A Mess Of Emotion.

Katya’s door was locked and I couldn’t find a secret key, so all I could do was sit and wait. Watching around me, I tried to focus my attention on anything other than what was going to happen. I watched the clouds pass through the sky until the day turned night and the vision became hard to fix. I sang random songs in my head to pass the time and fill thoughts. Both failed to distract me. I was stuck with that feeling like you’ve been thinking intensely all day but no actual thoughts enter your head. I was a canvas that had been painted and repainted and whited over a million times, yet remained completely blank. That’s the worst kind of thinking. The type that remains subconscious and never registers, despite having a profound affect on wherever your head was before.

Now as I waited for her, I was recounting everything Katya had ever done that could be construed negatively. What I was doing was making things easier on myself. Trying to turn Katya into a bad thing and make myself feel less guilty. I guess the notion had subconsciously awoken in me that dumping someone whom I cared deeply for whilst she was in the midst of whatever it was that had caused her to use the drug was not the most sensitive thing I could do. Then it hit me – the cause. What had caused her to do this? And how long had she been doing it?

Questions started finding themselves and discovering the doubt in my mind. It was hard to shine a negative light on the girl when I kept accidentally reflecting it on myself. Think, Owen, think. Think about the time she screamed at you at the beach house. Think about the pain you felt whenever she was away. It will all be gone if you end it.

Usually I can convince myself of anything. Usually isn’t always. Right now, my courage was dwindling and dissipating and I knew if Katya didn’t turn up within seconds, I wouldn’t be able to follow through with my plans.

“Owen?” A surprised utter of my name brought me away from my thoughts. How long Katya had been standing ahead of me, I don’t know. I’d sunken so deep into my mind’s eye that my retinas had forgotten to gaze. I fumbled for a reply but all my pre-scripted lines vanished immediately. I was on my own. A coward. Shoe gazing, I refused to meet her eyes. It was an impossibility. Too much confrontation for me to handle confronting. As I was lost for words, Katya had more. “What are you doing here?”

I slowly eyed upward until I was looking at her cheek. Okay Owen. Be strong and get this over and done with. Do it. Do it do it do it do it do it do it.

“You hung up on me earlier.” Was what I mustered. Katya’s cheek contorted as she grinned partially, angrily.

“I told you I’d call.”

“I needed to speak to you.”

“I was going to call.”

“But I…”

“I said I was going to…” as Katya was growing increasingly livid, I interrupted her with a sudden rush of bravado.

“Damo found a needle.”

Silence. And I repeated myself. The silence then continued. Echoing, screaming silence. The loudest nothing I’ve ever encountered. The way Katya’s tongue moved to the left, slightly pushing out her lower lip, suggested she was lost for what to say. Suggested she was preparing to lie.

“What are you talking about?” And though I still avoided her eyes, I noticed her face move slightly, as she further avoided mine. We were embroiled in confrontation yet both distancing ourselves, attempting to remove ourselves from reality. Her discomfort justified my accusation and reaffirmed my stance.

“At his house. Damo found a needle.” I repeated.

“So?” She knew exactly where I was going with this, though continued to play dumb.

“So,” I began, completely conflicted on whether to finish, “it’s not mine and it wasn’t Damo’s.” She waited silent, not biting at the bait. “The only other person that’s been at the house,” I paused, “is you.” I’d immediately stopped dancing around the subject and had now thrust myself into it.

“So you think it was mine?” Katya’s voice suddenly grew tempered, as if she was accusing me of wrongdoing. I sat taciturn for a moment, slightly taken aback by her aggressive tone. Finding the appropriate words to convey my meaning.

“Well, who else could it be?”

Katya threw her arms out and turned a little, obviously frustrated with my line of questioning. I was feeling increasingly uncomfortable yet a part of me was somehow excited to be interrogating.

“And you just assume that Damo isn’t lying?” her voice rose as she sounded furious. For a moment I rethought my stance before forcing myself to persist with my course.

“Why would he bring it up if he wanted to hide it from me?” I retorted, causing Katya to pause. Searching for another line of dialogue in her ongoing fabrication. Obviously unable to fine one, Katya moved to pass me and enter her house.

As she fumbled to push her key into the keyhole, she said “I don’t want to talk to you at the moment, Owen.”

“You can’t just deny a problem Katya.” In a less intense moment I may have seen the hypocrisy in me making that remark. “You can’t just refuse to speak to me about something like this!” Now my voice was rising. Finally she turned, spinning around as violently as a cartoon tornado. Again my eyes hastily darted sideward to avoid hers. Her voice came at me unyieldingly as she launched into an all-out assault. Her words brimming with honesty, perhaps for the first time, Katya voluntarily broke character and demolished my ideal.

“What do you want me to say? Why are you even here? You don’t want me to tell you the truth. You want me to deny everything and negate all your little suspicions. You want me to put on an honest face and tell you that everything’s okay and that I’d never do anything like that. You want me to kill all the doubts you have and reaffirm this perfect image that you’ve created. This fantasy that you’ve conceived that I can never possibly live up to no matter what I do. Well you know what, Owen? I can’t. I’m not going to let you turn me into something I’m not. Yes, that fucking needle was mine, okay? Are you happy now? Is that what you wanted to hear?”

I stood still. The recipient of this tirade. Her words hurt more than I could’ve ever imagined. No, that’s not what I wanted to hear. That’s exactly what I’d convinced myself I wanted to hear. What I wanted was exactly what she refused to do and now I had no choice. I had to end it. Though, as I went to, my curiosity got the best of me.

“When?” I was shoe gazing again, afraid to meet her eyes. The truth was as I’d suspected, but hearing her affirm it caused my whole body to ache. I felt sick. No matter what I tried to convince myself, I loved this girl and no amount of self-denial could ever truly persuade my mind.

“When what?” Katya asked, bitterness filling her voice. An undertone of disdain barely apparent. The curse of the writer: overanalyzing everything. Meticulous observations uncovering things you never wanted to know.

“When did you start?” Imbued with sadness, my words emptied out at a nearly inaudible volume. Katya must’ve felt the emptiness emanate from my being as her tone shifted and for a moment she was completely honest and gentle, the way I wished she’d always been. Though, what she was being honest about was a facet of her life that I’d never stop wishing away.

“You remember I told you about how I was a few years ago?”

Yeah, I remembered. The alcohol, the random sex, the downward spiral. A spiral I’d thought she’d lifted herself out from. I nodded in recognition.

“Well, I never told you, but the people I fell in with were a bit older than me and they were pretty heavy into drugs.” She unfolded the scene before me. Young, impressionable, wrong crowd, if it wasn’t Katya saying it, I would’ve felt like I’d just entered a tacky teen-drama show. One of the conditions of her moving into her own place and having her education paid for was that she stopped hanging around that group. According to her, she’d kept to that side of the agreement. It wasn’t as if she was addicted then. She’d only been able to afford it a couple of times. Parting from her old friends was difficult, she said, but she’d looked on it then as a chance to start anew. Her own house, schooling, paying gigs, as a new beginning it was perfect.

“So… why did you start seeing Jessie again?” And as I asked, a nagging thought told me that I didn’t want to know the answer. As Katya’s story had gone so far, her life had been mending itself before I’d entered the picture.

“Owen, don’t.” Perhaps she sensed there was no way to continue this conversation without hurting me.

“I need to know.” I persisted as Katya began to turn herself toward the door again. She unlocked it and began twisting the knob when suddenly my hand gripped her shoulder and span her around. She was still averting my eyes when I yelled “Fucking tell me!” And before I knew what was happening, I’d shoved Katya against the door. For the first time I saw her eyes and they were wrought with fear. Wide and shocked. As soon as I realised what I’d done, my body swelled with remorse and disgust. Self-loathing resonated quickly and the situation had gotten way out of hand.

Katya, still wide-eyed and frightened, breathed in deeply, sighed and answered:

“After what happened with Steven, after I was interviewed by the police…” she sighed again, obviously giving away this information involuntarily, “I tried to call you…” and I saw exactly where this was headed.

“You tried to call Sammi in class.” I interrupted. She nodded and continued.

“Jessie was a great friend when I was going through all my shit and it just seemed like a good time to call her.”

“And she got you back into that shit?” my voice rose suddenly, my temperament fluctuating madly. The blame lay squarely on me. I wasn’t there for her when she needed me most. The mess I’d gotten her into had ruined everything. Guilt pulsed through me and what I needed was to impart blame on anyone else.

“No!” Katya retorted. “She didn’t get me into anything. I made my own choice.”

“Well it was the wrong fucking choice!” Passionate, my blame shifted to Katya herself, where it had started. Katya opened her mouth and went to respond, but something stopped her. I knew exactly what she’d refrained from saying. She realised just as well as I that this was all my fault, and the fact that she knew only agonized me further. The fact that I’d again induced such anguish amidst her painful life which she was once repairing just added to my misery.

What Katya had said earlier struck me. “This fantasy that you’ve created that I can never possibly live up to…”

Though I’d realised that I’d idealized her to angelic levels impossible to reach, I’d not given consideration to how much pressure this must’ve put on her. Through this confrontation, despite the bitterness, it had become agonizingly clear that Katya still loved me. That was why she refused to come out and lay all the blame for this on me. A side effect of love is never wanting to disappoint the one that captivates you, and with my raised expectations of Katya, how hard had she been working to keep me infatuated? How much of what I’d seen of her was just an act portrayed to impress me? What if the strong, independent, carefree Katya was just a fictional character created to hold my attention, to distract me from reality? Doubt filled my mind, though all it was doing was drawing me closer. Making me care more. The weaker she grew, the more I felt the need to protect her. Instincts fighting the way I’d been preparing my mind all day.

No Owen! I told myself. Stay strong and finish this. And my eyes were still on hers, hurt and frail. Just tell her. Say that it’s okay, that you can’t do it any more. Mind vs. Instinct and Heart. The hardest battle the self can ever contend. Her retinas told a tale of guilt and remorse and pain for ever hurting me, whilst maintaining a belaying note of animosity. She loved me, I loved her – shouldn’t it be simple? The heart knows no logic.

Our eyes communicating, my mind screaming at the rest of me, my instincts tugging, I was a mess of emotion. Mired in thought, I was drowning in a flood of uncertainty.

Until a moment of clarity.

What I’d been convincing myself all day returned with fervor. Eventually the heart would learn to live with decisions made by the mind. Resolution filled me as I readied myself, sighing in the silence that echoed between us. I looked Katya in the eyes that had engrossed me so strongly for the past months and said:

“I’m sorry.”

I’m just not as strong as I wish I was. Katya eyed me wearily for a moment before we embraced. Lips locked, Katya reached an arm behind her and opened the door and we went in kissing, all the way to her room where we lay down and fucked.