coming back

I could hear my friend laughing down the phone at me, are you surviving? She’s my rock, the one that helps me if I fall a little. It’s like the support network in an AA group. Oh dear, this is not an addiction, but a trial, a program, a test.

When I’ve discussed my situation with my friends they look at me with an odd expression. First impressed, then confused. But why do you want to do that to yourself? I can see it laced in their eyes. To take something away that is so great, what is the point?

Some times I don’t know what the point is.

I have started to look at men differently. With more interest, not interest in their bodies, looks etc, but their minds. What do you think they are thinking when they see me? Before I would just think they wanted to jump my bones, now, I see beyond that, into something much deeper, more complex. Of course I have the intelligence to see beyond men’s sexual appetite, but now I’m more interested in their darkness.

There is something that they carry which women do not have, something truly secretive. I am generalising far too much in this one, but I think it is a valid point.

Do they pity me, like my friends who try to look encouraging? Maybe that is it. Maybe. They pity for me because I am a woman and women suffer, for my suffering I will weep. So they pity.

I have been accepted by my boyfriend after finally he has been tempting me for days. So now I have the others to contend with. A particular older man who I sat next to at a dinner party was one story. He warmed to me, sweetly, and the conversation was brilliant, I laughed, he laughed, I laughed again and as he went for the next laugh he slung his head on my shoulder like a schoolgirl. I laughed forward, not wanting to draw attention to this advance, but shoving him off effectively. He handed me the coffee and held my hand while I poured, I looked up at him as the party went on around us. Let’s get out of here, he said with an odd smile, I could see from the state of his teeth that he was about the same age as my father. Let’s make a run for it, my place. And then he lunged for my ear, nibbling away like a hungry kitten. I felt nauseous, maybe from the wine, but now accelerated by this geriatric trying to remove my lobe.

I had to get out, I downed the coffee and swiftly exited. The rain was pouring, again, and I could hear him calling my name down the street. The rain was soaking my face, clearing the feeling that kept washing back up from my body to my thoughts, come back, come back.