A little forward to this beauty: Are you ever just casually
browsing social media and see a picture of someone that just makes you
feel huffy and violated all over again, even though you'd forgotten
about the whole thing? That's exactly what inspired today's
narrative. I suppose I needed to revisit those old huffy feelings, blow
them off like steam in order to keep pressure from building up in my
anxiety/rage cooker. Sometimes that part of my life that won't die because
another person won't just let it die (it's been over three years, come
on, dude) makes me want to just go to his face and scream at him until he stops malfunctioning, tell him to vanish from my life and the lives of everyone around me, but then I realize that I'd be too
sickened at this point to do that and that it's really not worth it to
acknowledge it anymore. Let this be the dying cry of any helpless or angry
feelings he has inspired, and please, please let the feelings on his end die. Just let him make some
semblance of living a life that isn't striving to be parallel to mine at
all times, let him develop some interests and personality traits that aren't directly inspired by me, and let the parallels now in place be torn down. Let my life in him die so that it is mine alone, and let him just have one of his own. Or let him fade and wink out.
**********
"Ew, what are you even drinking?"
I looked down at my little plastic low ball cup, trying to imagine how it might look weird to someone, "It's just ginger ale, what?"
"Oh, hm," He leaned back in his chair a little further, his feet propped on the rickety, clothless table. He was still regarding my drink but striving just a bit with his demeanor to appear informed, as if yes, he had known all along that it is ginger ale, that ginger ale is perfectly natural. I still stared into my cup, wondering if the color of my drink looked gross. I sipped.
Motion to my right, Nathan was sitting up a little straighter, his little green uniform coat straining at the shoulders, his head strangely lacking hair, "Oh, you'll never guess who's joined the Army now."
I was only half paying attention, mostly contemplating whether ginger ale is, actually, gross, "Who?" I thought he might say Levi, I'd heard about Levi. Or maybe a wild card, someone who I'd never suspect. I contemplated wild cards.
"Tyler freaking --------."
A hot and angry flutter in my chest. I felt my eyes narrowing, realized how ugly it must look, wiped that ugly look off before asking, "What?"
Seeing that sour look on my face and knowing from everyone's stance he'd
said something quite interesting, he perked up and continued with bright
eyes and a laugh, "Yeah, I saw him around, he said he'd joined the
National Guard."
More little questions from the peanut gallery, laughter. A joke or two. Wide-eyed husband.
I was unsure what to say for a moment. My fingertips alighted on the table next to my drink, covering a splatter of dried paint. The drink shook on the table like it was Jurassic Park. We were discussing someone I had actually been relieved to forget about, someone who was unimportant enough to forget and to leave no trace except a vague feeling of annoyance, someone who only came to mind when he was being creepy, someone who couldn't let things be, someone who wanted my life. My life isn't anything overtly special, really, I'm just a girl. Nevertheless, when this person was looking to find himself, he found me,
he tried to be me.
I don't think I would have cared half so much, would have even bothered to respond, if I hadn't had another strange bit of information on him drop at my feet only a couple of weeks before. I had only just swept it up and thrown it out, and here was this new thing, dirtying the floor at my feet.
I thought that people should know this thing I was experiencing, know about my messy floor. I crossed my legs and leaned forward, smoothing the green fabric of my dress as I moved, feeling predatory and lithe, "You can't be serious. No. No freaking way, he's too much of a pussy. And when will this guy get a life of his own? He's always emulating
my life, when does it stop? I mean, I thought we'd all just move on, but he can't just let things be. He's such a... creep, there's no other word for it. Did you know he named his god damn
baby after me?"
"What?! No, now that's weird."
"It's true! His baby has my middle name, I just shit when I saw it on the internet, I..." For a moment I'd been caught up in this conversation like it was the usual round of gossip, but I realized just then that this was me, my life. This was a surreal and strange event. It gave me that tickling, green, icky feeling under my heart like I'd just been violated.
I could have told them more, more about how it had been years but he still wouldn't leave my life alone and just let it be mine. I could have, but instead I became a little quieter and let that green feeling boil my blood until I was light headed.
They discussed it, I listened. Had he made it through Basic? No. I halfheartedly threw in another two cents, and we all agreed he was too much of a wimp to make it through.
Sips of cheap wine, goodbye, good luck, and congratulations. Liquor store, video games, up all night. I simmered on the back burner, still feeling transient and strange, like I was caught by the hooks of the past and being dragged backward. Old friends were telling me old things made up like they were new about someone from a time in my life that was, it seemed, as old as a time could get. But it apparently wasn't so old for him.
I sat on the couch later, reading, sitting straight and tall and feeling bookish, just the way I love. Serenity over here.
"So I was looking at Tyler's page to find out more about what Nathan said, and he has my job."
My eyebrows flew toward my hairline then settled back down into the old furrow, into old wrinkles people in the past had sewn in my forehead's field. My eyes didn't leave the page, "What? How is that? What does that even mean?"
"Look," he beckoned me to the computer screen and hunched over, ready to pull up an explanation, "He put down here under his job title that he's a 'Systems Support and Communication Specialist.' That's the official title of my job, the one on my profile."
"What? I..." Only a moment passed before I realized something downright dark, "Do you know what that means? Do you know how disturbing that is?"
"It's weird... what?"
I kept on staring at the screen, "It's not a coincidence, not after that baby thing. It means that he's looking at us, looking at our profiles, reading about us, watching what we do
still. He had to go on Facebook, maybe even look via someone who is friends with us, read your job title, make a
life decision based on it, and request that job specifically at the recruiting office," I stood up, threw my hands in the air, backed up a couple of steps, "This is just too, too strange and gross."
Eyes cast down toward the keyboard, back up at me again, "Wow, I knew he was weird, but I never really thought it was like that."
"Well, I told you it was," I went still for a moment, hand on my cheek, ready for the feeling of violation, but instead of feeling predated, for some reason I suddenly felt big. Big on so many levels where this relic person of the past was so small. The more I lived and the more he didn't, not truly, the smaller he became. If he never stopped, it didn't matter one bit; he was incapable of truly touching me. He'd just grow smaller and smaller until he winked out while I kept right on living. "But fuck him. Fuck him, fuck him. If he can't get a life of his own, even after getting married and having a family, it's really his problem."
