Chapter 11: A Shame

his eyes open gently.

he can feel his heart racing in response to the loud ambulance that just flew past his house, siren and horns blaring.

as he hears it speed away from him, a wave of relief rushes over him.

i’ve just been asleep in my bed this whole time.

He sits there, somewhat comforted by his still beating chest, and listens as the ambulance grows fainter and fainter.

he realizes that his phone alarm had gone off at the same time the ambulance drove by - and it’s still making its tinny noise. he grabs the phone to shut it off and realizes it’s only 6:00am.

forgot to shut that off.

thankfully, he doesn’t feel underslept.

wild night last night, eh? tetris til’ the ripe hour of…10pm?

ALl of a sudden, his dreams come rushing back to him.

my old car…james dean…that mansion…ithaca…?

he couldn’t put it all together, he could only remember pieces. it felt nonsensical to him.

he remembers the night before and how sullen and lost he felt. today felt different. he was still assessing his feelings. he recalls everything he explored mentally last night while playing tetris.

instinctively, he clicks the facebook app on his phone.

he had totally unfollowed her, but they were still ‘friends’. he did it because he felt like any time she would post, he would get sucked into her orbit and begin obsessing about her all over again.

he searched her profile, hesitated, and then tepidly clicked her name.

he nervously avoided any of her new posts. he couldn’t fathom seeing any evidence of what she’d been up to. he instead clicked her profile picture, and then clicked the left arrow immediately so that it would send him to the beginning of all of her photos.

he studied each photo meticulously, trying to extract what was so beautiful about her to him. he was trying to pull all the old feelings back into focus so that he could reassess them from the present.

i want to feel how i felt. would i appreciate it more? would i squander it again?

He scrolled and scrolled and scrolled.

did i love her? do i love her?

he doesn’t have a moment of clarity, but he starts to realize that last night he was taking a very different lens. A sadder, safer, more observant one. he realized he hadn’t actually stopped to think why he felt so burnt by it all, so invested.

i feel possessive.