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.

"Ginger-ale" by truth2lies on deviantART

"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."

Making a Cold Bath by Angedevil on Deviantart

I found myself alone in his bathroom, feeling vulnerable like the spider that was lingering near the drain.  The mirror above the sink was too high to see anything but my neck and face, but I knew my body must be pink with fever.  I felt odd and frightened, being alone for the first time since I had arrived.  I felt this desperate need for the joined-at-the-hip connection we'd had for days on end, but I just couldn't invite him in to be with me, no matter how blase` he was about his mother's presence in the house.

I smoothed my hands across my abdomen and scented the smell of old perfume on my neck.  There was tension in there, the sickly ivory feeling of an infection somewhere I couldn't see.  It was pushing down, wanting out and using all of my energy in its struggle for escape.

I ran the bath with mixed feelings, unsure whether I was pleased with or mortified by the washing down of the odd little spider.  There are always spiders in that bathroom though, so I imagine that their kind is doing alright, despite my one malicious act.

The little buckets with Korean writing along the edge of the tub made me think of Japanese bath houses, and with this vision of steam-filled rooms surmounted by paintings of Mt. Fuji, I stepped in and let the water hold the curves of my body.  It was so deep and hot, deep and hot enough to put a little pressure on my sinuses.  It was the biggest tub I'd ever bathed in.

I didn't feel better though.  I felt weakened and drained and a little slutty, but I held on to the hope that I would feel better soon, that somehow the water would cleanse my organs of whatever had its grip on me.  Fevered steam curled out of my nostrils like dragon's breath, but nothing I could do was going to stop my inevitable boiling over.  I was sick, probably as sick as I'd ever been.  But I knew we only had so much time, and when time is so precious and so secret as what we were sharing, you drink those moments in without letting anything get in your way.

Even though I was decidedly uncomfortable in my illness, I let my head loll and my mind wander to the reality that had opened around me.  I imagine some people would say that reality had closed in around them, but I just knew it had opened.  I had been closed in before, but in that moment, I knew that I had so many options, that my life was wide and vast and unpredictable.  I couldn't see farther than the moment I was in for the sheer knowledge that the world I lived in had literally no boundaries anymore.  It was like living my entire life underground and then learning about the sky.  No one has ever been so free as I was at that moment, free to make right or wrong choices or no choices at all.

But I'd be fooling myself if I said that this feeling was more than fleeting.  While I couldn't quite see what the future held,  the truth of where I was and how I'd revamped my life was dawning on me.  The world I was in was starting to roll off the ground like fog, and I was so aware of its depature while simultaneously trying to block it out.  It was leaving me stranded so quickly after I'd taken that amazing freedom and plucked a choice from it like a star from the sky.  I felt young and privileged, I felt old and deprived, and I had no idea how I would feel the next day.

But while I was so confused, so scared of the events I was evading and what had yet to be, I always felt the twang of connection tugging me forward.  It never left me, and I knew it would be a constant for the rest of my life.  I could feel myself drowning in the empty air without his touch to ground me.  So I heaved myself like an astronaut from zero-g space onto the very earthen surface of his linoleum floor and made myself ready for sallies of kisses and a sweet lingering goodbye-for-now.

So here is my first foray into something I'd love to make a regular part of this blog: a narrative of a tiny snippet of my life a la Sex and the City (the book).  Mike was telling me recently that by not publishing my writing, among other things, I'm not really putting myself into this blog.  But like I said in my Poetry in a Blog post, it's unwise to publish writing you'd like to see published one day in a blog.  Because of this, rather than put out sub par work as a representation of me, I simply haven't been publishing anything.  This is my way of making this blog my own, and I hope you enjoy it!

******

The two of us were alone in her dorm room.  It was dim in there, the only lights a desk lamp and strings of orange and purple party lights hanging from the ceiling.  It always felt magical to me to be there under those lights, like I was experiencing somethings small and beautiful that I would remember for the rest of my life.  We called them brothel lights, and she always had them on when she didn't want to be in the pitch black, because she claimed the fluorescents made the room sick and full of vibrations.

String of Lights 01 by L-nay on Deviantart

I was standing; I'm not sure why.  I was probably exploring.  I always liked to explore that room, no matter how many times I went there, to admire the pictures on the wall or touch the petals of the dried flowers on her night stand.  It felt young and rebellious and sweet, like a part of my life I had skipped when I moved out of my parents' house and straight into an apartment.

I hated having to grow up that way, having to support someone who was born in a cesspool and would never crawl out and feeling that I had no other choice.  I was made an adult too soon and had experienced the consequences of attaching myself to a malign force so many times, someone who was simply not as good as me, however conceited that may sound, someone who could only drag me down instead of rise with me.  I wanted a do-over desperately; I wanted to be in that dorm and live under those lights for years of my life, to pay almost nothing for rent and never feel fears that a girl my age shouldn't feel.  I wanted sleepovers and shrimp ramen and Vault soda and a thousand things that young people deserve.

She was sitting on the bed with her laptop, just like always, nose buried in the screen.  Her typing was always tentative, especially when she was talking to someone or role playing in one of her groups.  She was the kind of person who was so careful with her words.  I always thought it was because she was terrified of saying the wrong thing, but later I knew it was because she had a way of taking her time to say exactly the right thing, the thing that would get her results.

Things were quiet; the conversation had lulled.  Without looking up, she said to me in a way that seemed offhandish and yet revealed how much she wanted to talk about it, "Mike called me.  Our Mike."

For a moment, I was silent.  I honestly didn't remember him in that second.  Time had so separated us, and I had lived a life that made that part of my existence seem a distant dream, "Wow, really?" I wrinkled my nose and laughed at the sheer improbability of that statement, "What on earth could he possibly want to call for?"

"I wasn't sure myself, but he ended up telling me he still loves me."

Shock. "What, really?"

"He asked if I would get back together with him and give it another shot, but I told him I just couldn't do that to Anthony, you know?  I'm engaged.  I mean, I told him I wish I could and that if things were different, if he had come along sooner, I really would have, but it was just too late for that."

"Wow, that's crazy."  It felt crazy, and it felt heavy.  It felt gross.  He felt gross, like the animal that could actually love someone I loved but knew to be so dysfunctional inside on levels she couldn't even address with me when I thought we were so close.

"Yeah... and you know what else?  Right after I rejected him, he told me he's going to join the Army.  I mean, he said he'd move out here and come live with me and we could be together, but you know I have Anthony; I couldn't do that.  I told him not to do it, but he said that if I wouldn't be with him, he didn't really have a choice.  I mean, really, I can't believe he joined the Army because of me."

And that was the moment that my mind dropped the whole thing.  It was fat, icky, and worthless to think about.  What did I care if he felt so strongly for her like that?  He must seriously have been creepy to have pined after her all those years and call out of the blue with all these six-year feelings.  After all, so many of the people she talked to were very, very creepy.  They scared me; I was scared for her.  But I refused to let myself get sucked into that midnights-outside-your-window world.

But I was being naive.  I was being trusting toward the person who had been the most beautiful constant in my life.  Who would ever, ever suspect the person they were closest with in the world to fudge the truth or even to tell a bald-faced lie?  And how was I to know that I was only feeling what I was supposed to feel, that I was a result?