This is a project that I began in 2017, and have not since revisited. She is in her original glory and I plan to revise and expand on this further when the time feels right.
He leaned in ever so gently, as if he were going to place a kiss on my waiting lips, but stopped inches from my face. “I need to go,” was not the whisper I wanted, but rather expected. Turning to hide my disappointment, I waved my hand to dismiss him. I don’t know what I expected. I took a long drag from the cigarette I held captive between my middle and pointer finger while looking over the sand and far past the waves crashing into the shore. The door slammed and I sighed. Another day, another dawn. And another failed conversation with a boy I thought I loved.
Two Years Prior
A fragile staircase held together a small two story house that, in the past months, had suddenly seemed to become too big. Her father sat outside watching the moon, and the stars, smoking good weed out of a shitty one hitter, contemplating. Her mother sat inside, emerged in an overflowing bubble bath, silently drunk, her mind too far away from her to grasp onto. Her brother, 13, sat at his computer, the one and only place he liked to be at, trying to forget. She was out and bout, per usual, trying her best to stay out of her suffocating home.
Chapter 1: One Year Prior
As I searched frantically for the alarm on my phone that seemed never ending, I blocked out my mother’s screams, reminding me for the fourth time that if I was late again, the consequences would not be pretty. I never did understand her sense of concern for my attendance and punctuality when it came to school, but I didn’t have much of a say about the matter anyways. I dabbed on the last touches of mascara on my eyes, which my mother would most likely say were permanently rolled into the backs of my sockets. I grabbed my keys and lunch and walked casually to my car, knowing she was watching. My attendance, my problem, was what I figured should make the most sense to any normal human being. Rolling up to school with my music blaring out through my speakers, which were actually pretty impressive considering my car was a 2008 4 Runner that still had it’s original radio, I saw John making his way up the sidewalk, worn from the heavy feet dragged against as each high schooler reluctantly made their way towards the doors.
John was 17 as we entered our fourth and final year of high school and our fifth year of dating, although our commitment to each other throughout the years fluctuated from impossible to break apart to impossible to hold civil conversation. I loved him and he loved me, what else could I have asked for? I remember the first time I saw him in the small, cramped hallways of the middle school I had been attending from the start and that he had recently been enrolled into, after moving from California to Austin. He strolled casually, already exhibiting signs of a sense of comfort that had taken me years to achieve among my classmates, most of which I disliked for their taste in well, just about everything. Company, conversation and depth to say the least. He fit in almost unusually quickly, but later on I came to realize his ability to blend and please was just a part of one of his many personalities. His ability to conform.
“When did you know it was over?” was so frequently asked I felt as if i should be allowed to smack the next person who questioned me. Smacked not because it was “too painful” or “too hard to talk about”, but because it wasn’t there business in the first place and because i didn’t have an answer that they’d want to hear. No, there wasn’t one particular moment when i knew it was over. It was a collection that had been building quietly and sneakily, creeping around corners and hiding under dark places, like my bed. But I couldn’t put that into words they’d understand nor that they would want to hear. So I stuck with the simple, rather than explaining that I knew it was over when his hands no longer occupied themselves with mine, when our nights fell short excused by excuses that were irrelevant but i somehow seemed to believe, when the texts grew cold, along with his heart and his desire to put my happiness anywhere in the equation. I guess it wasn’t so much that i never saw the signs, it was more my subconscious deciding to ignore them. A side effect of love, blindness.
But oh well, whats past is past and its time to live in the present.
So lets get back to it.
Mb's Words & Writes 