Once Upon A Time in January of 2018...
I had been writing a lot at Barnes and Noble to the point where I started jokingly referring to it as my office.
The day I speak of in this entry wasn’t a particularly good day on an emotional level, as I was unknowingly being drained by our friendship.
I headed directly to the poetry section, grabbed a translation of Dante’s Inferno I had yet to read, and setup shop in a chair off to the side.
However, reading was nigh impossible, because you were the center of my thoughts.
I kept rereading the same page over and over again, and eventually gave up.
Putting the book down, I retrieved my phone, and hopped on Facebook.
You had a lot on your mind, and you were wandering the second floor in search of something; whether it was a book or an answer to a question, I had no idea. Regardless, you were in need of being anywhere away from where you had been previously.
Your path took you to the railing that overlooked the first floor, and you proceeded to gaze down at the poetry section.
That’s when you saw me.
A strong urge washed over your body to hurry downstairs.
Except...you didn’t...
You were afraid. You didn’t want me to see you like this, so you held back.
I accessed messenger and opened our chat. I started to type something, but stopped. I just didn’t know what to say, and I was already depressed. And while we had always shared our feelings on our depression, our dark thoughts, and the darkness that can be found within all of us, this time I didn’t.
I let out a sigh, said “I miss you,” and closed out of the chat.
I picked up the book, and slowly looked up to the second floor railing.
You quickly backed away the moment you saw my head move.
Sighing again, I opened the book, turned to a page, and tried to read once more. I was just going to have to take you along for the ride.
Later on in February, on the night you had a breakdown in my car, you would relay your side of the story to me.
“Did you feel my energy, and that’s why you looked up!?” you asked, excitedly.
“Yes,” I lied.
Also, during your breakdown, you would talk about your ex, and the side of him that you had yet to share.
“My ex would call me a slut, and say that I’m not beautiful...” you said, tears in your eyes. “Do you think I’m beautiful?”
“Of course I think you’re beautiful,” I replied. “You’re beautiful on the inside and out.”
It would continue with an instance where you were feeling suicidal, so he pulled a gun on himself threatening to pull the trigger as a way to make you stop.
“He pulled a gun on you!?”
“Yeah, he put it to his head and started yelling ‘do you want me to do it? Because I’ll fucking do it!’”
He would end up cheating on you with this other woman who “used her demon powers” to make him cheat.
Or he just knowingly cheated on you and there was no dark magic involved...?
“He was always really jealous and didn’t like me talking to other guys. He always accused me of flirting with them. I was just being friendly!”
Great.
The entire time, you blamed yourself for a lot of what happened in your relationship. You were blaming yourself for things that were beyond your control, you were blaming yourself for things that were never your fault.
You were blaming yourself for being human.
“I still love him, but I can’t be with him. He has his issues, but he’s such a beautiful soul. And when I talk to him, he always breaks down and apologizes for everything.”
He misses your vulnerability, how you’re impressionable, and easily influenced.
He misses the pure heart that he could abuse until you were on your knees in submission.
“When you meet him...please don’t hate him,” you would say in a way that heavily implied that everyone hated him.
“Don’t worry,” I said, plastic smile on my face, “I won’t lay him out in the parking lot the moment he enters my vision.”
I would never get to meet this “beautiful soul,” and my world is better for it.
A mutual friend of ours would refer to him as “poison,” whilst another would use words I can’t repost here, and another would say that it’s possible that he influenced the fallout between us.
Afterwards, I would wonder if he had been the heroin addict you would speak of from time to time when I would bring up drug addiction in relation to my first script.
Regardless, it matters not, for what was once is now no more.
- Jaclyn