensibly, there was some security in knowing that I could change dreams; it reiterated the variability of the world I was depending on.
I decided to wake up, meekly consoled by possibility, and hopeful as I went on to face what was not really inevitable.
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