“You’re late”
He muttered, his voice heavy, his annoyance on its third trimester. That’s just as well. I didn’t want to come anyway.
I was the one to initiate this meeting though, so I apologized. There was no going back. Not even the hisses from my tenacious insecurities would dissuade me today. I hate confrontation. Unlike normal people I must plan it out, draft all the cons till there is no way out. To swirl the idea on my tongue until my tonsils decide it a necessary bittersweet to give my dish nuance.
So, I sat opposite him. He hadn’t said much yet, but charisma had been generously poured atop his head, onto the table, oozing from the bastard. Drowning me. Oh, but I had time today. We sat in deliberate silence, ignoring the elephant in the room, hell we had all the big five that day. I watched a clock on an old wall that seemed to say, one more earthquake and that’s it. Another painful breath. Sigh.
“I don’t think we should see each other anymore” I spat out. He cocked an eyebrow. I repeated myself, made sure he knew I wasn’t saying this on a whim. I didn’t like who I had become since we met. Fell in all the ways I hadn’t hoped – slowly and then all at once. I walk on eggshells, terrified of what will break my resolve next. He makes me snap and hiss. Punching into invisible walls with my fist. The other day I had a full-blown argument with a stranger on the internet. They wanted to end my career because I wasn’t PC enough. Pfft. I was mad. Turns out I wasn’t conservative enough, not liberal enough either. Just a moving deficit. Stuck between other confused strangers clicking away at the baits, trying to change the world by commenting in capital letters. Searching for purpose, but instead finding all the doors to the opinions that infuriate me. I was angry. I was him.
I kept releasing all the avalanches I had been brewing. Tired of doing the bare minimum for myself, helping others way too much than I should. There have been no trophies, my love, for being real, just bruises. Ask my back. I miss the hope I had, but I can’t ever get her back. I was explaining in circles, desperately connecting unrelated incidents because I couldn’t pinpoint the reason for my exasperation, my anger.
He didn’t respond and I wouldn’t leave. So, akin an arranged marriage, we sat there rooted to our spots for as long as we valued our mortality. I didn’t really mind the silence. I had after all, known numbness like a long lost acquaintance, cordially and fiercely, umbilical.
Ergo, I sat with my anger all day long,
all night,
long enough, until he told me his real name was grief.
Twenty Fever 