Giving and Receiving: A Short Love Story

I saw her again. I thought I was completely over the entire mess. But it all came back so fast…

I began crashing at my friend's place about a year ago, I’d been kicked out of campus housing, as if that was a surprise. I needed a ride to classes, and he wrangled her into driving me up to campus…they were neighbors.

That first time, I refused to talk to her, started smoking all kinds of shit in the car. She just went and frickin’ took my cigarettes, all my stuff, tossed it out the window with the strangest look on her face. As if it all just amused her.

How the hell she did that without me socking her, I have no idea. Maybe I was too messed up to do anything but stare at her. Right then, I hated her fricking, goody-two-shoes guts.

But when I heard a honk the next day, I got up and went out. I don’t know why. All she did was alternately reprimand me, try to get me to say things, talk about her life, or just drive, watching the road with a strange smile on her face. All the jackassed things I did didn’t really bother her. Like she knew I shouldn’t do all that shit for my own good, but it really didn’t make a difference to her…or, more that my general demeanor didn’t put her off.

She was so different from, well, everyone.  I had to start responding, to defend myself. We’d argue the whole ride—well, I’d argue and she would just talk around everything I said with that little smile on her face. Eventually it wasn’t even about the arguing, I just needed to talk to her.

A dreary February day, I got in the car and she wasn’t talking, didn’t have that smile. She finally broke down, told me her aunt had died.  The person she’d always been able to confide in was gone. It should have been weird to be the sounding board, the confidant, but with her it was suddenly so natural. Though I suppose we’d had a relationship for a while, that contact was the start of THAT kind of relationship.

 

Just having each other’s company was the best thing. It certainly was the healthiest relationship I’d ever been in. But the fact that someone I cared about, whose opinion I valued and who I didn’t really want to see hurt, still couldn’t get me to stop all my shit wasn’t good. It wasn’t good for her.

 

But I was so stupid I couldn’t see it. And she cared too much about me to care what was happening to her. She still picked and prodded at me, only now it really affected her. She started looking drawn, didn’t have her special look. Except by then I didn’t notice.

 

By the time I was finally put in the hospital, she was too. I shouldn’t have been surprised, shouldn’t have let her get to that point before I realized what I had done. Yeah, breaking it off was best—though it took a hell of a lot of convincing myself before I finally did it. She kept saying I needed her. I did. I still do. But she didn’t need me.

Seeing her now proved the reasonable part of myself, or the part of her that she left with me, right. She looked like herself again. My one regret is that I was able to get so much from those months, while I can’t honestly say she benefited at all. It’s damn hard to see her, cause I’m a hell of a ways from being good enough to be in her life again. I may never get there. But I have to keep trying--for her. 

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Writing anything, and in any form, is difficult. I always worry about finding exactly the right (or write, hahaha) words. Getting my feelings on paper, well, into sentences in some form or another, is excruciating. It's like when I was little, and would have a beautiful image in my head that I could never draw the way I pictured it. Other people's opinions bring a whole other layer of self doubt into the mix. 

That's why the general, almost inherently known, guidelines of short story writing are so helpful. That selectivity is encouraged makes me feel not quite as insanely over-analytical. The other pointers are equally helpful. While longer works can definitely play with time in a more interesting and complex way, a sparse number of characters is something I feel helps most works, not just short stories. 

However, as with any art, it must be allowed to flow naturally--which means story conventions are secondary to what actually makes a story work. Though for me that flow is usually glacial, even molasses-paced, and often full of back-tracking and self doubt, there has been much comfort provided to me through the years knowing that it is alright to start sentences with "and" on occasion, or more important parts of my work, though not necessarily conventional, can work.