Adrian

Dear Adrian,
I'm eating again. I just wanted you to know.

I'm enjoying the attention I've been getting lately from playing your
victim. I find myself surrounded by supporters and sympathisers, all
eager to hate you, I am the queen of your pain, and I laugh a
lot.
They tell me that you weren't right for me, that they knew the
relationship was doomed from the start, which leaves me thinking
'Gee, thank you for telling me now that it's too late and I've already
lost five months of my life'.

It got to the point that their sympathy made me sick, I couldn't laugh
anymore.
So I escaped, spent a week in my house on the coast. Time to myself and
all that bullshit. It was good. I spent the entire day enjoying
displacement activity, working out, washing my hair, sleeping in the
sun.
I started listening to my body and eating healthy again.
Isn't it funny that I couldn't eat for thirty-two hours after we broke
up? Just like in those cheap paperback romances you so hated me for
reading, only this time it was real.

Imagine me, the unofficial champion of double cheese burgers, standing
in the empty kitchen on an early Friday morning, staring at a ripe
banana, persuading myself to eat it. The heavy sweetness of the fruit
nauseated me, and I just couldn't.
It's almost as if my subconscious was screaming
'If I can't have him, then I won't have anything else that I love,
either!'
I'm eating now, don't worry.

I'd like to think I'm coping, but at night I betray myself, when I'm
finally in my bed, and it's making those beautiful squeaking noises
that I've loved since I was ten, I block out the time when you lay here
beside me. I rest my head on my pillow, and I pray with all my heart
that tonight, please just tonight, I won't dream of you.

Yesterday I went out with my friends in Michael's old van, just like
back in high school, and we cruised along the coast, singing our hearts
out to Sheryl Crow. I watched the shining gold lights on the ocean's
surface, smiled and thought
'Well that wasn't so hard. I am getting over you, Adrian!'

I think I've forgotten the colour of your eyes, and when I tried to
remember how it felt to kiss you, to feel your hands on me, I got
nothing. It didn't even hurt. It's like the memory's been erased.
'Finally', I thought, 'it's finally over'.

But I guess I tempted fate too much, because I dreamt of you last
night. One of those mind-numbing, haunting dreams.

I'm at some party.
You're sitting in a far corner with the redhead, I can't remember her
name, used to call her Look of Death because of the way she sneered at
me. Never understood why she hated me. Only in the dream she's an ugly
old lady with peeling skin and grey hair, which makes me laugh and feel
sorry for you.

You sit behind three grey boxes,as grey as your eyes,and the shirt you
bought me last winter.
I'm dressed in a slinky red cocktail dress, my chest is anorexic flat
and my arms are bony. I saunter over to you, flaunting my bare back and
shiny teeth. Now that I'm sick-thin, I know you want me more.
"No business this year, Adrian?" I ask you slyly, but you just point at
the last box and say
"Aren't you going to open it?"

Despite myself, I open the box, and find three large folded pieces of
papers. When I unfold them, I discover they are pages out of my diary,
the one I used to keep when I was twelve, full of old secrets like
Jamey, anorexia and the joint in Nina's bathroom.

I find myself shaking with fury, because I realise that all that
bullshit about you really knowing me inside out was pure lies; you had
to steal my diary to find the real me, to know how to hurt me
most.

But before I can say anything, I find a tiny scrap of paper at the
bottom of the box. It looks like it's a dedication torn out of some
book,reads simply
'Well, one hundred years of solitude. No reperjub. No reperjub'. The
last two lines, the words keep changing as soon as I start to read
them, their forms confuse me, I stutter and stumble, you sigh in
frustration at my clumsiness.

But then I read the line 'No reperjub'. It meant 'No regrets'. And
suddenly I understand why you wanted me to open the box.
What you are trying to tell me is that you will live the rest of your
life in miserable solitude and regret over having lost me, but you will
never regret me.
No reperjub meant no regrets.

As I read out the words , a sudden wave of pain washes over me, so
intense, so dizzying that I woke myself up, clutching the covers in
fear.
Silent tears ran down my cheeks as I stared at the white ceiling, your
face still in my head. It was only 8 am. I made myself a bowl of Coco
Pops and sat reading a stupid tabloid on the cold kitchen floor.
Displacement activity.

Later on, still haunted, I called up my mom's best friend, who's a
shrink, and I told her about the dream. You know what she said? She
told me I'm not over you yet. She said that I've been subconsciously
oppressing the pain that still festers inside me. I'm in such a hurry
to get over you, that my mind is trying to make me hate you. But the
truth is, I don't. I don't hate you.

I told you that, remember? When you sat on the steps of your house and
my voice went hoarse. I told you I could never hate you, because it's
hard for the strong to hate the weak. And you are so weak, full of fear
of me, you didn't even have the strength to let me down gently.
Instead, I fell alone.

Oh yeah, she also told me that your redhead is happy we broke up, and
that she wants you. I'm hardly surprised, you're so charming,
especially when you play the sensitive soul. I'm sure you've cried on
her shoulder about me, big bad old me, and now she hates me even more.
Tell her the feeling is mutual.

It's 2 am, but I can't sleep. I'm scared you'll come to me again.
That letter. It's all I can think of.
No reperjub.
I want you to miss me, I want you to feel at least half the pain I've
swallowed. Please don't tell me it's been easy for you. How do your
arms feel without me inside them?
I guess I have already become a taboo subject to your world, a box
labeled 'Ex' packed into the storage of your head.
But I just can't send you to Reject yet. It's too soon.

I laugh a lot, that's what's important.
I'm laughing again, Adrian. Towards the end of our relationship, I
stopped.
You know how I'd enjoy making fun of myself and you'd join in? Well, I
stopped laughing once I realised the joke was on me. Boy, have I been
foolish.

The first two days, it was physical pain. I could actually finger-point
the exact location of my soul: between my lungs, just behind my
trachea. I could feel it bruising so badly, I had difficulty
breathing.

The third day, I walked like a corpse, and shuddered.
I found myself in the empty gym, the only place I could hide from you.
I stood in front of a punch bag, they had 'Glorious' playing on the
system, I saw your face, and suddenly I reached out and slammed my fist
into the leather. For thirty minutes I punched the shit out of the poor
bag, every time I remembered your eyes and that repulsive
'I'm-so-sorry' look, I'd lose control and lash out. Blow after blow, I
swore at you, every punch I dealt was my way of paying you back.
And all I could think of was 'I will get over you, I HAVE to get over
you! '.

But my knuckles were bleeding and the determination in my voice could
not hide the despair.
'How can I get over him?' I asked myself 'Even a punch bag can't save
me'.

Somewhere into the second week, I woke out of the coma and picked
myself up. Survival instincts set in, and I decided that the only way
to move on was to hate you.

I know you hate me. I know the things I said must have hurt you,
because your flirting with my friends was just too obvious.
You took Chrissie to the roof top, my roof top, where we'd first
kissed, how could you?
You're hurting me with the people I love most, but why ? You've killed
me enough already.

I met Alan yesterday, he said it's for the best, and gave me the
biggest bear hug ever.
I love Alan.
But when I started to sense that he loved me more than you do, that's
when I knew.
Oh, hell, I knew all along, I was just too in love with you to face
it.

Things are different now. Even though my heart is broken, somehow I
feel something new. As if, when my heart broke, something was released.
Something warm and sweet.
This something is my freedom.
I am free.
I am still in pain, and not a moment goes by without the physical hurt
in my lungs, but still.
I walk down the street and I hear sounds I've blocked out for what
feels like eternity. The sound of the little girl's shoes squeaking in
front of me, the wind rushing in the trees, the beggar calling out to
me.

And something I've never done, something that took me aback was when I
gave the beggar woman some change. I've never done that before.
It's as if I've become a better person since the break up.

I saw Amber, and she almost fell over in shock when, instead of my
customary bitching, I reached over and gave her a big hug.
God knows, I might turn into a tree hugger soon.

It's amazing how much I've learnt now that you're gone.
I've learnt that all this questioning and daydreaming is self
destructive.
Revenge is pointless.
Trying to turn everyone against you is useless.
The only way to move on is to learn to forgive you. Even when I know
you hate me, and that you still want to hurt me, I have to learn to
pity you, and love you for your weakness.
That's the only way I can learn to forgive myself.

I've found that I'm no longer attracted to men. I fear them and their
cruel hands. Yes, you caused enough harm to turn me off the men of this
world!
But not permanently, I hope.
I know me too well, someday I'll be back again, breaking hearts as I
go.
The truth is, Adrian, there are millions of beautiful men out there, I
just happened to meet one rotten apple.

Reading back on everything I've written, I realise that I'm lying
again. I'd like to convince myself that you're worried about me, that
you want to know if I'm eating and what I'm reading, when in fact,
you're not.
It's hard to understand that someone I loved so much probably doesn't
even think about me.

I dread seeing you again. I fear meeting you on the street or seeing
you from afar.
I wish you would move to Australia, or just disappear for a few hundred
years, or something.

Sometimes I dream of breaking your nose, kicking you knees, scratching
your throat out, but I stop myself before I go too far. It's childish,
I know, but then again I always was, it's part of my charm.
Unfortunately you never liked it.

I will get over you.
I will lick my wounds and watch every step I take, I may slip at times,
and I might look back, but I won't stop walking.
Nor will I turn around.

You didn't break me, Adrian, you have to understand that.
The damage you caused will heal soon, and the bruises will have to
fade, sooner or later.

One day I will no longer need displacement activity.
I will no longer wish for your suffering or your regret.

And I will come to understand that you had no reason to cause me so
much pain, that I didn't make a mistake, I just met one.

When that day comes, Adrian, I will forgive myself, remember you and
say the words that you will never even think of :
'No reperjub. No reperjub.'

Pandora