I’m going to be honest with you, and tell you that I’m only going to be partially honest with you. My hope is that, if I’m good enough at this, you’ll be able to read the truth hiding behind my lies, and that we’ll both be a little better off for it. Maybe a little better off is too optimistic. But the key to telling a good story is balancing the truth, the lies, and the bigger truth your lies help construct. Writing is contrived, constructed, and it’s easy to hide things behind a façade of pretty words. Life may or may not build to something grand, but stories should. If I promised you that this was building to something, would you pardon the lies I need to tell to help build it? Could you find the truth? Even if you can’t, and in spite of everything I’ve just said, I’m going to ask you to trust me. This works better if you trust me.
Knowing all the details of what happened might make you judge me a bit too harshly, though. In some things, your imagination might do a better job of filling in the gaps than my storytelling ability. You’ll have to do some of the heavy lifting here, and that will make you complicit. What you think and how you feel will be on you. I’ll give you enough details to close the gaps as best as I can.
This being the beginning of the holiday season, it was only natural that I should read the text I got from Sarah as soon as I got back in my car. Whether hearing from her was a good or bad thing is entirely up for interpretation. Although, if I am being honest, maybe the better interpretation comes from Ashley’s reaction when I told her that Sarah had texted me wanting to meet for dinner that night.
One word, sent quickly over text:
DON’T!
I frowned down at the screen, and tapped out a quick response:
Why not?
The phone buzzed on my passenger seat, but apart from a quick glance to see that it was, in fact, a response to my response, it would have to wait. Texting and driving is a bad idea. But, if you have to, at least wait until you hit a stop sign to unlock your phone and scan to read …bad for you… before you have to move again. It’s better than trying to open your phone while going eighty down the interstate.
Not that you should speed, either.
You also shouldn’t take any driving advice from a guy who once got a ticket for going forty in a thirty-five. Some nameless town in Kentucky apparently made most of its money off the fact that the road leading into the town had a speed-limit of fifty-five that dropped to thirty-five right at the town line. A cop waited at either end of the town to enforce that speed limit to the letter.
Number.
Whatever.
The town isn’t actually nameless, but I don’t feel like naming it. She lived there. I was driving us back from date night. I promised myself I wouldn’t dwell on this, but dwelling on the speeding ticket I got that night isn’t quite the same as dwelling on Her. It’s close, and a little uncomfortable, to think of a night She and I spent together that doesn’t seem that long ago.
She, in this instance, is not Sarah.
But if I should not dwell on Her, then I should not dwell on Sarah. I got a speeding ticket with Her. I almost drove Sarah and I into a river once. That alone might be good enough reason to not meet her for dinner tonight.
She’s bad for you dude.
That was Ashley’s full text, read only when I pulled into my driveway. My thumbs flew across the little electronic keyboard beneath her response, then paused while I thought of the best way to word my thoughts. The garage door clicked shut behind me and I was nearly into the living room before I thought of something:
She’s not that bad. She says she’s excited to see me.
Don’t do it. You know how she is with you!
What do you mean?
She’s trouble. Always was for you.
I guess.
Dude!
It’s different!
How?
I’m over her.
If I’m being honest, that’s a lie. The weight of it forced me down onto the couch. The couch she and I used to lay on together. The couch She and I used to lay on together, the first piece of furniture in our apartment. Eight years. I don’t know how long it takes to get over something like that. More than six months, apparently. Had to be, because I still felt all that turmoil laying on the couch, thinking not only of Her but also how to best, or if I should, respond to a text from a best friend. We’ll call her that.
It’s funny, the lines best friends seem to cross. Ashley, back when we first met, said that I see the world too black and white. I did, then, honestly. It wasn’t healthy. But it did make me think why she was so concerned about me seeing Sarah. A hard black line in a grey ocean, stark only for the fact of its own existence. It was annoying to see it there, trying to block me.
Maybe Ashley just cared more for me than I did. She’s a good friend, good enough to call me on my honesty and my lies.
My phone buzzed again:
Bullshit.
Direct, but fair.
Direct, but fair, lol
Are you really?
She has a boyfriend.
You spent two weeks together in Maine.
But nothing happened!
At first that may seem an obvious lie. It is. Maybe. “Nothing happened,” is so general an observation and so blatant a falsehood that it’s either entirely disregarded or immediately dismissed. Rarely is it taken at face value. The cabin only had one bed, so that happened, and maybe that’s not the strictest interpretation of nothing happening. It’s inherently suspicious, that’s not a lie. But suspicion isn’t guilt, and none of this is an admission of guilt. I am not admitting that anything happened, but you do know that I’m not being entirely honest with you. So, we’ll say, nothing that should cause that amount of suspicion happened. That’s the full truth, and if I am being honest with myself, it hurts.
That kind of honesty is painful.
We know that pain, you and me.
But maybe suspicious circumstances are enough. I should be a little cautious. But I nearly drove us into a river once. Maybe caution is not our forte.
To be honest, that’s one of the things I find so endearing about us. It binds us together almost as much as our shared existential fatalism. Maybe that leads to a lack of caution, or maybe it’s the other way around. But we were two despair-inflicted, anxiety-driven, thought-focused souls who found someone who, at least for a time, helped us revel in the despair, laugh through the anxiety, and ride a running mind like a stallion. It’s the most lovely and comforting experience to have with another person. It’s an understanding, and being understood is as addicting an experience as being loved. That’s why we’re best friends. We can handle each other’s worst and turn it into some of the best moments of our lives.
As a point of contrast, She and I couldn’t handle each other’s worst. Now we are no longer in each other’s lives.
The problem with being so close to someone who can handle your worst comes from just how well they’re able to handle it.
Ashely knew this:
She uses you.
She’s my friend.
Doesn’t act like it.
A friend like Ashley is a good friend to have. She’s someone who sees things as they are, especially when I am given to flights of romantic drama and exaggeration. She’s grounded, somewhat realistic, and isn’t afraid to tell me what I already know: that I’ll get hurt if I see Sarah. No romantic façade, no picturesque torture of unrequited love. Just that honesty. It’s more than I can offer myself.
Maybe in keeping me talking you’ve gotten me to admit more than I should.
That, or now I feel the pain that comes with being honest with myself.
In much the same way as I can distract Sarah…:
I saw mom crying today.
…I can distract myself by thinking about how I’ve had nothing to eat but lukewarm coffee today.
It’s already noon.
I’ll make a quesadilla.
Maybe I’ll have a beer.
In our first meeting, my therapist told me that alcohol is a depressant. I told him that I was the depressant. He didn’t laugh. Since, then he’s gotten a little better at tolerating my self-deprecation whether or not he actually appreciates it. I don’t know if we’ll get there.
Sarah would have laughed at that joke.
My phone landed across the kitchen table. I watched it land. The sound of my chewing seemed louder than it had earlier. I was only partially finished with my quesadilla, but found no desire to eat the rest. It wound up in the trash. The half-full bottle of beer followed me back to the couch.
I read Sarah’s response to my suggestion of a time and place to meet.
The bottle of beer was empty.
Does this feel like it’s building to something? I guess somewhere in here there’s a bit of a stereotypical narrative forming. Maybe it’s okay if that’s all this builds to. That’s something for you to decide, when we get to the end. Is that a contrivance? Sure, but that’s all that writing is. Most of it, at least. A duel with Chekov’s guns, or a game of dominoes.
Ready, aim, fire!
Let them fall!
I wonder what I’m aiming for.
I wonder how to play dominoes. Does anyone actually know how to? I’ve had fun setting them up and watching them fall, but I don’t think that’s the point.
This seems irrelevant, but the gift of writing means that I can make it completely relevant.
Watch:
Let’s compare dominoes to life. Do we actually know the rules of life? Do we care to know them? The smiles that hide scars, the jokes that conceal tears, the hugs casting shadows over heartbreak. I don’t claim to know half the rules of people, of love, of friends. Ashley is convinced that Sarah is breaking the rules, but even if we knew them does that mean we’d play by them? Why should there be rules about this kind of thing? The only rules to care about are the rules we chose to play by. Like dominoes.
Although I do have a feeling that Ashley’s more than a little right. It’s not really a rule, but there is a kind of implicit understanding in a relationship that you won’t try to intentionally hurt each other. That’s something most people can agree on, I think. It was one of the first things I spoke to my therapist about.
He asked me if I’d ever intentionally hurt anyone.
I told him about my breakup.
He said he wasn’t sure that it counted.
I said that one goes into something like that knowing that you’ll cause pain. That, and I still saw her broken face in my mind. I still do. Constantly.
I wonder if I’m going to have to see a face like that again.
Not that a conversation with Sarah about this would be as destructive as a breakup. It couldn’t be, right? Best friends fight. Best friends fight. Boundaries are important. Maybe that black line in the grey sea has a purpose being there. Countries have ocean borders. We should adapt, then, to changing circumstances and free ourselves from the unhealthy conventions of our pasts. That would be the proper thing to say, the honest thing, if we had any inclination to talk about us. If she knew a conversation like that was coming.
But I don’t want to hut her the way I hurt Her.
I can’t see a face like that again.
There, now we have some stakes. We’re building a story. I mention this in part because we’re getting a little too honest now. It’s uncomfortable to have you this close to the truth, so I have to nudge you back a bit. I’m sorry about that, but it’s in the interest of my own survival. Even if I am only being partially honest, there’s more truth in the lies I’m telling you than in the truth. Not that you can sort them out. My only hope now is that you’re invested enough to finish. If you’ve made it this far, you have to have at least some interest in the ending.
I, of course, know how this ends. Part of me is excited to share it with you. Why I’ve decided that now is a good time, though, I’m not sure. Maybe it was seeing my mother cry. It’s an unsettling thing. Reality is complicated. Life’s hard. Maybe if you’d made better choices, there’d be a little less suffering. You can’t really know. No one’s perfect. There’s a useless platitude. Up there with knowing that everyone makes mistakes. Maybe the key to it all is just to try.
I know I’ve tried.
I’m trying more than I used to.
I should have said no so many times.
I wonder if Sarah’s trying.
I should say no now.
Or, I could just not respond to her text confirming that we’re meeting at six at that little diner we loved to go to. Responding might be better, though. I could let it all out. Tell her that for my own emotional wellbeing I don’t think it’s a good idea to see her.
But we are happy when we’re together. Everything stops for a bit. The world, and all its fires, stops burning. My mind stops racing. It’s a moment of bliss, felt eternal. It is pretty to think about something like that, even if the reality, when it comes, is far uglier.
Because, of course, we are not together. This is not a bandage. It’s an opiate delivered in the thin needle of smiles, touches, and gestures that fans a flame that deserved its death long ago. But I haven’t the heart to kill it just now, if I’m being honest with you.
I could tell you that I left my keys on the kitchen table. Better yet, I could tell you that they were in my coat pocket because that’s not a full lie. I won’t mention that I’d put on the coat. I could be honest, and tell you that I’m tired. Maybe too tired to leave the house unless it was something important. I could tell you that I stayed on the couch, like I had on so many other days, and watched daylight pass me by until it was night. I’d forget all of the nothing I’d accomplished. The entire affair never occurred.
I’d tell you that, if I was lying to you.
But I told you that you could trust me.
I’m at least being partially honest.
If this has built to anything, though, I’m sorry it built to a lie.
But it’s a lie that tells a truth.
A story.
You can judge for yourself if I’ve been honest than not.