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"forget everything I ever told you. I'm sure I lied way more twice."
she felt like she was going to go mad
again
but she knew there was no choice but to get over it.
she fantasized ways to get out of the responsibility of the cats.
she kept walking around her neighborhood when it got too much.
and her sister had invited people to her house. it hurt because it would be the same group as Christmas, and she hoped her mother would live more so it wouldn't be the last. and she blamed the cats but they'd be fine. it was just they were the only agency she could externalize.
her brother had also invited people to his. she wasn't one of them. she would have just used him for the pot and distraction anyway. it was so nice to distract.
"I hope you are happy with your hold on me. it sure struck me awful strong."
god she hated all her music. she was listening to the Athens music because she was feeling too much and needed to stop walking and there was no where to go. she had this feeling that nothing was changing and that this would be the sisyphisian shit every day. she cried in her bedroom as she was changing from her flow housedress to her walking garb. honestly, she cried just to see if that would make the panic go away. she called on it like an actress. it helped a tiny bit and lasted a few seconds.
she had called her mother!, and that had killed some time.
"I'm just dragging my devotion in a last ditch retreat seeking some safety."
she was so very very very very very tired of wafting in Leon all the time. why was she hanging on? what was it she thought would happen? what did she want? she didn't even have any more stories left. even these words were threadbare if beautifully phrased you darling human. it was completely ridiculous, but she cried when she put on her docksider Sebago shoes - the kind he had worn at Swenson's - because they reminded her of him maybe the last time she had worn them had been with him. and his green bmw 2001 with no bumper when he worked at the Mexican restaurant and how he had traded books to read and had toga parties with his high school friends and gotten hard crushes.
==
and the last day in highlands.
it had to have been something he knew then
that he didn't love her
that he didn't want to love her.
that she was just killing his time and he was getting a bit ... over it.
it gnashed at her craw.
so of course, she puts it in a museum case. perhaps all 28 or so days they ever laid eyes on each other.
and she wraps a universe into it as if he's some fucking reincarnated soul mate lesson
and let's use a failing metaphor. she was failing any lesson she was supposed to learn
unless the path involved daily hourly regurgitation of the same thing over and over.
the woods were pretty in highlands. there was a stream. the weather was brisk.
she was fucking mortified. she had bickered with him today and showed irritation. she had said he never touched her and that she liked him more than he liked her.
it felt like a pop.
they crossed the stream and started uphill. they went the shortest path.
she chose to walk in her brown cashmere pants that constantly needed the tiny friction balls shaved off of them. it was colder than they had thought. she was deeply hungover and hadn't been hungover in a long long while - maybe since the last time she had been with her family. he was smug but a good companion - always. he followed behind as they walked in the woods behind the expensive boutique hotel her sister had rented them all. everyone had come except their brother.
they came across civilization in the middle of the walk and she asked if she could use his credit card - she had not brought money having thought it was just the woods. it was the first time she had asked him for anything material. she wanted a gatorade lemon lime to see if the ache would go away.
it knocked a bit of the edge off. they wandered into the rich boutique-laden town. he looked up where to go when she said "maybe sushi and miso soup."
they talked about the art on the walls - what they'd pick. it was the only thing she remembered besides logistics on the food. she took hers as leftovers although the soup was perfect. they never talked about what this was. maybe they already had.
and then another night that night - the big dinner. all the family gathered.
he did great. she still wishes she had gotten the steak and lobster - but she had already had felt that she had taken too much from these people. he was in the family foto taken by the waiter.
her mom later said, "let's get. foto of you two."
it was the first - and last - picture ever taken of it - them. she did some pop culture reference just to make light of it. she assumed he hated it. he was such a good sport.
they skipped breakfast the next day. he had feigned sleep.
she gave him a blowjob and acted grateful the opportunity to say
and oral apology.
it was rather sad actually, but at the time she felt so sorry that she had not been cooler. that she had leaked emotion and stress and confusion. she wanted to touch his leg - his foot - his back, but he would always pull away politely.
he brought wine for the host.
as a gift.
and she always felt badly filtered tongue-tied.
self-editing anticipating too rapidly to be coherent. (next time...)
because he mattered. and she had written the end in the beginning.
it was so hard not to go mad.
she had to turn the music off. silence was better. or maybe another walk. Athens was so vivid, and it had been the last time she had
forgotten to be sad for a second.
she kept wanting to say something truthful and something that would make it all be poetic or make sense but the only thing she could keep picking at - snatching from the debris was:
next time....
and her hobbies were people and imagining what they thought.
she was her own lab rat.
and it got so fucking lonely
but there was a line in odysseus that she heard was said by the sirens to tempt him, "everything thing you dream of, you've already had."
ouch.
she would try to be better tomorrow and not so catastrophic.
right now. she was just going to try to stop thinking.
she wondered how to do that.
good start.
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