#mywritten

Chapter one. 

Derek, Pleased To Meet Me

Even though it may have been only minutes after she stormed out of the flat, it was as though the walls almost sighed with relief around me and I thought, “Maybe I could get away with being crazy and hasty and sporadic - get away with being reckless and absent like all these girls I’m acquainted with.”

Admitting I put myself in their path is strenuous, but I’m going to try to be as honest as I can. I just can’t beat around the bush any more, it isn’t healthy. So, off she went. Huffing and puffing louder and louder as she stomped further and further towards the exit. You know what? Good riddance! Girls are all the same. Girls always take up more space than you’ve offered. I heard her pull open the door with what I’m sure was stifled frustration but was also trying to be graceful. Her smooth exit was very obviously interrupted by the swollen door, as this apartment is damp and sensitive to the rain. It’s old and characteristic and I adore it.

I mean, yeah, I suppose I strive to take care of my apartment as if it were a living breathing thing. What’s funny is that I couldn’t care less about actual living breathing things. My efforts to separate myself from my annoyances has been pretty successful, other than of course the broad who walked into my life by accident and is hopefully taking the walking out part seriously. We’ll talk on the phone soon and I’ll be nice, cool and collected. I’ll come out looking and feeling good, for sure. 

I could hear her struggle with the doorknob as she tried to slam the door shut and I thought about how neat it is that wood expands when it gets moist. Girls are always complaining about cold, damp things and and never understand the science behind anything. They are constantly focused on their discomfort. Finally, I heard her lock the door behind her. Girls are passive aggressive and passive aggression is a weakness. I was sitting here on the couch in my own apartment, and she locks my door for the last time behind her. Girls are so dramatic. I should have asked for my key back. All this drama has me off my game. She probably feels like she got the last word in as she locked the door, the look of satisfaction turning to sheepish defeat. Here is the part where I should feel guilt as I imagine her sauntering out of the building. I just don’t and I’m too busy to dwell on the reason why. I know she’s trying to convince herself that I lost the game, and that I’ll soon feel a wave of sorrow overcome me when I realize she’s really gone. I’ll have you know I dislike making assumptions but I know her just enough to know that. Oh, the sorrow. Ha! ...I'll let her have it. She thinks she's making me think. I observe her efforts smugly. And, like I do with most of my interactions with her, I'll be the bigger person and let her think she has some influence on my thoughts and my attitude. Maybe, though, I will think. It might do some good, it helps drown her out when she's acting strange.

As these interactions happen more and more frequently, i've been slowly constructing a system. I have come to understand I have fairly convincing head nods and “uhuh”s. and I try my hardest to conjure up meaningful eye contact. Alas, girls always want the last word. Every fucking time. Her shrill voice is still ringing in my ears. I'll tell you, It’s almost like a demon seized her mind after just six months of dating. By that time I was already invested. Stuck. Too lazy to hurt feelings. If I had more to say, I think she would have left sooner. But I weighed out the pros and cons like the rational adult I am and sat back. I like having her around, she makes me laugh when she’s not bringing up deep meaningless shit. Playing games with persons unaware has always been an underlying trait of mine and I know how terrible that sounds but bear with me here. I'm trying to be more honest lately. Still, I don’t know why I put myself into these situations. Girls.

However, this morning I feel I am at a loss for words, or games, or nonchalant defence mechanisms. Ah hell, I don’t care. I guess I’m locked in my apartment? You really got me G. Jesus my apartment is now a complete disaster. I didn’t expect her to get physical. She must be very frustrated. Thankfully, she only destroyed the shit I could do without. Shit she brought into the house in the first place. Now I can just throw it all out with out feeling any guilt. I have an actual alert button to send up a maid, I've never used it. Theres a first for everything. What a day!

Girls like to give you an ultimatum at some point when you haven’t reacted to anything in a while. For some reason, I hope she comes back sobbing and blubbering and sees I haven’t even moved from my spot. She’ll think I haven’t even noticed. Yeah. She’ll be okay though, I always thought she was a somewhat well rounded girl, just lonely. But what girl isn’t whether their in a relationship or not. Can’t please ‘em.

I can’t help but picture the scenerio unfold. She’s probably pacing in front of the apartment making a fool of herself. If only it were raining, making it extra melodramatic. It sounds sad, and cruel, but I know she’d take a bit of pleasure in being a spectacle, damsel in distress. I imagine she’ll go to a bar nearby and get silly. Girls like to self destruct. 

Well, I don’t care. I can’t care right now. Tomorrow I’ll tell the door man to not let her in anymore. 'Good riddance!' I'll say. However, if she wants to come get the rest of her things, that means she will have to ring me up.. and then I’ll have to go down there to meet her and she knows I can’t do that. Damnit, maybe this was her plan. Oh, games, games.

Girls are always trying to change who you are and make you uncomfortable with a bunch of uplifting quotes they’ve come across somewhere on social media. I can never tell if they’re trying to make me uncomfortable but I feel uncomfortable.

Speaking of shit like that, you can tell a girl is crazy when she starts hanging quotes in the bathroom like “Do one thing every day that scares you.” Hangs it right across from the toilet so you read it over and over while you’re taking a shit. But they’re just words. 

I suppose I should mention that I haven’t left the apartment in twelve years. Sure, you know, I’ve been on the balcony, lots. It’s not like I shut myself in and pull the blinds or anything. You’re probably imagining piles of newspaper everywhere and a dank dusty galaxy floating gently through the house. No, it’s not like that at all. You see, I’m very stylish and I like controlled clutter. And there is no layer of fog dust anywhere. Spic and span. Theres a lot about me that I should explain and I’ll get to it. 

I can see the sky better than anyone in this city. From my balcony, the cars look like insects and I can’t even see the people. Ha! They are so irrelevant. Here are the facts; I am on the 30th floor. I’ve stepped in my elevator 6 times since I’ve moved in. I even had a helicopter deliver a huge tree onto my roof top patio so I don’t feel so alienated. Just because I prefer distance from people, places and things out there doesn't mean I don’t want to be part of it all. It does make sense.

It helps me breathe better knowing I have a tree. Sometimes, I fear the oxygen those riff raffs breathe doesn’t quite reach me up here and I am afraid of suffocating. I know it sounds silly. But with the tree, I just feel better about it. I have a real interest in psychology. This is temporary. I do want to be like everyone else, in a way. I just know I’m better. And I can do things up here better than anyone can do down there. 

Oh, but of course some over paid degenerate made an assumption and blamed it on miscommunication and brought me the wrong damn tree. Excuses are tiring and offensive to my intelligence. God Damn. I wanted a palm tree, because I’ve never traveled and they look tropical, but they brought me a Japanese maple. Having people in my home makes me feel dizzy so I didn't say anything. I don’t like to fuss like she does. Girls like to fuss over everything.

How about the time when the class was heading to the science laboratory. That day I was exhausted and I find myself humming to a tune. And to my surprise, I heard a voice that was singing silently to my humms and it was you.

Just like the other afternoon where the class was tired from the group work and the weather was just so dry. I was just sitting at the farthest corner of the room and you were three feet away from me, I began wording out the lyrics to my favorite song and when I stopped, you continued it silently.

Having those moments were fun, and I didn’t think that could happen. But it did, and it made me feel happy no matter how exhausted I was. No matter how down I felt each day was.

Because, it was a bit peculiar. The songs I listened to wasn’t something you hear on a daily basis, the songs that was released way before, even before 2009, some long before we were born. Yet you recognize them, something that the people around us wouldn’t.

You made me feel special, and not alone. You made me feel like I wasn’t just the odd one out, like I wasn’t the only nail that sticks out. It felt like we could be the only one who could understand each other. For what’s it like to be different; having a different perspective, or a trying out all perspectives. That was something we shared.

We were rebels, against the current. Not go with the flow, not the yes-man. I wasn’t too afraid to show what I am, but I was too afraid to let people know how I feel. And you were afraid of the rejection, you'll get when they see your true colors. You really aren't hiding, but they just don't really see you the way you are. And I too, probably do not see you as what you are completely, but I see what you are capable of.

When I was weak you were strong; when I was trying to be strong, you were at your low. If I may say something that I had felt that I should have said earlier, it would be that you should not be afraid to show who you are, you should not be afraid to not be what they like. Please, stay you.

We could only touch you once you cooled down.

After your body had cooked, and your thoughts were cut off

As if a pair of pliers took to them

pinching through a steel wire.

After your brained toughened up into something overcooked enough that I’d throw into my stew

Or eat with my eggs.

After anger and grief replaced psychology with science and vengeance put out any chance of truth.

After we all started out as mothers and fathers, friends, sisters and brothers who had tragically lost someone

Someone that you took

After we searched for you and failed, kept trying and played your game

After playing your game with you.

You won, you know.

We cannot all admit it. Crowds of us, drunk and screaming your name as if we had all felt what the families had felt, feeling empowered, riled up like angry humans do.

Parading around the prison on the day of your death. You would have loved it.

But we lost something that day.

No one will ever understand that steel wire that tangled through your brain.

No one will know why

No one will understand the motives coming from an intellectual brain such as yours

The blank white motives are blank white

When, to you, they were strategically placed like train tracks.

Maybe they were black, a shade of blue, red, or yellow. But no one will know

When human anger takes ahold

I think you felt a big red hot anger rather than a numb cold and smothered it with the thought that

Revenge seems like the only way

Revenge on what?

A mind is one of a kind

A mind is made every single day

And when his mind comes back into this world

We will wish to go back to that day.

For killing a rat that grew a brown spot

For putting a tiger down who’d became sad

For burning up a barn and walking away feeling glad

not thinking about it twice about

It’s only us who will feel regret.

But

It’s weird to think you didn’t know something was going on in that rapidly growing head of yours. Your world caved in on you and all you felt that you had left was the bottom of a well you spent most of your time in. Someone must have seen the signs. You didn’t get even the slightest nudge of what was really going on. You, always being very good at seeing things as if you were on the outside looking in, could never use this certain skill on yourself. Instead, you kept your crumpled up paper balls of self hatred in a waste basket that was always full to the brim but never seemed to overflow.. until much later, that is. I do wonder what it would have been like if you’d been aware of where this darkness was coming from. You probably would have treated people better, joined in on more laughter, had more compassion for others around you and maybe felt less judgement towards everyone around you. I think you would have been able to communicate, be more honest, and love yourself enough despite the feelings that haunted you. You would have known that you created things in your mind that didn’t exist, and you would have scoffed at the things that made you feel like dying sometimes. When your friends reached out that one time, I wish you would have let them flood in. They really tried. You had a lot of chances before and after. But you just didn’t know and you didn’t talk about it. Depression to you seemed fake and superficial, pretentious, ridiculous even. You thought it was simply an act to get attention, and at its worst, that was the last thing you wanted. But you longed for understanding when no one understood. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault.

I’ll take the credit for the stuff you know you do and lie to yourself about.

I will reveal these things, whilst unveiling the elephants in every corner of every room in the metaphorical mansion that is my mind. if we actually reach this point I would be able to tell the you who I am.

My name is Rachel. I’ll never be what you expect because once I realize that I’m where you want me, I’ll transform into something you might chase. This is how I’ll either lose you or rip you apart from the inside. My superficiality increases the more I hurt you and I won’t know until later. Even then I probably wont feel any guilt but I think I’d make an appropriate apology because of that moral compass we claim to be born with. I want to be as nice as I can pretend to be but I’m not a faker either.

I’ll get you hooked onto something about me that is really meaningless if you’d just see beyond past the lust in your retinas and the haze though which you desire to uncover my mystery. Don’t fuss, I’ll just tell you about my mystery. I’ll always give you the benefit of the doubt. I’ll tell you I’m a bonified pacifist and you’ll agree and say “me too!”. This makes me think you’re pathetic for pretending you’re anything like me. You’re lucky. My so called mystery is the procrastination that has encompassed me my whole entire life. It is my fear of confrontation in any situation. It is my disbelief of the success the future can hold. It is everything I hate about myself and can’t get past and don’t really try to. Motivation isn’t my strong suit. You think all of this is charming and quirky. Maybe I’m a diamond in the rust. I see all of this unfold and it’s like an inviting playground that I’ve built. I enjoy watching you get flushed by my stories and poems. You leap and bound into my playground, ignoring the withered ropes and rusty, loose screws. You’ll have your hopes as high as the tallest jungle gym. But baby, I I built it with scraps of old metal and didn’t read any instructions. I don’t feel so bad because I can’t understand how you could be so silly.

Through all of this, I never lied. Every story I told was true and every poem I read I wrote. But I’ve only ever shown you how alienated I feel. You turned that into beauty when I think it is the ugliest thing. To you, I’m either an anomaly or a project. Something you’ve constructed in your mind, failing to read the blueprints I’ve provided.

And when you’re scared your instincts come into play

You retreat expecting something else to move

It’s just so fucking dark in here

And to top it off you are alone

And the stiffness in your body isn’t from the cold

And there’s something you want more than giving up and going home

So in this scenario I’d sure feel the greatest comfort if you approached me in this place

I’d throw my shivering arms around you

And press my forehead against your throat

Whimper shyly with relief as I breath in the smell of your cologne

I’d forget what got me here because I’d feel safe and warm and good

But In this moment as you walk towards me and I’m feeling the way I think I should

I realize all I’m scared of is you walking right past me

Just as an unfamiliar acquaintance would

I think I’d try to say something but as usual nothing would come out

I crave you too much and it happened too quick and you really needn’t turn around

Oh my darling I have plenty to give,

More than I even know

But something else tells me there’s more important things to you then spending time on figuring me out

I’d like to offer the part of myself where everything is easy, blissful and carefree

But first baby break into this sunless room, please

Dear E,

I arrived at my destination, Qualicum Beach, with utter content rising in my throat. What ever mind set or obstacle that has kept me away for so long has been shunned and now cowers in the darkest corner of my head. I am so happy to be away from the daily routine of sleeping in, eating masses, drinking excessively, and going to bed at obscure hours of the night. However, despite my rath of routine, there is very much a routine around me. This routine, though, could never in my mind be thought of as regular and especially not boring. My Oma and Opa, like most elderly people, wake in the early hours of the day to feed their most hungry of habits: reading. They sit in their comfortable, yet elegant, sofas in their large arched-ceiling living room; light pouring in from all the windows onto their many little knick nacks, paintings, and the words on their pages. Classical music streams lightly, but consistently, throughout the house alongside the rich smell of expensive coffee brewing. Morning isn't so painful to bare here.

The day follows up with a casual cup of tea on the patio if it's nice out, and then a short but satisfying brunch of buns, tomatoes and an assortment of meat slices and cheeses. They recieve a new National Geographic once a month, and when that day comes they sit down and read all the way through it, one at a time. I think they've read every single one since the 1980's. Just another interesting fact you can add to any convorsation can be something from a National Geographic. I love it.

The day continues and they go out to a garage sale down the street, grocery shopping, dropping off something at the Sally Ann; things that townspeople do. This consumes most of their day and then they sit outside on the patio once again while dinner cooks in the oven, breathing in the last few petals of daylight. In the late evening, the T.V. is finally acknowledged and my Oma and Opa watch a British mystery T.V show or movie. This is followed by more reading, ofcourse, and then a good nights sleep.

I could sit and admire the way they live forever, and then I realize, why don't I just live it? And then I come back to reality and know I couldn't be ready to live like this for a very long time. It's too good. It's for the people who have had the experiences, the pain, the anger, the glorious happiness, and the misfortune. It's for the people when the time has come to live without trying to please, impress, spite, or exceed. I know that time will come for me, and for you, too.

I've been thinking about you a lot since I've been here; which has barely been three days. I wonder constantly about what you're doing, how you're doing, if you're thinking of me as well. I have my doubts but I have my certainties; doubts about if you're thoughts are the same as mine, and certanties about my thoughts being true.

I have to break up with you. I'm so sorry. Just kidding! But here is where I get really lame and you needn't keep reading if you aren't interested in a sappy explanation of a woman's feelings.

I never thought I would end up with someone like you. I say that in a way where I mean that you are the most amazing person I have ever met. When I first saw you, I knew I had to meet you and when I did, I was scared shitless and also positive I would not make any kind of impression on you. I feel warm inside thinking of the thoughts running through my head as we first spoke over Facebook. Even though it wasn't a very substantial convorsation, I felt giddy and limp with the exhaust of all the energy I put into each word I said to you. Meeting you was basically the best thing that has ever happened to me and I feel so lucky to have you.

That's not all. I was thinking today that (and no pressure) you are the one I want to spend the rest of my life with. That's just the current and content feeling inside of me at this moment. I've had doubts in the past, but I am now sure there is no place I'd rather be than just beside you. If we were cast into stone beside eachother while sneaking into a magical land and left there for eternity I would be satisfied.

We haven't been together for that long, maybe over a year now, and it scares me for a number of reasons. I know so many people who have been together for a long time, and then all of a sudden have went their separate ways. Out of nowhere they lost feelings for each other and I am so frightened for that to happen to you and I. I don't think you have any idea of how frightened I am. All of these songs and life stories that describe people being together for so long and then all of a sudden it doesn't work out; it would kill me if that ever happened because I'm sure it would be you that moved on. You are advancing in life faster than I am, I know, and I am going to try my best to catch up to you. I am scared that if I can't, you will meet someone spontaniously and find that there are so many fish in the sea. I've swam in my sea, and as lame as this sounds, I'm sure I've found my fish; I want to with all my strength stay exciting and new for you.

I know I am over thinking all of this and I'm being a crazy little lady, but every day I am reminded of cases where people who appear to have loved eachother dearly a week before, end abruptly, never to explain to others of how or why they didn't work out. If if was easy for you to move on from me to Michelle (sorry for mentioning), then maybe it will be easy to move on to someone else as well.

All of this makes me a little crazy when I think about it, and it is definitely a convorsation to have in a couple years I suppose, but I know you and you know me so well, it's like we have already been together for years. I know what you're thinking right now and I'll just shut up. But know that I'm sorry for everything I've ever done that's hurt you. On a more positive note though, I love you so very much and I'm so happy we've made it this far. And if we do make it in the end and are still very much in love, remind me that our time of pain, anger and misfortune is over and move us into a nice place on the beach with bookcases and Persian rugs galore.