You've never been that great at relationships; you dumped your first steady boyfriend after a week. You blamed it on too much stress, and not enough time to devote to him, and your therapist told you that you broke up because you have issues dealing with your parents' divorce. You'd like to tell your therapist that you hardly remember your parents being married, let along their divorce, and that he can shove that up his ph.d ass, but instead, you mutely agree, get your new prescription, and go home.
You are a relationship robot, and you malfunction.
After that, you rode the pine in the great game of *gasp* LOVE, sat out, watched, and offered cynical advice to whoever would listen. But, on the side, you watched movies like 'While you were sleeping' and watched Wedding Stories on TLC and secretly couldn't wait to do your hair, wear the dress, get the ring. You didn't tell anyone else that, however. That would have made you a sap. So you shut down emotionally for a couple years, didn't let anyone in, didn't really let anything out. Just sat..and ticked...like a bomb.
The bomb went off when in the middle of your dull existence, your cousin died. Not just any cousin, the cousin who taught you the good swing at baseball, played Magyver and drove you to band practice. The kind that never had money, but always had enough to buy a soda. Well, he died, and suddenly, you were lost. You took him for granted that he would always be around, and what did he do? He left. It wasn't so pleasant, was it? No..in fact, after that, you stopped taking your happy pills, crawled into bed, and stared at the ceiling for three weeks straight.
Except, the week after he died, and when you were still feeling hollow, you took a trip to Paradise with two of your closest friends. One of them was Him, the object of your affection for three years.
The trip pretty much killed all said affection, and upon returning from paradise, on crutches due to a slippery grate, you didn't really talk to your two friends that much, and now, you don't even know what planet they are on.
So you fell back into your happy little vacuum, only now, you were empty, too, becuase every time you turned around, you thought about your cousin and how much you missed him, and what made it even worse is that if he actually were around, the two of you would carefully ignore each other, because you were good at it, you'd been practicing it ever since puberty hit and communication stopped, because it wasn't cool to hang out with your cousins anymore.
So you hid away, smiled a lot, and the melancholia crept up inside you and ate away your heart. You took a trip up to visit your dad, who you haven't had a real conversation with since you were five and he left, and went through the motions of being the good daughter, because heaven forbid you end up like your older brother. You play perfect, and then one night, purely by accident, you put your hand through a glass table.
And it feels marvelous. In fact, you are sorely disappointed for weeks, even months, that you received no deep cuts. So you go back, and you trace over your wrist with a paper clip, not enough to cut, but enough to scratch, and it brings relief. It scares you, too, because you know that next will be a pin, then an exacto knife, then you will be spread out in your bathtub, like Ophelia, only your blood will surround you, not flowers.
So you go back home, and you tell your therapist that you don't really like people, in fact, just being around them makes you panic, so he gives you more happy pills, and sends you to another therapist to talk about your feelings. And everything goes great! The pills work, the talking helps, and all of a sudden, you are a Productive Human Being! It's wonderful!
And then you meet this guy. You sit in the coffee bar, and he sits there, too, and he's reading an old fashioned book and underlining passages. You know how those intellectual types turn you on. So you smile, and ask for what he is reading, and you exchange pleasantries, and then, as he is about to leave, you give him your phone number and say, 'I'd like to know how the story ends.'
You feel like a complete idiot, of course, because what you just did was F-L-I-R-T-E-D. Flirting is hard, you could never flirt, he'll never call. But he does call, the next night in fact, and you talk for five hours. and you smile, and a little part of your vacuum is filled up, and you feel giddy.
You ask him to join you and some friends for a little social gathering a few nights later, and he says he'd love to. He and your friends get drunk on rum and have a great time playing cards, and then, you and he get cozy on the couch, huddled together like spoons watching the Matrix.
Later on, you get the idea to watch the sunrise, because you know that if you watch the sunrise with someone it's special. But you actually miss the sunrise, because you and he are making out on your friend's trampoline, and his hand up your shirt is near euphoria.
The next morning, you are so excited about this great guy who showed interest in you! No one ever does that! So you relate all the details to your two best friends. Unfortunately, Magic Man hears all this, and leaves angry. Without saying goodbye, of course. Later, when you call, he asks you to meet, so that you two can 'talk'.
To make a long story short, he dumps you. He says he doesn't want a relationship. He also relates to you the virtues of his Ex Girlfriend, who, it seems, is a Goddess. There is no way you can ever compare to her. So you call your friends to pick you up, because you know that if you drive, you will crash into a telephone pole. So they come pick you up, and you cry, and then, you act as if it were better that way, that all you were after was a little nookie.
But at night, when you are all by yourself, you think about him, and how soft his lips were, and you cry yourself to sleep for a few weeks, write sad poetry, and stop eating. You always were that weak, simpering fool you never wanted to be, and that makes you feel even worse.
Because now you realize how alone you feel, and that, unfortunately, it might never go away..
