2007-12-10
Help Me Out of This
The thing about being friends with a drunk is that you never know what the right thing to do is.
You might say, "Do not bother calling me if you are in a drunken rage."
The phone calls you get subsequently will be often and remorseful, to the point that you are now angry about hearing those pathetic little words, "I'm sorry."
Then you'll stop answering the phone because you need to not answer that phone for a few hours, and later because you're at scrimmage.
You'll check your messages after you've slept for 5 hours and gotten up to faithfully do the work at the gym you so desperately believe is keeping you in line and proving to yourself that you CAN be committed, that you CAN be a fucking champ.
You'll listen to a 4.3 minute message in the elevator that carries you from the first to the second floor of your office. You're in the elevator because you have a disgusting lump, possibly a hematoma, on your thigh from when you fell like a fat, rookie chump at scrimmage last night.
Plus, you like those last seconds of solace before the day starts.
You're torn about this message though. I mean, you KNOW it's a cry for your attention and that it's just another manipulation: "I'm SO SORRY, where are YOU? I need a friend! I will move with you!!"
You feel pretty sick - maybe the base-ball sized lump in your thigh, maybe the lack of sleep, maybe the message, maybe the money that you don't have and sort of need right now (it's great that she wants to help like this but it is far too stressful and you can not agree to it in the future, you HAVE to say no to your mother next time because you haven't come that far, baby), and maybe it's that you just figured out that you're pretty sure you have a stalker since the coincidences are too easy. You're not worried about this - he is not dangerous.
You are worried that your left ankle is going to boat up painfully the way it does when you are freaking out.
What is that?
You are worried that you will never, ever get free of Jesus.
Past years?
It was true that you would not clear it because you loved him, still.
A lot.
This year, after the Homecoming 2007 in October, you don't love him anymore.
It's a little lonely to not be in love with someone you worshipped for ten years.
It's a weird loneliness, the one that comes with not being in love with someone anymore.
Especially when you were in love with him while you should well have been out of love with him, when you had been presented with other options, when you had specifically created another life for yourself.
You loved him still.
And now you don't.
It's kind of like if a kid has a blankie and yet is old enough to understand that the blankie is purely symbolic.
Jesus himself wasn't my blankie but being in love with Jesus WAS my blankie.
Without it, I feel really goddamn old.
I mean.... better.
More solid.
More real.
Actually, I feel like a completely different person if you want to know the truth.
There's an emptiness to not having that love anymore but it's sort of a satisfying hole, if that makes any sense. I guess it's a hole of vulnerability and that's sort of a good thing if you think about it.
It makes you human and accessible.
It gives you a certain desirable hunger that the people you want to love seem to pick up on immediately.
So you're standing there, outside the elevator, and you're still listening to this message from someone with whom you are no longer in love.
There are 7 missed calls from yesterday, not counting the twice you picked up.
There is no boyfriend-girlfriend relationship that could be breaking up because even though you were in love with him and he with you, you were not together.
Because of the alcohol.
But you're standing there waiting to pull yourself together before you swipe your badge to gain entry to your office and you feel like you've felt on any of the other 19 occasions the two of you have broken up over the past ten years, except for one thing.
The 19 times before this, you were still in love with him underneath whatever else you were feeling.
And now you're not in love with him.
What do you do next?
arizonasarah at 10:30 a.m.