Back to Life

 The trip is over. I need to kill fifteen minutes before my next meeting. So, here we are. 

I'm in an odd state with jet lag affecting me more than ever. I have not been able to get my nights straight and can't seem to stay awake past seven which has me awake at three. Buh. 

I'm very officially back at work today, Monday. It's so unfortunate that it is the way it is right now. I don't look forward to the mess and the making sense of the mess of people. But this is very much what needs to be done right now - and there are so fucking many cooks in this kitchen. I get exhausted as soon as the smallest thought about it all enters into my head. I

It's sad. A place I used to love so much is just a haunted reminder of a thing that is gone. 

Five days later? 

Wish You Were here is singing from my TV via Spotify. Of course, I think of you Jimmy. How dreamy we were, or was it just the time that was dreamy. You and I couldn't have been more unalike. This album, for all the time it played in the background while we slept, reminds me most of that time it was my birthday and your roommates birthday. You all threw a party for him, and you, for the first time I was aware of, cheated on me right in front of me. Do you remember? I imagine you don't, if for no other reason than you were drunk. I walked in the bedroom while you and your not girlfriend were having a lover's quarrel. I politely said "excuse me, I just want to get my coat." You both, politely?, waited for me to leave before you resumed. How excruciatingly awkward. Her name was Honour, of all things, and she was everything I was not.  

I'm the kind of revenge seeker that requires absolute proof, and I will wait ever so patiently for it. I didn't call you out on anything in the moment because you could have provided some weak denial that gaslit me just enough. Plausible doubt. So, I waited. Who knows when I had stopped drinking - in a sea of drunk 17-19 year olds living like it was their last night on earth, and they were going to take it down with ferocious intent - I was stone sober as I waited for the moment of absolute proof. 

I stayed in the background. Nobody even talked to me, all these people that were supposedly my friends too. I was an actual ghost watching a movie. I was the representation of kind, soft, and good and nobody wants to see when their invested in debauchery, jagged, and bad. So, I quietly trailed behind everyone as the party moved from your house to... somewhere I never ended up. I walked behind you and Honour. You were laughing and signing. I waited for any transgression. You had no clue or desire to know where I was. 

And then your and Honour's hands joined, the lovers. We were at the corner of Fernwood and Bay St by this time, a stones throw away from the apartment I lived in with my kind, soft, and good mother. I can still see this image, this night, so clearly in my minds eye. 

"JIMMY!!!" your name came out of my mouth as a deeply vile screech. I screamed at you from the bottom of my broken heart. You let go of her hand and slid into a bush (of all things to do) so as not to meet my eyes. Drunk and ridiculous. 

I don't know what I screamed after that, but I screamed and ran away from you for fucking ever and ever. It was the weekend of your roommates birthday, which was two days before mine. It was my actual birthday. The year, the night, I turned sixteen. 

But, it wasn't forever and ever, was it? No, it was just the beginning. And now, here I am and there you are. Will you survive? Have you survived? Or are you dead somewhere as I type this? Why is Wish You Were Here playing on my TV? 

Back to life this post is titled. As if I ever left it. All these years later and I'm still the kind, soft, and good person. The one that seems so kind they must be naive. But I never was, I just knew exactly what I wanted. Or, exactly what I didn't want. I didn't want you, not the life you lead. Not the life my future and later husband of twenty years lead. 

I remember my sixteenth birthday fondly. I remember you with a wry smile, silly Jimmy, cheating on me. I love that I got to be a ghost on that night. I loved watching you all when you refused to see me. I'm sure it hurt more at the time, but still I'm sure I remember a small part of me delighting in watching my life unfold in real time and the fact that I got to be so clearly present for it. Ahh, what a gift. 

To this day, I don't know what drew us together or why I still feel connected to you, like we were meant to be but we just got it wrong in this lifetime. You weren't ready to settle down on a farm and have babies, so that was that. I went off and became a professional in the tech world. 

Remember last year when I drove past you at a bus station. I called out your name. You had a hood on and I couldn't be sure it was you, but somehow I knew that body. You looked and called out my name, "is that you" you asked. "Yes!" I felt that answer inside me more than anything. Yes, it's the me that you knew all those years ago, I'm still here as if you were the only person who ever really and truly knew me and now, you could see me too. 

I cried as a I drove away, cried with  a mix of joy and sadness. My name on your tongue - is that you - trailing after. Yes, it's me and it's you, too.