if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had
a vision to find out Eternity" (17)
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| "who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity" (17) |
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| I met Tim my first year in high school. Sometimes, he was the only reason I survived. Probably often. When I was home alone, making dinner, I would call him and talk until I was no longer home alone. He protected me from the uncertainties of night sounds and the crucifixion that was high school. Whenever I couldn�t stand my life, he would pick me up. We�d drive around and get stoned, his way of trying to make me happy. When I was seventeen, I totaled my car on my way to pick him up. He called my parents for me because I couldn�t speak. Later that year was his crisis. He decided that he wanted popularity, and that I couldn�t fit into his life anymore. He used all of my insecurities against me. [I was ugly. He had replaced me. My parents didn�t love me. He didn�t love me. Etc. Etc. Etc.] There was a year-long silence. I tried to adjust my first year away from home, being a hermit and struggling to forget my past life as a never-Catholic ex-Catholic-schoolgirl. All the time he was there, in the back of my mind. I didn�t care about being angry anymore. I wanted Tim back. I contacted him the next summer. I discovered that while I thought he wasn�t talking to me, he thought I wasn�t talking to him. He had a deep regret for what he did. I didn�t need an apology; I needed him there. He visited me in August. He spent the night. In our year apart, Tim had accepted the fact that he was gay. He was trying out his new sexual freedom in Chicago, which later resulted in many V.D.s. Tim wanted to be close to me again, and sex was the only way he knew how at that point. I finally gave in to his advances to shut him up. All fathers fuck their daughters in some way. Tim just took a more direct/literal approach. I understood that, for Tim, sex was his way of knowing me again. A physical way to know me. When I got back to school, I had convinced myself that I was pregnant. I had no one to talk to, since Tim was unreachable, and I found the situation unspeakable to other people. I remember walking down the street in silence, but I was screaming inside. I sat under a friend�s red blanket and pretended to be my own fetus. I eventually started bleeding. I was, to my surprise, half-disappointed. Grief for an imaginary embryo. I eventually did reach Tim. I still talk to him. Telephone wires across my mind. | |||