/fold

like nathanael said over our game of texas hold em last night, i never know when to fold. it's all or nothing here, baby:: what you see is, unfortunately, what you get. . . and that often amounts to nothing more than an assload of disappointment.

four years ago i would have been lying in my bunk:: my nose inches from the ceiling, my heart high in my throat, and my thoughts hundreds of miles from everything else. for some reason or another, unbeknownst to me until . . . even now, i couldn't find my footing. school had become an exercise in evasion, jessica my distraction. more likely than not, she would have been curled next to me this supposed night four years ago.

that tiny bed swallowed my existence in the coming months:: there were days where my feet never touched the ground, where the numbing wash of sleep was preferable to waking life. life was increasingly a string of failures, each more devastating than the last. i wanted to clock out.

i sat on the edge of my bed, the real one, and flipped that damned quarter for hours. seriously. that was how one of the most influential decisions thus far in my life was decided:: dumb luck. truman or trinity? hell, i dunno - grab a coin.

dumb kid.

i sat on the edge of my bunk and cried after hearing my mother's voice. hannah finally got her driver's license. she got in an accident, but she's alright. rudy has yet another reason to hate the vet's - his lost doghood. everything i cared about was inaccessible, reached only through miles of cable and cardboard boxes. i had nothing here, only the hollow and the hostile.

there was something about her that was familiar. awkward around strangers [making my first weeks at college a bit overwhelming], i stole glances across the lounge, trying to piece together how i could possibly know this girl. the smile. it flashed in my direction, sparking irrational terror within me. oh my god. she was smiling at me. think, think, think, think, think.

"hi."

the floorboards shrieked their protest as every vertical surface in the place fell into dust. space-time ceased to exist and an all-consuming panic reverberated through my skull. clang clang clang clang clang. mental clamor gave way to a far more deafening silence as my eyes searched for some fixed point, any, in the room that wasn't somehow swept towards that smile. all hope was lost. . . i froze. way to go dumbshit.

"hi."

my fate was sealed. this was not love at first sight:: it was an exhilarating, horrible feeling that promised to choke out all else, rasping its deathly intentions behind an inpenetrable, veil-like aura of wholesome abundance, life overflowing. i knew. i knew, even then, that this girl would be the death of me.



was this life?



every morning, i plodded out the door of my unremarkable room, under the veranda of my unremarkable dorm, and towards a desk in some unremarkable classroom or another where a lecture i was uninterested in was to take place. my boredom was borne of my schizophrenic self-worth - i had decided that i was too complex to be known by anyone and, consequently, depressed and lonely. who the fuck would want to hang out with me?! life was something that happened back home, off campus, and outside the boundaries i had confined myself to. maybe i was just sick of waiting for something to happen. who knows.

she invited herself over to my room, which was fortunate and inevitable because my tongue was obviously glued to the top of my mouth. it never came loose.

over the coming months i became more involved, more alarmed, more alone with her. nigh every waking moment was spent near that smile. i shirked classes, ate next to nothing, and i slept only when i passed out from exhaustion. honestly, i entertained thoughts that she would devour my soul in my sleep there near the end. i made up for those lost hours tenfold near christmas.

fits of conscience.

that's what she called them. we're getting too close, i'd say. i haven't treated you like i should, jessica, and i need to sincerely ask your forgiveness for that. that look. she'd look at me, startled, as if i was a stranger. laughs. kisses.

fits. tantrums. fucking riotous indignation. i only wish to God i had more of them.

i was too lonely to jump ship. i was fucked either way, i assumed, so i might as well cling to whatever semblance of humanity was left me. i was right. when the ship hit i sank like a stone. the better part of a year of my life was spent convincing people who cared about me that nothing was wrong. that it was normal to sleep twenty hours a day and eat five meals a week. that fifty degrees fahrenheit was a reasonable temperature for a dorm room [funny story, that, involving an air conditioner, an uninsulated window, and a bitter-ass winter in northern missouri]. that life was somehow carrying on as usual in spite of the appearance of absolute stasis.

the rest of it is neither unique to me nor in the least bit interesting. two years after that semester i passed my first class EVAR and declared myself an english major. why? i dig it. i love the analysis, the discussion, the introspection. i went through life without reacting for too long - i suppose i'm just making up for lost experience. and after reading so much of her poetry i think i owe it to myself to bury that shite under volumes of the good stuff.

:P