Surreal Ecstasy (12 page)

My story was raw and uncensored. I
told her about the drugs. I even told her a little bit about my parents, right
after I relayed to her how Adim had never introduced me to his family the
entire time we'd been together. She finally spoke up, asking me if I ever
introduced Adim to my own family. I avoided her eyes and admitted that my
relationship with my parents was not that much better than my relationship with
Adim.

It made me feel like such a loser.

Finally, I got to a point where I
felt I'd said enough. I stopped and checked the little clock above Dess' TV. I'd
been talking for over an hour and a half. I was suddenly so tired of talking
and hearing my own voice, and my vocal chords actually hurt. I don't know if I've
ever talked so much—especially about something so personal—to anyone in my
adult life, or maybe in my entire life, period. Except for Friend, maybe. But
Dess was the first
real
person to experience all this. I peered over at
her guiltily, wondering if I'd just scared off the first real friend I ever
had.

As if she knew what I was thinking,
she gave me a reassuring smile, got up, and gave me a long, comforting hug. I
accepted it gladly, leaning my head on her shoulder and taking a deep breath. I
was not going to cry, I told myself. I was done crying. I'd cried enough
rivers, and I was done feeling sorry for myself.

"Morgue?"

"Yeah?"

"You need to do something
about this."

"About what? Adim?"

She nodded, forehead furrowed with
concern. "Morgue, I know you've been a victim of his for a long time."
She paused as I flinched and avoided her eyes. "But you need to do something.
Show that you're strong and won't accept anybody treating you that way. Did you
see how he acted at the hospital? It was like you were his property and that
you had no say in the matter. Was he apologetic or even sympathetic to how you
were feeling? Of course not, because he views you as being an extension of
himself, a
thing
that he owns."

I sat down and pulled my feet up,
my arms wrapping around my knees. "What am I supposed to do?" I wasn't
sure if I wanted to think about this right now.

"See it objectively,"
Dess suggested. "And ask yourself:  If someone you cared about was in a
situation like this, what advice would you give her?" I looked up at her,
my eyes brimming with tears.

A loud beep from my phone—a text
notification—interrupted us, keeping us from any further discussion.

A feeling of dread filled my heart.
There aren't that many people on this planet who would be texting me right now.
The only person it could possibly be was my mother.

I was so not in the mood for this,
so not in the mood to hear about what a low-life piece of slime I was. I looked
up at Dess, who was watching me with bated breath. She made no comment but
respectfully gave me the space to handle this myself, while still standing
close to me to let me know that she was there if I needed her.

I totally loved her, this new best
friend of mine.

My mother's rude, all-caps font cut
right to the chase without greeting or even a faked nicety.

MORGAN! ARE YOU POSSESSED? YOU'RE
LOSING YOUR JOB AND YOUR APARTMENT BECAUSE OF DRUGS? WHERE DID I GO WRONG WITH
YOU? WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS? I AM BEYOND DISAPPOINTED.

Sighing and shaking my head, I
decided to be a little more protective of myself, and with a sudden fervor, I
erased the message and closed my phone without replying. I looked at Dess, who
gave me an encouraging smile.

I sat there quiet for a moment,
then returned Dess' smile. "I have to admit, I do feel tons better, from
both ignoring my mom's message
and
getting all this off my chest. Thanks
for listening, Dess." I was surprised by how serene and emotionally stable
I felt. Never mind that I didn't know how my mother found out so fast about me
being fired, and I definitely had no clue where she got the idea that I was
losing my apartment.

But I didn't really care too much
anymore.

It made me think of something else,
something unpleasant that still lurked in my brain. That stupid photoshopped
picture of me selling myself, the image that caused all this. The good news was
that Facebook had probably deleted it by now due to its mature—though fake—content.
Maybe it was time I did something proactive as well.

 I had a sudden, tantalizing
thought. I asked Dess, "Do you have a laptop here somewhere that I can use
real quick?"

She started walking to her bedroom.
"Yeah. Hold on though—I have to find the power cord. I keep losing it, for
some reason."

While she was gone, I got on my
cell phone and called my service provider, asking to change my number with no
forwarding message from my old one. The entire process took about 15 minutes.

Dess came back in with her
brightly-decorated laptop. "What did you have in mind?" she asked me.

"I'm going to stop being a
victim," I told her, winking.

She smiled approvingly and nodded,
setting the laptop up on the couch next to me and booting it up. I gave her my
new cell number before I could forget and, while I was thinking about it, typed
in and saved her number on my phone. Once the computer was on, I went online
and logged onto Facebook.

My original intention was to make
my Facebook page private, but that didn't seem like enough of a precaution to
me. I thought for a minute and, almost without thinking, went to Facebook's
account settings page and completed the process required for deactivating my
account, wiping it clean from the internet, so that nobody would be able to
peek into my life at all (or contact me, for that matter).

I didn't care anymore. It no longer
mattered. I figured that if someone, relative or no, already disliked me to
that
extent, where they were willing to disown me based on events I had little
to no control over, all without granting me the basic right of letting me
explain my side of the story, then their 'support' could never have been all
that great in the first place. Hell, I've been abused by different people
through the years, and while I endured that injustice, not once did I say they
were unworthy to be close to me or give them a hard time—about anything. At
most, I would just stop talking to them for a short length of time.

If only I were granted that same
respect in return.

I know of people who, if they did
the worst things humankind could possibly do, the people who truly loved them
would still show support for them. I almost couldn't believe such loyalty and
unconditional love really existed, and though the idea made me hopeful, it also
made me melancholy to reflect on that which I did not have.

If a person declared that I wasn't
as 'holy' as they were or that the quality of my soul wasn't 'good enough' for
them to be friends with, well, their love, if it ever existed, was conditional
and temporary. If people were so determined to think the worst about me, they're
going to do it regardless of anything I could possibly do. They'd still find
something to complain about.

This was the conclusion I was
slowly coming to, the theory that my tired soul was beginning to create.

I did not want to have a
conversation with my mother during which I would try to 'convince' her of my
innocence, or of the misunderstandings she's obviously had about me. The word 'convince'
implies guilt on my part, and though I was far, far from perfect, I was not a
terrible person either. I really wasn't. I was a person who had loved and lived
like everyone else, and just like everyone else, I had taken the actions that I'd
deemed appropriate for whatever conditions that were in my life at the time. 

I decided then that I was going to
be my own support system, for real this time. I was not going to count on
anyone else, because everyone else seemed to have their own agenda. Just when I
had needed them most, I was abandoned and, as a result, even more alienated
than before. Why had I been basing my self-worth on these people, rather than
building it up for myself?

I decided I wasn't going to dwell
on it any longer. Was it fair that my family believed I was the female
incarnation of the devil? No, it wasn't, but thinking about it objectively, I
realized this probably had more to do with them than with me. They obviously
had their own issues for whatever reason, and I was done enabling them and
asking for more of their abuse, done being the punching bag for everyone else.
I had the right to live my life however the hell I saw fit, and if they didn't
like it, then I didn't need their 'friendship.'

It was time to put the blinders on.
I was officially done with everyone's crap. I was done being sensitive to
everyone else's emotions when nobody gave my own feelings a second thought. It
was time to start really living and leaving all the negativity behind,
negativity that was not only holding me back but keeping me captive in the most
restricting manner.

I'd had friends in high school, but
I never kept in touch with any of them, and I didn't feel like I had a reason
to. They fed me tons of negative energy under the guise of friendship. However,
I was never fooled. That negativity was overwhelming and suffocating, and I
couldn't understand how I could be a magnet for life-sucking people like that. 

Dess was an amazing person, and I
was lucky she went nuts and decided to hunt me down and have crazy bible talk
with me. It made me feel complete and happy to think that I now had someone I
could really talk to—someone I could tell everything to. Not only would she
understand, but she would use that information to be closer to me and be a
better friend to me, if that were possible. We just became friends this week,
yet I feel like I've known her for a lifetime. But I'm not going to depend on
her either. That wouldn't be fair to either one of us. I have to find my
strength and individuality, and I knew Dess would not only support me in that,
but that she would insist on it.

Funny how having one genuine friend
beats out a hundred fake ones.

As far as men were concerned:  Was
I ready to think about this? I sat back and took a deep breath. Would I like to
have a beautiful romantic relationship someday with the perfect man?

It was odd, the idea of truly
moving on and forward in the hopes of finding someone new I could love.
Thinking realistically to myself, yes, of course I would like to have a
wonderful relationship with a perfect man. But I don't
need
to be in any
relationship—platonic or otherwise—if it meant I wasn't being appreciated. If I
couldn't find a man who treated me right, I would live a life of simplicity. I
would go to work, read art history books, bowl an occasional 75 if I were
lucky, and go to Mariners games with the avid hope that one day they make it to
the World Series… all without a man, because this was
my
choice, and I
could be strong without companionship.

Adim was clearly losing his
marbles. Part of me felt sad about that, but I reminded myself that he wasn't
my problem anymore. He separated himself from my heart the first time he ever
struck me. A small nagging thought implied that I was going to have to deal
with this maniac again—something he said at the hospital about having to talk
to me about our future. I shuddered. Yes, he was really turning into a nutcase.

If he did approach me and continued
to be his nasty self, I would deal with it. I am not going to keep looking over
my shoulder or stop living my life. I'm going to deflect these boulders that
people keep throwing at me. If it results in certain people not talking to me
anymore, fine. The trick is to develop thick skin and stop letting them get to
me.

Well, once again, it appeared that
I was to be alone.

And for the first time in my life,
that sounded okay to me.

Chapter 9

Remind me later to kill Dess.

That was my only thought as I
started the engine, my left hand clenched around Dess' steering wheel in a
fuming death grip.

It was just a little past noon on the day I got released from the hospital—the same day I got fired from work and
had a run-in with my nutbag ex-boyfriend. I'd had a long, emotionally-draining
morning, so I was grateful that Dess was there to discuss it all with me.

Everything was fine after that—at
first. We were both relaxing and beginning to have a really nice day. And then
she does something so twisted that I had to add her on to my secret hit list,
my affection for her notwithstanding.

She'd tried to set me up with Ree!

It all happened in a blur and yes,
I was obsessed with him weeks ago, but I would have liked more time to adjust
to the possibility of me actually getting to spend time with this rare human
specimen. Here I sat, in Dess' unusual clothes which were SO not me, still
reeling from my strange day. I haven't even been home yet, so I couldn't
properly prepare for meeting the Most Beautiful Man on Earth face-to-face.

Not twenty minutes ago, I had been
sitting comfortably on her couch, watching Food Network, my favorite channel.
Dess had been checking her own Facebook. I knew she'd wanted to know more about
our destinies and missions, but I also knew she wanted me to rest. Instead of
hounding me again, she had been considerate and chose to leave me alone for a
little while as I sat lazily on her little couch.

Did I mention that I loved this new
best friend of mine, even though I currently wanted to kill her?

There was a knock at the door. Dess
got up begrudgingly, being forced to leave her Café World momentarily unattended.
I heard her take a few steps toward the door and then laugh, squealing, "I
cannot fucking believe it."

I turned my head to see her open
the door and HIM coming through with a small duffel bag, walking along
nonchalantly, as if it had been perfectly natural for someone of his perfection
to be standing there. He threw his bag in the house and then tackled Dess,
putting her in a headlock. She bit down on his arm, causing him to loosen his
grip on her and back up a little. She jumped at him, and they had wrestled for
a couple minutes, pushing each other away and laughing.