| It was a cool April morning I had just left Quentara’s minutes before. As I made my way
across the parking lot and towards the bridge to my building, I thought about
what had been going on lately. All drama, but I’m used to this sort of thing. I
thought about my past with Kim. I thought about my present with Quentara. I
thought about my future with Quentara. I
thought about Ginny telling Quentara things. Things about myself and things
about my relationship with Kim. I felt my eyes ignite and my blood boil. I
exhaled.
In this cool April morning, I reflected on the things that
Ginny had told Quentara about me. That she has gotten to know me much better
the past year. That the way I’m with isn’t the real me. That she knows me
better than I know myself. That I’m fickle and that I always want what I can’t
have and that I have a bad self image of myself. She tells Quentara that I will
lose interest in her, just like I did with Ginny. Because, I had liked Ginny
and Ginny had liked me back but because I was fickle, nothing ever happened
with us. That I certainly had liked Gretchen, though I had never said anything
about it. She tells Quentara more things, things like I wouldn’t be as flexible
as Q’s boyfriend is on things such as smoking. I would fight her tooth and nail
about quitting. She also brings up things about me and Kim, about how we had a
lot of sex and about how I had my best friends and I had my girlfriend, but
where I had gone wrong was that I didn’t realize that my girlfriend could be my
best friend. As she explains to Quentara, that’s what makes her and Patrick so
good. They’re best friends on top of being together.
Fuck you.
Immediately after hearing this, my mood is sour. My eyes
darken and my brow hardens. I need to punch something. I need to smoke. I need
air. My brain races as it tries to regain its hold on my body’s composure. It
knows the last thing that I want to do is let out the beast that is my temper
unchecked. My temper is quick, but my brain is quicker. I exhale deeply and my brow softens. Reason
and logic takes over, and I quickly struggle, desperately, to assure Q that
Ginny is wrong. I sit there for the night, but when I leave her room, the brow
hardens again.
In this cool April morning, I wonder where the fuck Ginny
gets off saying these things about me. I wonder how much she could possibly
glean about my mental state of being and why I am who I am by sitting on the
couch, a tumor on Patrick’s side, the Yoko Ono of a friendship I’ve had since
High School.
None of it makes sense to me, but at the same time it all
makes sense. She doesn’t know me. I noticed that earlier this year, before she
mutated into a cancerous lump extending from Patrick’s loins. I knew about her
life, but she knew very little about mine. Kim has said this to me before. I
keep people at a distance; I don’t let them know very much about me. I do this
to keep myself from getting hurt. The less they know about me and the more I
know about them then I have the upper-hand on the friendship.
This is something I noticed with her early on when we were
still friends and we talked often. At this point, before she’s talked shit
about me, we have hardly spoken since January. Oh, sure, we talk. That would be
near impossible not to do. She is an officer in my club and she’s always in my
room, usually blending into Patrick’s personality. But I think I’ve had 1
serious conversation with her since January. Does this one conversation dub her
as the describer laureate of my life?
I think not. The truth is, she is at the point in her life
where she is in her first serious relationship. And part of that is the feeling
that she and Patrick are in a unique place, and therefore are qualified to
comment on other people and their relationships. Call me bitter, but the both
of them seem so smug and superior all the time, like what they have is better
than anyone else in the world, both single and in a relationship. That must be
because they’re both best friends and boyfriend/girlfriend. If only we all
could be so lucky. What does this have to do with me? Little to nothing, in
reality. I just happen to live there, and they get too look down on me as a way
to make themselves feel better about where they are. Because they’re both
scared shitless about what they’re doing; neither of them know. And Patrick is
going abroad in the fall, and this just ups the ante. They both have a lot more
to lose. So, if they feel like they’re doing better than I am, then it gives
them an advantage, if only in their heads. And through this, they feel more
comfortable with each other: “We may have problems, but at least we’re not like
that.” Like I said, I have nothing to do with it. I’m just caught in the
crossfire. So, she doesn’t know me. She can’t accurately explain why I
do what I do. She has nothing on me. She just needs to feel better about her
things, right? Right.
So why do I feel like I’m missing something? I find myself
questioning myself and my confidence. I wasn’t doing this a few weeks ago. Now
I’m sitting here wondering about myself, sorting through self-doubt. Asking
myself while I hold my head up with my hands, my brow curled. Pondering: who am
I?
The cool April night turned cold. |
