by Carr, Suzie
By the time she walked halfway over to me, I wanted to faint. My breathing chopped. My eyes squinted. My nose itched. My head fogged. I searched the far recesses of my mind for protection against the inevitable panic attack that would soon wrap itself around all sense of reason and choke me. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t face the humiliation of her not liking me, of me disappointing her, of jumping into my first kiss with someone as beautiful and experienced as Eva. I couldn’t do this.
Just as I reached down and grabbed for the car door handle, Larry backed out of the spot and sped off with a wave. Eva closed in on me now with more determined steps. Her hair flittered around her, wild and messy. I stood, arms hanging down by my side like useless branches on a dying tree. My chest bellowed in and out.
She landed in front of me smiling, her face all aglow, and a sparkle in the center of her large pupils. “We meet once again,” she said in a playful whisper. She brushed her wild hair away from her face, tossing it over her shoulders.
I nodded. She stood before me with an easy smile. I searched for my voice deep down under the rubble of my fearful years and could only manage to bite my lower lip and hold my erratic breaths from spurting out and ruining a most perfect romantic moment.
She moved in close, so close I could see the shimmer of her blush and eye shadow, so close I could smell her minty breath, so close I could hear her light breaths tickling the air between us. She placed her hand on my forearm and cradled it. Her light, caring touch sent shockwaves through me. They raced through every nook and cranny of my being; speeding up as they weaved down my arms to my fingertips, up to my heart, down to my belly button and to the tips of my toes. Warm and comforting, I stood in her grace, admiring her beauty and relaxing under her embrace. “Are you okay? You look like you’re about to faint.”
“I’m not feeling well.” I searched out Larry. He had stopped at the entrance waiting on nothing. No cars traveled by. He just waited. All the confidence I needed faded into the milky air and left me alone to fend for myself.
“Let me see if I can track your friend down.” She waved her hands to Larry and headed towards him. Her hair bounced around the middle of her back, happy, jovial.
Larry’s brake lights flashed and he backed up, circled around and opened his window for Eva. I panicked, praying Larry would not say anything stupid. I just wanted to run, hide from this awful mess that pinpointed a time in my life where I knew a year, two years, twenty years from then I’d look back on and regret.
I couldn’t manage to look her in the eye. How would I ever manage to stand tall with a warm smile and insert myself into this lady’s life as plain Jane? She needed the arms of a confident woman with a history that sparkled with accomplishments, awards, friends, travels, adventures, and interesting quirks, not ones that would smother her good heart.
Larry drove towards me. Eva trailed behind giving us space. Before hopping into his front seat, I looked up at her. She waved. I waved.
I drew the curtain. The dreadful tug of a teary goodbye to a life I wanted had climbed up from the horizon and made its landfall on my heart. I had just ruined my chance at a life worth living. I would spend the rest of my life hashing out this moment, the moment when I closed the door on any possibility of a life with Eva Handel that included more than a laptop computer and emoticons.
Chapter Fourteen
Without delay, I wrote my email to Eva. I told her I couldn’t meet up with her the following week because something had come up, something that would take over my life. “I’m so sorry. But, I’m going to be unavailable for a while. I’ll miss you, babe.”
“But I’m here now.”
“I’m sorry. Things have come up and I’m not available.” I sent the reply, and my heart broke in half.
When she responded with questions I had no answers for, I simply pretended to rush off to a project that robbed me of time to message, time to chat, time to carry on with our ‘relationship.’
# #
My world turned blacker than black in the days that followed. As if someone dropped a brick down my throat and tossed me into the Patapsco River, I sank to the lowest point. Barely able to lift my head high enough to acknowledge the threat, I balled over, challenged not to throw up, and eager to vacate from this most despicable part of my life. I spent the better part of my days sobbing into my couch pillows like someone had removed my heart, stomped on it and tried to put it back together again to no avail.
Larry broke through my door on really bad days and comforted me. We ate lots of cheesecake in the weeks that followed my oath of silence, so much so that I grew back into my above average sized clothes. On his recent cheesecake visit, after I couldn’t button my pants, I took one look at his offered cake, reached up and smashed it to the ground. Then I stomped on it, splattering cheesecake all over the place, on the cuff of my pants, my sandals, my carpet, my leather couch, even my stationary bike that started this addictive behavior. I grabbed onto the handles and yelled. “Take this bike out of here. I don’t want to see it.” I pushed it towards the door and it got stuck on my carpet. I pulled back for leverage and then fell backwards, clobbering poor Larry in the mouth. He bent over in a scream.
The scene ended badly with Larry bleeding and pressing several ice cubes in a white towel to his lips and me scrubbing cheesecake into my carpet as I tried to clean it up, sobbing, heaving and punching the ground. My knuckles bled and swelled up within minutes. I spent the rest of the evening balled up staring at my empty Twitter messages crying into my pillow and wishing I were dead.
# #
I sipped black coffee and scrolled through our past emails, reminiscing over the most precious times in my life when I meant more to Eva than just the girl who dumped her without a warning over some ‘busy stuff.’
I wanted to reconnect, to go back in time to the fun.
Travis kept me in the loop on the progress for the anti-bullying event. He assured me over and over again that he kept my identity a secret from Eva, that he understood my fears even though he didn’t agree with them. Travis and I had gotten close and we confided in each other about our nightmares, our fears, and our insecurities. Travis always ended on a high note, reminding me to take the high road whenever possible and be gentle with myself.
I’d feel stronger after our conversations and realize that I had lived the past twenty-nine years alone, so I could survive the next fifty the same way. Avoid the lure, and wipe out the addiction. Ignore the bully, and wipe out the problem. Same strategy could work for both.
I learned from those gloomy bullying days that the best way to prevent walking through that dark tunnel was to head in the opposite direction. Facing demons head on never resulted in anything good. Things blew up with that idiotic tactic, just like with my cheesecake fiasco with Larry.
I struggled terribly in the first month. Eva had sent me several ‘good morning’ messages and I ignored them. They stopped coming altogether now. Their absence sucked the air out of my lungs.
On more than one occasion, I hovered over sending her a smiley face that asked her how she was. Then, after abiding by my ten-minute rule of walking away and returning to the unsent message, I’d always delete it, strengthened by my walk to the toaster or to the fridge or to the plants. I could do this, I would say as I hit the delete key. Time would erase this kind of dreadful pain. I willed time to bless me.
Then, one morning, two months into my lonely struggle, she messaged me. “I can’t take it. Why are you ignoring me?”
I couldn’t ignore this question. So, after several seconds of deliberating, I messaged back, “I’m sorry. I just think you’re better off forgetting about me.”
Grit scratched at the back of my throat as I sent this hurtful, but necessary, message. Better to destroy the bridge than to risk being lured back over it and getting burned even more later on when the fire burned that much hotter.
In the weeks that followed, my core hollowed out a little more each day to the point nothing could f
ill it. I tried walking and blubbered the entire time. I tried writing and stared at a white screen. I tried watching funny videos and spent the time chucking the bird to the computer screen. I tried ten different flavors of cheesecake, only to throw up after indulging. I tried focusing in on an investment class and ended up failing miserably and feeling worse. I tried smoking a cigarette and puked off my balcony. Ultimately, I surrendered to the loneliness. Why fight it?
On my darkest days, I’d venture into Eva’s Twitter and Facebook and really torture myself. Her happy voice had returned, her exclamation points now celebrating other people’s joy. The decent girl in me should’ve been happy for her, but instead this angered me. How dare she move on so quickly? Was CarefreeJanie not that special to her?
One night I got drunk on several Seabreeze drinks and almost chimed into her tweets. Vodka had a way of erasing inhibitions. Instead, I strolled way too far into her Twitter feeds and mentions and embarked on some flirty tweets between her and Sara, her on-again, off-again possessive girlfriend. They exchanged several winks and playful short remarks about fun, the city, and wanting to dance. My chest constricted. I clicked into this chick’s recent images, and her romantic eyes, pouty lips, olive skin and thin frame saddened me.
The dread crawled up my spine like a snake in grass. I caused this. I opened her up to this fun. I made this life. I chose to live alone.
All the past choices piled up one after the other causing a jam at the base where logic used to form. I chose to not kiss that boy back when I had a chance. I chose to cower at the sight of a group of people. I chose to be miserable all of these years. No one put a gun to my head and said to live like a reclusive hermit afraid of my own shadow. No one forbade me to walk out of my front door and embrace life. No one but me. I chose this life.
It didn’t choose me.
This predicated the notion that I could still choose my life. It didn’t have to choose me. Like I could dictate my storylines, I could dictate my life. I guzzled more Seabreeze.
I stood and paced my living room, fueled by anger, impassioned by Seabreeze. At any one moment in time, I could take back control and push crap I didn’t want to deal with to the backseat and continue the drive as I saw fit. If I wanted to hug the curbstone, then I’d hug it. If I wanted to drive like a maniac, then I’d push the pedal down further. If I wanted to take a lovely Sunday drive and do the speed limit and aggravate the shit out of everyone behind me, then that would be my prerogative. I chose. No one could choose for me.
I felt like Mel Gibson in Braveheart suddenly, fist in the air, screaming out to the enemies and the haters who struck at me with their pointy spears. I could be the better person here. I didn’t need to be wallowing in tears over a lost love. If I wanted to love someone, I could. I coveted power and control.
I tripped over the edge of the coffee table and spilled some of my drink. I could let Eva know that I fully supported her relationship with this gorgeous girl on Twitter, and she would maybe once again view me as someone worthy of her past love, of her past torture, and overlook the fact that I acted like a complete bitch.
Drunk on empowerment, I messaged her. “I hope all is going great for you. You seem happy.”
There. Easy. Done. I swiped my hands proud of my trek out onto the edge of the cliff. A blur later, she responded. “I am happy.”
“Travis tells me the event is coming along great.”
“It is.”
Her short words cut through me. “So what’s new?”
“What’s new? Lots.”
She hated me. “Are you going to make me dig?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Of course. Tell me.”
“I’m seeing Sara again.”
My heart dropped. Gravity, mean and powerful, cut off my parachute and dropped me to the ground like a rock. The large tears poured onto my lap, soaking me, drowning me. My head pounded. My throat dried up. All moisture evaporated, leaving me caked with grit and regret for what I’d let happen.
Her heart belonged to someone else now. That easily. All those tummy rolls and heart leaps and urges would be filled in by someone other than me. She didn’t need me anymore. She would read my tweets and brush over them like the other hundred or so she got every day. I would be that girl she once had a thing with. That girl she no longer needed. That girl one day a few years from now she’d remember and chuckle. A small smile might creep on her face as she skipped along a steamy memory we shared, and then it would disappear as quickly when her lover wrapped her arms around her golden shoulders and kissed her soft skin and told her how much she loved her.
The pain tore through me, ravishing everything I had built up in me to protect myself against such harsh elements. I no longer could fend off the abrasive torches, the pounding rocks, and the cuts of knives that sliced through my surface. I stood exposed, vulnerable again, unprotected from things that could kill my spirit.
I couldn’t bear to face the rest of the night with knowing she doted after someone else, sprinkling her spirit with her warm heart.
“Wow, good for you,” I wrote this as tears spilled down my cheeks. So honorable of me. So mature of me.
I drank more waiting for her response. Oh how I wished I had a superpower that would allow me into her head so I could tinker with it and never let her fall in love with anyone but me.
I did this. I drove her away. I told her to go. I opened up the door to my heart and pushed her through it. I sealed it off from her. She could never enter again with the fortress I built. She had no choice but to march forward without looking back on me. I never tossed her a good reason to look back on me.
I’d get over this just like got over everyone else who disappointed me. She deserved to be happy. She deserved to be with someone who could stand up to her ghosts from the past and push them aside, someone who didn’t huddle behind a laptop, someone not plagued by scars, someone not easily destroyed by the hands of others. I would go on with my life just like I had before I fell into her Twitter feed. Before that, I could spend countless hours on the couch watching House and eating popcorn and taking long baths listening to Baroque and never once feeling sideswiped, steamrolled, terribly sad.
Everything she admired about me no longer mattered. So what if I published short stories in magazines? So what if I touched countless LGBT youth with my stories? So what if I wrote a beautiful tribute for her to showcase at an event that would gift her with massive attention? So what about any of this anymore? She had a better love to track now, a lover to admire, a lover to rediscover and explore.
Oh, this hurt. My stomach twisted and my heart mangled from the trampling. My broken heart with all its chards flew around like shrapnel, jabbing me, stabbing me, cutting me open. This pain rolled over me, flattening everything.
How else could I respond? With envy? Then she’d challenge me. If she challenged me, I’d have to challenge back, and we'd be right back where we were before, struggling to find a footing that made sense. I’d never be that girl for her, the balanced girl, the unscarred girl, the brave girl not afraid of being bullied into submission.
Fuck myself and everything I’d become. I hated myself. Why couldn’t I be normal? Why couldn’t I face the world with one confident foot in front of the other like everyone else?
I balled up on my bed clinging to my bed sheets and cried.
A few hours later, I rose and faced my computer with a determined fierce intensity to be the kind of girl Eva loved. The kind of girl I created in CarefreeJanie. The kind of girl I wished existed in the real me. I wrote her a message and said, “I’m happy for you, babe. I think she’s very lucky.”
The rest of the afternoon, I busied myself with organizing my canned goods according to type, then size. I also tore down my curtains and washed them all, then hung them back up to de-wrinkle. I vacuumed and shampooed my carpets. And then I began construction on my bedroom closet, hanging shelving I’d bought long before Eva entered my life. By midnight, I decided
enough time had buffered between my last heroic tweet message and I could face her response.
I logged in.
Nothing.
I fell to the ground and wept some more, reopening all the pain gates, the vacuum seal on my air, the wounds that hadn’t quite healed over enough to protect my insides from being torn out again.
# #
The next morning at work, I logged on to Messenger and Eva popped online. My heart clenched. “Hey you,” I wrote as casually as my fingers could manage.
“Hey.”
“Did you get my message?”
“Yes,” she wrote.
“Okay. Good.” Her choppy answers rattled me. “So what’s going on?”
“The event. The event is. Are you going to be there to help or are you too busy?”
I had already destroyed my chance with her. She hated me. “I won’t be able to be there.”
“You make no sense. One day you’re making love to me online, the next you’re telling me how happy you are that I’m back together with my girlfriend.”
“I am. I want you to be happy.”
“What is going on with you? Did I say something to offend you?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then why?”
“I’m going through some things,” I wrote. “It’s just too complicated to get into right now.”
“You’re always hiding yourself. You’ve never once told me something deep, something real about you. I don’t understand.”
“I’ve got some dark things that you wouldn’t understand.”
“Well you could’ve tried me.”
“It’s better this way. I really think it’s better if I don’t go.”
“You are so selfish.” Despair lingered in her typed words.
I couldn’t handle the slap of her insult. I signed off on a tremble.
A few minutes later, I went into my email and Eva had written to me. I always dug to learn the real you but you never let me in. You hid behind a flirt or a virtual kiss. And now you’re hiding behind a fear that has you gripped so tightly you’re willing to turn your back on someone who really needs you now. Shame on you. Where is that girl I fell in love with? Hmm? Where are you, CarefreeJanie? This event isn’t about us. Life is more than who you are, more than who I am. It’s about being there when it matters.