No Innocents

Today


Shuddered awake at the sound of my cell phone vibrating, I'm immediately overcome with a horrendous sense of deja vu.


What's happened is that this is the second time I've woken up today, the first time was 6:30 in the morning when my alarm went off. It was the same situation over again, same room, same clothes, same dull sky, same cell phone. I lay there brooding for a time, then showered and went to class, came back, and fell asleep again.


Normally I don't sleep in the middle of the day, because it confuses me so, but I was up all night.


This time I'm being called, and it's PVC. I'm not yet cognizant, but I remember her telling me yesterday that she was feeling under the weather and I know she wants me to come over there now and nurse her back to health, again. This happens a lot, and I think a lot of the time she's faking and it's not something I find charming.


She tells me she feels bad and is hungry and has no food at her apartment and can I please go buy her food and take it to her and take care of her?






I can be bitter, here. I can be not nice.

This space is mine.


I briefly mentioned the other obligations that I did in fact have today, I'd set my alarm for two in the afternoon, when I'd feel well rested and ready to tackle all the other shit I had to do, but that's just me being silly.

I ask her what she wants me to get, and she tells me Taco Bell, and she is lying lying lying about being sick because that's not the sort of food you eat when your stomach is messing with you.


Then again, she is the unhealthiest eater I've ever met. She eats ice cream and candy for breakfast and will not listen to me when I suggest that might not be the best thing to do over and over and over. She wonders why she's sickly.


I will get over there and she will feel all of a sudden a lot better.


Is that flattering? I doesn't feel flattering.



She tends to lie.

I tend to act like I believe her.


In a relationship, there are no innocents.



My contacts have been behaving badly, so I'm wearing the glasses I haven't worn since high school with the incredibly scratched up lenses.

I need new ones, but I haven't the money.


I stalk my way down to my car, muttering and saying nasty things, and yell ugly things to other cars as I drive. She calls me again as I pull into the Taco Bell parking lot (I do not like drive throughs), but I know why she's calling and do not answer the phone. I buy what she asked for, plus a drink that she didn't, and proceed to her place, pausing only briefly to call a nice old man a fucking cunt for allowing me to proceed into an intersection before him.


I can be mean in my car too, it is also a space that is mine.


When I get there she answers the door and looks just fine. I repeatedly indicate that she needs to go ahead and eat the food she wanted so desperately and stop hugging me and when she continues to not do that I lie that I have to go to the bathroom so I can get some space to calm down because I need to calm down because I am not calm.

I sit on the toilet and reflect a while. With my glasses off. Being nearsighted, my real world is not sharp and distinct, but fuzzy and hard to resolve.

Not being able to see soothes me sometimes. I don't have to focus.







Did you catch that metaphor? You probably tripped over it.

Okay, good.

When I go back to her, she tells me that she feels loads better, and that's nice. I hear a shower start up and realize that one of her roommates was here the entire time.

It's rather a shorter trip to Taco Bell from her apartment than from mine, that's all. It's not like they're not good friends.


No surprises, though. By the time I'd gotten to her apartment I'd already replanned the rest of today and some of tomorrow.



I tell her that I'm going to take her grocery shopping today, because I can't do this again tomorrow because I'll be spending tomorrow doing the things I was going to finish today.

She tells me she called me that second time to tell me I didn't have to come over.


I knew that. I also knew why she waited 20 minutes to do it.

The rest of the day worked out like so: I take her grocery shopping, bring her back so she can unload it, and take her to class, then pick her up from class and drop her off at her apartment.

I was no longer angry, as angry as I sometimes get it's never for very long.

That's why I need just a little bit of time for people to fuck off and leave me alone. Just a little bit.



No, it is not to much to ask.


After I drop her off at her class, I go to get some breakfast. It's three in the afternoon and I'm starving so I go to Quizno's. The girl working the counter is cute, and I pass some time think about love with the Quizno's girl. She sings along with the music, and it's adorable, but I look vaguely homeless at the moment, with my bed hair and glasses that look like they've been sandpapered, so I decline to flirt with her.

It's a weird thing, probably another neurosis, but my throat is closing up and I'm having trouble breathing at this point. It makes me gag. I don't think it's asthma, you don't just get asthma.

I've probably been thinking too much again. There is such a thing as being too introspective.

Sometimes I examine myself too closely and something happens like that time I couldn't swallow for a week without pain as I'd convinced myself there was something in my throat because in paying attention to how the muscles moved I'd become too conscious of the sensations and I couldn't for the life of me let it go.



Sensory overload will drive you fucking nuts. In your life you will probably miss about 80%ish of the world around you and it's essential to your sanity that you do.



Let's get back to the story.

Taking PVC back home from class she tells me that if I ever need her ever for anything I should call her and she'll come take care of me, which is a nice sentiment, and she may even think it's true. I take a deep breath and gag, put pass it off as a cough.


I'm crazy.

I may not be as crazy as the people around me (though I may) and I don't take any medication, but I'm still out of my mind.



Sometimes, and it isn't as bad as it used to be, I get so scared I can't move for a time. Sometimes when I feel it coming on I drink myself senseless so I can pass out and wake up with the dawn of a new day and feel better. Phoenix from the ashes, etc.

But I drink enough and that's probably a bad coping mechanism, yes?


A couple of months ago it entered my head that being in a relationship, I might not have to suffer through it alone all the time, so I took to calling PVC when I was lonely and scared (pretty shocking, I know) so she could come over and make me feel better. She's crazy too, so I figured she'd be sympathetic. She certainly expects me to be. However, it seems that I get these "spells" of mine at really inconvenient times, when she is apparently on-task and doing her homework or studying.

She was laying the groundwork for her favorite argument, that I don't love her as much as she loves me.

I can't fight that one, because I'm pretty sure she's talking about showing love through words as opposed to through actions, and she's got me there. Talk is cheap but she really buys into it.


I'm being completely unfair, but I can do that. This entire post is completely unfair. She has friends she can vent to, I don't really have anything like that, so I do this. I vent to the internet, which is pathetic, but what should I do?

Should I stop living because I'm bad at making close friends and can't always maintain my stoic dignity?


...


Well...


I won't. In your face.


Anyways, I apologized for being so inconsiderate and I've never called her since just because I feel bad.


Which, though she'll deny it, she has a point. That's not something I should get too dependent on somebody else to help me through. It's always been me versus laying down and dying, and I've lost before, but laying down and dying is really bad at finishing people off and it gets boring just sitting there. I've screamed the phrase "I give up" a whole lot of times but nothing ever happens when I do.

It's really disappointing. I thought someone was keeping score.

What's the point of being all end of my rope dramatic if no one's watching?





Lame.



Anyways, that's what pisses me off, when I have to drop everything and go nurse her out of her imaginary illnesses, that I still don't have anyone to come and nurse me out of mine.


When I drop her off she tells me to call her tonight, and I will, but as I drove back to my apartment massaging my throat (into the sunset, pretty) I pulled out my phone and turned it off.

----------------------------------------------------------


Yesterday

Actually, a couple of weeks ago, but I'm being metaphorical again.

I wake up knowing it's going to be a long day, a lot of stuff to do, but it's one of those rare days I feel equal to the challenge, but before I can do any real work I have to go to class and run other silly little errands like paying bills.

Boo.

It's five in the afternoon when I'm done, but that's seven hours left in the day, plenty of time.

My phone rings and it's PVC and she tells me she's sick, cold, sweating, tired, can't move, and is very scared.


I sighed in frustration. Think I'm an asshole if you want. This exact thing has happened before, and it will happen again.


I tell her I'll come over and take care of her and she pretends to protest that I have other things to do but I go ahead and cut through all that so I can get off the phone, go ahead and get over to her place and get on with the healing ritual proper.

After I hang up I do a thing where I list out loud all the things that have conspired to piss me the fuck off again, naming them so I can watch them and better correct my behavior for their insidious evil influence. I'm interrupted by PVC calling again and I pull my hair a little and make weird noises and answer the phone very calmly and ask what's up how are you doing how's the weather?

She's tells me she's sick, cold, sweating, tired, can't move, and is very scared, and it makes me very scared and I ask her if she didn't remember just calling me to say the same thing not two minutes ago.


Which she did, she was just calling me again, just cause.


But I still curse at every car in front of me on the way over there, and consider running every red light. I think about how this relationship is in some ways very similar to my last, rather less successful one, and almost rear-end a car intentionally. In lieu of rationally and calmly working through my stress and anger, I scream very loudly which was stupid because all it did was give me a coughing fit.

Luckily, the door to her apartment is unlocked because when I get there she's still in bed, and asleep, and I'm no longer angry because what if she's really sick this time?

I think about the logistics of carrying her to the hospital.


After some talking, I manage to coax her into the shower so she can warm up (turns out she can move, after all), and take care of some of her business which she said was stressing her. There was something she was supposed to help set up the next day and she wasn't sure what she was supposed to do and it made her scared. I fix her some sandwiches while she's in the shower and when she comes out in just a towel I let myself get aroused a little but quash the feeling quickly because she's not my girlfriend at the moment, she's my child, and I do not like the mixed signals.

I used to have to help my ex into showers to help her sober up, and of course staggering drunk was when she was horniest, and when I considered it the most wrong to have sex with her.


If she's not really cognizant, how is it not rape? She's giving me the come hither gesture or the best approximation she can manage in her altered state of consciousness, but it just seemed wrong.



Maybe I'm just too uptight. Maybe I just need to loosen up.

But, southern baptist morals. I was going to be a pastor once. It dies hard.


Some of it does.

But that's not the point.



The point is that after I nursed PVC back to "health" once again (it's been dark outside for a while), and got her blessing to go home so I could do my schoolwork, I was once again feeling like I could take on the day, all two and a half hours that were left of it. I got in touch with the person in charge of that thing PVC had to do in the morning, and got them to talk to each other and work it out, for which she thanked me profusely. She told me she was feeling a lot better and was going to go to sleep. We said our goodbyes, and I turned to get started on my research paper but while I was mentally congratulating myself on managing to do something right and not being too much of a rat bastard I was beset by the very vivid mental image of her snuggling deeper into her blankets and clutching her teddy bear tighter, no longer stressed, no longer afraid, and drifting off to sleep feeling calm, loved and completely safe and I started crying really hard and couldn't stop. I'm still not sure why.


But by the time I was able to get a grip on myself the day was gone and I was exhausted so I set my alarm for 4AM to get an early start because I was behind and I was going to have to work long and hard to catch up.