Halloween is fast approaching signaling the end of October and the days are so cold now, oh so cold. The change in seasons is something I tend to resist, and I have dreamt my entire life about living somewhere where the seasons are only slight changes in temperature, where a winter jacket is a thing of memories. However, the change in seasons is so good, so crisp…so refreshing. It lets the mind forget, creating new memories and banishing old ones to an unlit part of the brain. Those synapses take a rest, until the particular season starts up again. The seasons change, and the clouds part, the temperature rises, and the memories come flooding back like a tidal wave, crashing upon me, and stirring up emotions that have lain on the sea floor of the brain, unknowningly festering; dormant for so long.
Autumn is different in this way; it is a good time. The chilly breeze does not remind me of any significant emotionally-aching relationship. Yet, my head can still be stuffy and so unclear at times as to the source of specific personal motivations.
The thought scares me… to have a man in my space, to view my life in material form… It’s not that I have anything to be wary of, I have a fondness for the smell of Mr. Clean. I am just so unwilling to share it. It is mine, and I do not want anyone to even know my life. Surely, they can know me, but not my life, not even my friends. To imagine a scenario makes me feel like a circus animal, expected to do tricks. I would die to know what they were thinking.
There is nothing physical that sustains the momentum to keep men at bay, away from my space. My roommates are considerate and friendly, my apartment is quiet... why couldn’t he come over? And hang out? My apartment is clean, and semi-neat most of the time. Why not? What imaginary line would that cross in my mind?
I guess it’s just too close. Too close. Yet, I am always the one yearning for closeness, seeking to create a cocoon with another person, a safe place. But this place is never mine. It is never my place. It is always ripped away from me – painfully, like the buttons on a jacket. And I accept this and replicate this situation over and over again until I swear that I won’t let it happen again. And then suddenly six months later I am waking up in someone else’s bed every morning, and happy. So happy. But it is not mine. My life, but the situation is not mine, it belongs to him. And I become a possession, an item of decoration amongst his things, an added bonus to his life, a source of ideas and amusement…in his life. He never makes his way into mine. And when I am casually discarded amongst his other personal material possessions I am left dumbfounded and in shock. How did this happen?
The steps of intertwining are absent, and my defense becomes my own vulnerability.
Fall.
