It stopped being funny when the sun went down. Then all bets were off as to where she was–hell, where I was, too. I had come here on her advice, even though technically I wasn’t supposed to make decisions on behalf of anyone else anymore, this had seemed like the best option I had at the time and so I took it. I broke her cardinal rule in order to take part in the experience, which might in itself defeat the purpose of the experience or, it might show my willingness to participate in the first place which, if you look at it a certain way, is a right which negates the wrong. A right which makes what I did right. From the moment I realized she was gone, which was when I found her bracelet on the ground, I knew this was not a test. I knew that she had intended on doing this, that all the times she had warned me not to depend on her had not been invitations to resist a temptation but rather very honest, very tangible demands on my free will. I stood there for a while, thinking simultaneously about a) how stupid I’d been to befuddle her very clear demands, and b) how mean she was to have not made it even more clear. Foolproof, they say. She didn’t make it foolproof. So now I’m here, at her behest, and she’s gone, at her behest I can imagine, and I have no clue what to do because all my life I’ve been doing a variation of what I’ve been told to do. I’m indecisive at best, un-opinionated at worst. I suspect people have been pretty upfront with me in my lifetime. I suspect this because I have felt respected, dignified in the presence of others. I rarely felt like an imposter. But now, as my life spirals faster than the loop that turns when I look up at the tree tops funneling my gaze into the bluest of skies, I question my interpretation of this straight forwardness. Or, rather, I begin to believe that what I did was not interpret but reinterpret the realities which were spoken to me at different times in my life. It is as though every time I was meant to hear one thing–which, in this case as in many before, was to stop depending so much on other people for fulfillment, direction, acceptance, self esteem, etc–part of me transformed the message to mean something else entirely. Something more palatable, more in line with the way I envisioned reality (one which ultimately always worked in my favor). If I realized someone saw me one way, I simply recast myself in a different part in their movie. Someone once told me I was spineless, but I took that to mean I was kind. Someone told me I had no backbone, but I told them I am simply conflict-averse; I don’t look for drama. Another person I cared about asked me why I thought the world owed me something, and I said, I don’t, I’m just optimistic. There was a disconnect somewhere. That is clear to me now as well. Crystal clear. But I believe I was well intentioned in rotating the globe we all share on the tip of my very finger because, really, who was I hurting but myself with my distorted notions and pervasive innocence? All this to say, I am lost now more than ever before. Lost: I have no clue which foot to put in front of the other, in which direction, at what speed, with what kind of equipment. Than ever before: there is no outside lens for me to distort the very crystal clear reality that I am a) lost and b) completely alone. There is a chance she’d come back for me. Perhaps I should hold on to that chance. That glimmer of hope that she’d glide in with Bob or anyone from back there and we’d be suddenly stronger in numbers alone and better able to find our next step. But no, gosh, I have to stop. She is not coming back. The situation calls not for optimism but for practicality. And I am not that kind. I shake my head a little. I decide my first step will be to walk back to the creek and splash water on my face. The heat of the day is falling quickly upon the inches of my skin most uncovered. I can sense how laborious it will be to convince myself for the next ten hours that I enjoy sweating. I make my way there in quite lousy a mood. I sort of chip at the forest floor. I kick things that didn’t ask to be kicked. I disturb in this way the destinies of some small invertebrates which in turn alter the destinies of many other organisms, up the chain to the vertebrates of my stupidity and stature. I get to the creek, this opening surrounded by greenery rooted in a cliff-like arrangement. I have to step down to reach the water, and I find myself in a sort of terrestrial bowl. I blush at the nakedness of the trees, seeing as I can see all their undercarriage in the sides of the dirt that collapsed to create this pond. I wonder if they feel as exposed as I do at this moment. They are not alone. I am. I splash once and then twice and something tingles when the water trickles down the back of my shirt. I try to reach it with one hand, then the other, but the itch is in that space where neither hand nor finger can reach. That space which, when reaching for it, weakens the proprioception which usually permits the angling of parts of my body to move and touch places I can’t see. So it is that the itch drives deeper into my skin, and that the urge to panic increases very rapidly, and that the sounds of the water that I found so calming and uplifting before all this mess are now evidently taunting me, mocking me for putting my trust into someone who had nothing to gain from helping me. I roll now onto the ground, the leaves I deigned kick earlier now my only hope at resolving the fire spreading through the skin on my back. I can almost smell my transparent hairs burning. I lay there, and the sky framed by the tippy top of the old, tall trees spins, still. I am a child again, lying in the grass of the green pastures of sheltered youth. I am young and I know one day I will care about things but right now I do not. Right now I am trying to figure out why the sky seems to turn. I am wondering if I am the only one who has noticed this. I feel special for noticing it. I am not itching, not bleeding, not alone in a forest with no real ending or starting point aside from two different worlds no longer interested in sharing. I am a child, and I can choose my reality, and I can choose what is in it and what must stay out of it and I can choose to forget, and just as I am about to do so, something in me remembers. One of the layers of me remembers things, and stores them somewhere inaccessibly deep. Another thing I can’t reach, but can feel all too vividly. Why can I touch every part of my body but this one? Why can’t I remember things I can vividly feel? Why did she leave? Why did I put whatever was left of my life in her hands? I lie there and I’m paralyzed because the itch has now spread to my spine. I could be imagining it, or I could be poisoned. She is gone and panic is all I know when people deceive me. I panic, and the world disappears. I panic and a new reality swallows me whole.
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