My Truth (1)

I am so tired. I am tired all of the time now but I think maybe this is a different tired. I am tired of tears the hot leaky ones that just seem to want to squeeze out of everywhere and threaten to saturate my voice. I am tired of not writing of holding it and holding it like some massive need to pee being squeezed back into submission by sheer will and excellently trained crotch muscles. I have trained my fingers to be idle and my mind to leave thoughts hanging unfinished in my head like tacky wall paper. I am tired of secrecy and the need to be so open. I want to be normal not some sort of in between thing. I am tired of money and the lack there of. Tired of bureaucracy, and insurmountable tasks. Occasionally it is good for the hero to face off a huge obstacle and overcome against all the odds, which by the way I never understood that phrase because you have never heard of a hero who didn’t overcome the obstacle so what kind of insurmountable odds are those. It sounds like the odds are in favor of him winning. But I am the hero of my own story and my obstacles are not just huge they are many and unforgiving. I am tired of losing. I am tired of everyone knowing the inside of me when I cant even see it. I am tired of being alone and yet tired of letting go and breaking.
I am a broken thing have done with me.
I have waited and waited to write because I wanted to write my story as one long tale, starting with the journal I started January 2nd. The Journal was a joint book with my friend Kendra, and in the beginning I playfully named it “The Adventures of Kendra and Kar” because I thought that for once in my life I was deciding to live and I was so very excited to see where that would take me. I have since given up on incorporating that book into this story because it would be a pointless waste of words, I was silly and stupid and young. So instead I will tell you what has happened in my own words from my own body to yours.

I told my parents that I simply had to stay with Kendra for New Years Eve, I told them it had been far to long since I had seen her and they owed it to me. They agreed and even let me take my sister with me. I was not going to Kendra’s though, at least not wholly. My friend Luke had invited my sister and Kendra and I to his New Years Party, which in reality was something my parents should have allowed anyway, it involved such innocuous things as many crates of pizza and a whole lot of R rated movies and a bunch of Mormon kids sitting on separate couches. The reason I wanted to go was because the one I felt had to be my soul mate would be there. I was barely 18 and in love with someone one who no longer loved me, or as far as I knew hated me. Still I hadn’t seen him for months and I had to visit him while he was there. I brought my sister because she makes some kind of flimsy moral support for me when I am insane. We left our house blaring loud rock music and flying over stretches of asphalt that probably had never actually touched my tires in their entire existence. We screamed and my eyes watered with the possibilities I knew this night could hold.
I breathed in cold black air outside Luke’s apartment waiting for something to happen in my brain to make my hand knock on the door. I didn’t have to, it opened and I walked down the long hall, there he was and he came up to me and hugged me. It was brief but I was electrified. Well at least this meant he couldn’t hate me. For hours I watched him out of the corner of my eye pretending to watch “The Boondock Saints” When the Pizza came I could finally extract myself from the couch and cross the room he was being insane on some sort of silly sugar rush and I some how ended up challenging him to a wrestling match in which I promised to whoop his ass. We wrestled for what seemed like 2 hours long past the point when I would have given up, but for the fact that at each moment he was touching me I felt safer and more alive, and I wanted to live so badly. We got hot and sweaty and red in the face, at one point he carried me out to the deck to get the freezing cold air, it felt so delicious I could have stayed there forever. Touching him and yet I knew he wasn’t mine and that something wasn’t quite right. When we finally settled down he fell asleep lying on the floor while I was playing with his hair. I had started running my fingers across his scalp slowly as he lay there hoping he wouldn’t mind my need to touch him. He didn’t bother me and when I asked he said it felt good, so I kept my fingers in his hair for hours ignoring sleepiness and my tired fingers. When did I know if I would ever be able to touch this closely again, when could I let my love flow so silently and softly and constantly? I didn’t care about sleep. When Luke came back from whatever errand he had been running he told us we should all stay the night, Adam woke up under my fingertips and I withdrew myself from him so he could do what he needed. He stood and began to walk to his room, the couches were filled with my sleeping sister and Luke’s little brother half cuddling on one, and Kendra and some bearded man asleep on the other. So I gathered my coat and prepared to lie awake on the floor. Adam turned then in the hall and asked if I wanted his bed, he said I shouldn’t have to sleep alone, I told him I didn’t want to take his bed, he insisted but I insisted too and turned a little red from embarrassment. I didn’t tell him I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway. Finally he said well we could both sleep in it, and my mind immediately burst into flames.
I nodded and followed him into his room down the hall. I borrowed a pair of Luke’s P.J. bottoms and crawled into the corner of the bed, Adam stripped to boxers when I told him it was alright and laid down next to me. The room was dark and we talked until I could feel him nodding off next to me, I wanted him to stay awake so I set my hand on his shoulder and started talking about some complete nonsense he leaned into me and I could feel his whispering on my face. I was so close to him and he was allowing it, he had suggested it, it must be a possibility that we could maybe not actually be completely through, maybe some spark in him still loved me. I grew a little bolder and a little closer and we sort of half cuddled until he would push me away and tell me it wasn’t “conducive to sleep” and that he was really really tired. I was too but this was gunna be the last time I saw him for a long time probably. When I bugged him so much at last he jumped out of bed and grabbed his pants and went to the bathroom. His telephone rang and I waited for him to pick it up, he came back and answered it and walked in the other room away from me. I felt kind of silly laying there in the ruffled bed. I don’t know why I felt silly just sort of a confused idea spreading into my head. He came back when he was off the phone I asked him who it had been and he said “Rachel” I asked who was Rachel and he said “ a girl from Utah” I nodded like I knew when really I didn’t. He went back to the bathroom and I heard the noise’ from a shower going on. I got out of bed and tip toed to Luke’s room, I knocked on the door and asked him who Rachel was, he said he didn’t know but he thought she was a girl in Utah who Adam liked, and there it was, the one I loved liked someone else. I didn’t find out till later that he was actually dating her, and all night he had only been trying to be polite to me and friendly and I had thought we were flirting or that I had some sort of odd chance to be loved by him again. I was devastated and so very embarrassed. I left and took Kendra home with me. That night crying in my bed we both decided that we should take a vacation from our problems we could go and visit some other part of the world and know that the world was such a very big place and we didn’t have to limit ourselves to Moscow. We bought a map at a travel store and got directions from a trucker on how to get to Idaho Falls, Kendra had friends there who we could visit and see if we found ourselves alone. I called my parents and told them I would be heading home for some clothes and then I would be off to spend the rest of the week with Kendra at her apartment. When I showed up finally at my house, my dad was there and confused because I had only spoken with my mom.
My dad and I have a very great relationship I love him very much and I understand how he thinks but I was determined and so when I opened the front door I thought only of how incapable of love I was and I killed everything in my path. He stopped me in the living room and said “ Hey I think you should call your mom she thinks your leaving or something. What’s going on?” I told him she was not wrong, I was going to go stay at Kendra’s. She had followed me into the house to get some clothes for our trip since we hadn’t had time to stop by her apartment. My dad has a huge temper and even though I understand him I can still be ripped apart by his hurricanes. He said, No I was not leaving for anywhere and that I had chores to do all week. I said No and walked into my room. He turned and told Kendra she should wait in the car. I stopped and turned and told him no that she had to come with me to my room. That was a mistake. He blew up at me and screamed “ THIS IS STILL MY HOUSE” I turned and gave into my hearts desire, I screamed over and over unintelligible things and ended up telling him she had to come in to get her clothes, which was only half a lie. We packed everything I could fit into all three of my backpacks my little sister and brother were confused. My sister shut down and stopped talking I assured her over and over that I would call her as soon as possible, I had told her earlier the truth of where I was going. She just nodded over and over and cursed my mom out under her breath. My little brother hugged me a dozen times and told me he loved me and he hugged Kendra and told her thank you for helping me his big sister, I almost cried at that one. My courage was wavering but I kept thinking of Adam and how I was such a fool and how I had to escape this hole in my heart at all costs. I never stopped to realize the hole would go with me. My mom arrived home and started throwing her salt into the cauldron of tears. I was probably the only one not crying. She tried to guilt trip me into behaving by calling every relative I had while I was still packing the necessities such as toothpaste and eyelash curlers and asking them to please pray for her because her daughter was running away, she cried and cried on the phone and tried to thrust the phone into my hand to talk to this aunt and that grandparent. She was hysterical. As I walked out the door for the last time she pleaded with me to talk to my grandpa I stopped on the step and said my first words to her. I said “ No mom I have to leave before you change my mind” I don’t know why I said it, I was full of a boiling hatred for my lack of some important element that I didn’t know, my malice was spilling into the relatively stable nest I had lived in forever. I broke all the rules and all the air seeped out of my safety.
I climbed into the car where Kendra was waiting. Breezy my dog stood staring at me in the hallo of the porch light. Her eyes pierced the darkness and I saw her heart, we pulled slowly from the drive and a tear slipped down my face, she knew I wasn’t coming back.