it's been two years rewrite
The slight breeze dances over the lawn of Rinna’s
She frequently finds herself sitting in front of this hallway window in the second story of her parents’ house thinking. She often times supposes that she should concentrate more on school, college, but she decided what’s the point? Even her economics major bores her and her restless mind. Input and output, as long as one knew the effects of the input the output was a given path of logic, nothing more. Her mind cannot help but wonder over memories, attempting to find answers and meaning, and clarity on the things that matter. The memories generating thought after thought, three at a time, a never-ending flow of consciousness in her mind. She generally likes them though—they keep her busy. It’s a relaxing pass time she both enjoys and sometimes hates, of course, depending on the subject and her mood.
She clears her throat.
The hall is silent, no music streaming out of her room that’s unusual for me, she thought. She can hear her mother vacuuming downstairs. Stretching out, she releases her knees from the fetal position, and moves to lean her head against the wall. She reaches for her journal to continue the thoughts going in and out. It being the fourteenth journal in the last six months and the pages are beginning to grow sparse. The breeze coming in through the gap in the cracked window suddenly prickles her skin with goose bumps, becoming too strong and chilly for her naked arms to handle. Grabbing the frame of the window near the latch, Rinna pulls the window down until she hears it slide into place closed. Waiting a moment for the goose bumps to go away she rubs her arms, chilly for a
So it’s September seventeenth.
I spent all of September fifteenth thinking. I didn’t tell anyone about it. Just me, only me, knew. I know that you don’t think about it. You don’t think anything now. You may not know it, but you don’t know how to think anymore.
The memory of September fifteenth abruptly interrupts her stream of consciousness. The fair was alight that night carrying a luminescent glow that thrilled the onlooker and the participator both. The Ferris-wheel being the focal point of the summer carnival; the bright yellow lights forming its shape in the darkness, drawing the eyes of the passersby away from the cotton candy stands, ice cream venders, and carnival games. Rinna remembered the skyline that night from the Ferris-wheel as it slowed to a stop at the very peak. Leaned back in Daren’s arms she was relaxed, content in the moment of silence. She sighed.
“What’re you thinking?”
“—I love you.”
“What?” she sat up abruptly and turned to look into the deep pool of his blue eyes. “What did you say?”
He stammered the repetition of his response, “I… I love you.”
Two years. That was two years ago.
Back to reality, she watches the cars pass through a stop sign through her window as the gloomy sky darkens with dusk approaching. They stop for the law and the continued stream of pedestrians. The break lights and occasional blinkers are overly illuminated by the growing darkness. They mesmerize her eyes. She continues to think while watching each of them approach the stop sign—one after another—then move on, back to their own separate lives.
She takes a deep breath, and lets it out.
You’re just a ripple now. That love, once great, is lost, to whose misfortune is unknown, though I laugh still. I now find it comical the things you said. It’s not an angry, hurt, mocking laughter, just a cynical one.
Daren brushed the back of his finger tips along Rinna’s arm watching the goose bumps appear. She watched those finger tips from hand to shoulder and back, her mind focused on the soothing feeling of his touch.
“Erin Nicole Louren, I love you.”
A little startled by the use of her full name she looked into his blue eyes and he into her green and replied with a smile, “I love you too.” She paused for a moment, “why the use of my full name?”
“I just wanted to say it, to hear it. It’s so beautiful. I know this sounds stupid but it’s really quite the poetic match to your beauty.” He pulled her forward and gently placed his lips on hers. The palm of his hand rested on her slender neck, while his thumb tenderly brushed her cheek.
I had believed them once. And since I knew you so closely a tiny part of me still believes them… but I know that it is foolish. It is a foolish little girl who now only uses your memory as a platform for greater thought about love, idealism, purpose, promises, hope, friendship, and persons.
She sighs, still watching the cars.
What is the loss of love? I struggle with this idea daily. How can one lose love? There are those who hope to never lose it, and those who pray they do. I haven’t decided which side I’m on, but that’s because I’m indecisive.
Rinna screamed out her frustration at the ceiling. Grabbing the stuffed bear he won on that night at the county fair she threw it across the room at the wall. She watched it make contact with dissatisfaction as it bounced back and landed softly on the floor. She snatched her favorite picture of the two of them off her desk and took her momentary satisfaction at the sound of the glass breaking into pieces in its colorful frame. She looked down at the photo through the broken pieces of glass; it was taken on her eighteenth birthday at their favorite restaurant which they’d always made a point to regularly attend. Every single server was in the picture singing her happy birthday, their favorite waiter was setting down the sparkling fiery cake and even the owner Vinny had made a point to join the serenade. Her favorite thing about the picture was that Daren had perfectly timed his kiss on the cheek for the photo so her face was lit up with such surprise and joy that another picture had yet to match it. In the scene that played out after the picture, her joy and surprise continued to grow as he had gotten down on one knee and adolescently asked for her eighteen year old hand in marriage. Like a naïve fool it was the happiest day of her life.
Her cheeks began to burn and she could see her vision blur as she fell to her knees hunched over with her face in her hands. She’d never wept harder in her entire life as her heart collapsed and submitted to being torn in two.
He’d cheated. He’d not only cheated, but had a girlfriend. He’d had a girlfriend for a month and a half before he broke up with her, getting together a week after she’d spent the money to fly up and visit him for a weekend. So much for that ring that was involved.
Isn’t love supposed to be this great idealistic achievement, the one pure thing in this world? Ha! Purity. I was pure once. I bared my innocence for you once. I loved you once. You were greatness to me once.
You crushed me… more than once.
An image flashed across Rinna’s vision of his lips on the neck of his curly-haired brunette of six months. Those lips creeping up her neck to whisper her full name in her ear.
A thought like that would have killed me six months ago—funny that it did. I still find it interesting that people really can survive, carry on, with the scar of a heart sown back together after being ripped in two... in the course of one night.
She pauses… and shrugs.
It was going to happen one day I guess.
I miss your cynicism, surprising I know. She looks down momentarily and chuckles it’s because I have come to develop my own sense of cynicism—thanks to you—in regards to most of life. I’ve decided that cynicism can be appropriate in knowing life, but hoping for the best is crucial. How else are we supposed to get out alive? But then again, no body does, ironically enough. I feel as though I would enjoy your humor more, and we would have to change less in order to… be happy. But you’ve moved on. I never thought you would—or could—but you did, hence the laughter. I once said that the only thing I feared was losing you, you replied, “it’s funny how many things we have in common,” thanks liar. It still blows my mind. But now I realize what love is to you. I realize what that kind of relationship is to you.
She shakes her head.
She remembers every moment where she gave up her wishes. She gave up her friends, her family, her body; she gave up her lips—her precious, never before touched lips because he wanted them. She gave up her loud energetic joyous self because it made him uncomfortable. She stopped skipping, she stopped climbing trees, she stopped charming strangers with her smile, and she stopped dancing to silence. She was embarrassed by the family that she adored because they were too loud and sarcastic for him. They called him ‘The Neutralizer’ because he quieted her, made her meek…too quiet, too meek.
I sympathize really. I sympathize with her now because I’m not sure she really knows the parts of you that I now realize are there. They are subtle, they are very difficult to catch—it took me two years to catch them, and that’s with over-detailed thought, reading, connecting the dots, and understanding. Although I think she might be better suited for you.
She glances down at her hands—her open palms—and presses them together, cracking her knuckles, then abruptly looks back out the window. Her eyes seem to search for something in the now dark sky. She sighs again, and her eyes settle back on the cars. The traffic has begun to subside. A tear begins to run down her unflinching cheek, the first tear in almost two months. It’s ignored.
Every day I come up with another reason against you. The list has now become long. The most recent addition is manipulative:
“I know you’re probably surprised and wondering what I’m doing here,” the curly-haired brunette stated.
“The thought did cross my mind, yes,” she replied leaned on the inside of her door frame.
“He called me on Tuesday and told me to stop talking to you, and I would like to know why.”
“Are you sure you want to open that can of worms?”
“I just want someone to be honest with me.”
Honesty was what she wanted and honesty was what she got. If Rinna was something it was honest. The thing she detested above all else was a liar so she did the best to keep from being a hypocrite.
The curly-haired brunette listened intently as Rinna explained that Daren had called her to meet up and give back her stuff. All she had wanted was to be his friend because she had invested so much time into their relationship that she didn’t want to throw away everything that they had together. He had been her best friend at one point in time. Rinna told the curly-haired brunette that they had met up last week and actually gotten along pretty well. When he went to pick up her box to give it to her he looked at her with his deep pools of blue eyes and told her that he still loved her. That he loved her even more since he had now come to understand who she was as they had grown apart. He told her everything she’d ever wanted to hear from him. Rinna’s heart had skipped more than just a beat or two but realized that she was done with him. That it was time to move on and that that scar was too deep and wouldn’t survive another of even the smallest little tear. She told him no. Daren tried to push her against the wall at an attempt for a cornering romantic kiss, but that Rinna had shoved him off, he had dared to trap her and smacked him. Smacked him for cheating on her in the first place, trying to cheat on his new girlfriend, thinking she would lower herself to follow his selfish path, and trying to manipulate his way into destroying the hearts of two girls.
Although you probably get that manipulation from the fact that you haven’t really made many deep real relationships/friendships. Ok so there were those couple of other girls but their feelings always got in the way. And your high school friends? I told you to hang out with them, I told you to call them, to see them but you dismissed my comments. And now where are they? You dropped them because you look to a woman to fulfill everything in your life. You expect her to give you, out of one relationship, what you’re supposed to get out of dozens of relationships: family, friends, and acquaintances. No one can do everything.
And now all you can do is try to pull everything you can out of your romantic life, wringing it dry, and exhaust her. You want all purpose to come from her but haven’t you ever thought of independence and creating your own purpose? What happened to partnership? Now you’re ruined. You don’t know how to have just a true friendship anymore. And I feel as though I need to keep myself tapped into you because otherwise… otherwise history will perhaps repeat itself. And that’s never a good thing.
posted by The Shadowpax @ 1:40 PM
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