I've had very vivid dreams for the past two nights. The night before last, they weren't so bad -- not classifiable as nightmares, in any case, although there was an unpleasant element to one of them. Last night though, my dreams just weren't very good at all.
So I'm feeling kind of lonely and depressed. Shitty dreams will do that to me.
Maybe I should cut down on my before-bed garlic consumption.
Nah.
I like nights. I like walking around in the night air. I like how quiet things get. I like jaywalking across usually-busy streets. I like identifying plants by smells. I like the sight of my feet on very, very dark pavement.
At the Jensens' house, there wasn't anyplace to go at night. Not by foot, in any case. Anyway, Jake never saw the point of using feet when one could use a motor vehicle. Sometimes we drove around at night. My favorite places to go were in Meth Valley: tucked-away, secret places. Jake liked those places because he supposed he'd film them someday. I liked them because I liked the wet ground under my feet, and the weird smells of the Valley: the ultra-natural ones of decaying plants, and some less natural ones along the lines of motor oil and old shoes. It made me feel more alive. But it still wasn't the same as walking around at night.
I couldn't do much of that, anyway. After classes and work all day -- and looking forward to having to get up at nine every morning -- doing much of anything at night was out of the question most times.
At the shelter, there was a midnight curfew. If you arrived back at 12:01, you were marked off as having spent the night out elsewhere. You could spend two nights out, and then they kicked you out. Anyway, you had to have your stupid chore completed by ten. And the bus toward the place stopped running at eight. It was best to get everything done before then, and be tucked neatly into your bed by eleven. The less subordinate women would stay outside smoking cigarettes into the mornings sometimes. I stayed outside with them frequently, telling them tales they didn't believe, and listening to their gossip. As long as we were on the property, we couldn't get our "nights out" taken away. But, from the smoking area, we couldn't really see the sky very well. And it was hard to smell night air with all the damned cigarettes burning. Cheap, shitty cigarettes, no less.
I went to the grocery store last night, a little past midnight. I watched the moon, and dodged sprinklers, and jaywalked with great joy.
Night is when the energies come. And so forth.
I hadn't realized I missed it so much.
When Jake told his family I was leaving him, his dad did not appear to be surprised at all. He said something like: "Well yeah. She's graduating. What did you expect?" As if I'd been using Jake and his family for free housing while I was in college.
That sentiment still stings. There always were things I didn't like about the Jensens, but I did try my best to consider them family. I liked them. Even if they didn't know jack shit about cooking, and put phrases like "sho nuff" into my vocabulary, I still liked them. Mr. Jensen thought I was just there for a place to live.
The ironic thing -- ONE of the ironic things -- is that my monthly expenses at the Jensen residence were higher than they'd EVER been when I was living elsewhere. I wasn't paying rent, no. There were other expenses that I had to take care of. Last night, I found a receipt in one of my books for one of Jake's court bills. A little under four hundred dollars, paid off right after Christmas. At the bottom of the receipt, it says: "Received from Jake Jensen." But that isn't true. I suppose Mr. Jensen thought the bills went unpaid. I suppose he thought that I was keeping my student loan money in some neat little Swiss bank account while the truck miraculously healed itself of broken mufflers and fucked-up fan belts, and they, the Jensens, slaved to provide a decent roof over my head while I was in college.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Jensen thought that I was leaving Jake for another guy. She was slightly closer to the truth, but still far enough away so that it hurt.
I left Jake for three reasons. First, because he broke up with me. Funny, how that is, really. He broke up with me. And in a fairly cruel way, too. Such is the problem with knowing people pretty well: you know which words will hurt them the most. Second, I left Jake because I was in love with someone else. And I consider it fucked up to be with one person and thinking about someone else. That shit about "if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with" is sort of horrifying to me. Not saying I've never done it, but I surely never felt good about it. This differs from leaving Jake for another guy in that I honestly had no idea if I'd end up with the other guy. Oh, I had my hopes, but for the most part, that was irrelevent. The point was, it would have been fucked up for me to stay when my heart wasn't in it. I'm a fucking philosophy minor, for gahd's sake. I spent a whole freaking year puzzling out systems of ethics. I couldn't have...
The third reason was the most complicated and the most difficult to explain. Something happened to Jake. He wasn't the same person anymore. Maybe I never knew him as well as I thought I did, or as well as I should have... but toward the end, Jake was not even close to being the person I thought I knew. Jake had been my friend. The new Jake didn't give a fuck what happened to me. The new Jake blamed me for things that didn't appear to have anything to do with me. I was the reason he stayed out all night with his friends. I was the reason he was angry all the time. In the morning, I'd go to school and things would be fine; in the evening, Jake would hand me a letter outlining all of the awful things I had done to him. Once, he picked a fight in a McDonald's parking lot, in the pouring rain, and relentlessly accused me of deliberately destroying his life, until I was ready to walk away and never go back. There, in the parking lot, with nothing but the clothes on my back, and the book in my bookbag. I'm still not sure why I didn't leave then. Jake hated me. And that just wasn't the Jake I knew. It was like he had died, and somebody else took over his body. Not necessarily a monster; not even necessarily somebody "bad." But somebody I could never have cared about, and certainly somebody who didn't care about me.
Honestly, I still feel like Jake died. And honestly, I miss him. Still, once in awhile, I'll have some thought that I can't wait to share with him. And then I remember: even if I knew where Jake was, even if he would speak to me, it's not him anymore. I wish, at least, there were a gravestone. I would go to it, and dump a two-liter of Dr. Pepper over it, and say, "here's to my dead homey." I would imagine him laughing at that.
Three times now, I've seen people turn into other people. The first time, a heartless, unhappy bitch of a woman turned into a loving, pleasant friend. The second time, a really sweet girl turned into a fucking cuntrag. And then there was Jake. I don't know why these things happened, although I have my suspicions and I don't hesitate to lay silent blame on the culprit: similar in all three cases... I do know, however, that such changes are permanent.
I am honestly quite happy with my life right now. I have my bookbag, a half pint of Ben & Jerry's, and a couple of good CDs. I'm in love -- to a degree that surpasses any definition I've ever heard of love -- with a man who makes my heart flutter every time I think about him. And I'm really quite sure he loves me too, as absurd as that is. I've got a few good friends and a baby who is currently whacking my internal organs around like ping-pong balls. (This sounds painful when I say it, but mostly it's just funny...) I have a roof over my head, a lot of paper, and a shitload of stamps. Things are good. Things are really very good. If I could solve the subconscious crisis that's causing my unhappy dreams, I think my world would be almost perfect.
But even despite all of that, there are parts of me that still ache. It hurts that the Jensens think so badly of me. It hurts that my motivations became so suspect so quickly. It hurts that I don't get to see Jake's nephew anymore, and it makes me cry to think of what they may have told him about me. But even above all of that -- and even despite the fights, the shelter, the hunger, the heaviness of my bags -- I think the worst pain in my life right now is the absence of my dead homey. I miss my friend.
I'm adapting well to my new town and my new home. I think. I don't miss Oly nearly as much as I thought I would. It's nice here. Today the sun is shining and somebody's blowing leaves off the sidewalk and I can hear one of my room-mates snoring a little. I got an email this morning from Neil: a particularly sweet one. Stuff is good.
I am almost over the trauma of my bad dreams.
~H.T.*