Words

Weirdest. Conversation. Ever.

When the phone started ringing, I was sure that he had gotten the letter. I was even more sure when it didn’t stop ringing. But once I finally answered it, and the conversation went as it always did, I started to wonder.

I waited for mention of unusual mail. I waited for any clue that he might have read it. And there it was. It came right after a joke about having to make money to support all of his women.

“Seriously. Don’t laugh. But you’re the one I compare everyone else to. You’re everything I want. Everything.”

This was not normal conversation anymore. In fact, even though, he had said these exact words to me before, they sounded different. I thought it might just have had something to do with the amount of adrenaline that was pumping through me. But then I realized that something really was different. He really wasn’t joking this time. Not that I had ever thought that he was before, but he always had a way to make a joke out of everything. To make me laugh about it and at the same time, always kind of wonder somewhere in the back of my mind if he meant it. He manages to leave me, most of the time, feeling completely confused but strangely refreshed. And as he continued, not letting me speak at all, I felt more and more sure of what I had done.

But, of course, I only had the clue. Never the actual concreteness of knowing that he had gotten my mindfuck of a letter. But I felt, for the first time in weeks, what I had been dreaming of, sweet relief. Relief that I didn’t have to wait anymore. Relief that I didn’t have to lose a friend because of something that I felt needed to be said. Because of a letter that had caused more stress than I can tell you. The letter that dripped with the kind of words that this girl never says.

I hung up feeling almost human again and for the first time in what may be years, I actually felt lonely. It was a rare, cold feeling. Foreign and unyielding. Torturous. But for a second, it felt good to feel like I was missing something. But it was bittersweet. I felt something that I hadn’t in a long time, and it was blissful. But at the same time, I started to feel what people must be running away from all the time. When they think that they are running towards something else. Really, they just want to avoid the loneliness. I think, well, I think you all know how I feel about serial monogamy, which is the common cure for the loneliness, but I think we should embrace that which makes us human. Sometimes it hurts, but for fuck’s sake, aren’t you glad that you can feel it?