Day 251 - Resurfacing - Chapter 2 - (1319 words)

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RESURFACING

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 2

“What are you talking about?” Her voice rises an octave and through the shrill veneer you can see the frustrated despair of confusion pushing through.

“Nothing, it doesn't matter.” I take a dismissive tone because that's the outcome I want to have right now. I am not interested in continuing the conversation at this time, not this place. I want to move on and the best way to do that is not direct confrontation but instead manipulation. I really want to be somewhere else, need to be somewhere else if I am going to put the right verb into play, and this interchange is a speed bump on the way. This slows me down, is in the way of getting to where I need to be.

Reduce the problem to it's simplest form and then tackle it there, that's the key. Take it apart from the inside until the small parts are easily managed. That's the way around the obstacle, any obstructive element that seems insurmountable at first, break it down into easier parts and then the chunks are child's play. Theoretically.

This barrier in my way here and now in the place where I need to not be, that is a living and breathing thing that exists for her own needs and wants. The problem is that they are diametrically opposed to my own, at least they have come to be, before they were... aligned? Maybe never aligned as much as coincidentally in a similar direction.

For now we need to get past this and move on. I need to get past her because she is a barrier and an obstruction, and I am one to her. She is holding on to something that is already gone, she just doesn't know it yet. That's a problem for her and I am the obstacle she needs to get over, she might think I am her destination, but I am not I'm just a stopover.

I have to stop talking in metaphors, they are open to too much interpretation and that will cause more problems. This is a matter for clarity of purpose and for unambiguous actions to be taken, ones that should not, cannot be misconstrued. This could become an endless loop unless the Möbius like link is severed so that the tail is not winding back to the head, and vice versa.

An Ouroborous, I can picture her like a snake consuming itself and in it's lizard's gluttony I can see her face reflected. That makes what I have to do a little easier, there's something of the lizard in her now and I think of that and it's easy to distance myself from any blow dealt to the cold blooded creature.

It's not a physical blow, I am not a monster after all, but more of a psychological one that she will likely be hurt from but I will quickly forget because that is the small part that I need to consume to overcome the larger goal of being where I need to be.

Why do people have to be so selfish about other weary travellers crawling interminably on the surface of the world? Why do we have to get in each other's way, so easily and so unforgiving about it. The world would be a better place if we all stood aside when that was the right thing to do. Humanity have lost the common sense of decency around basic manners.

Obstacles, most people are obstacles without any thought to the progress they impede. Take a walk down any street with a purpose and the more people there are the more they impede your journey. Beyond the basic mathematics of it, there are more people so the incidence is therefore higher, the more people there are the more the impedance is multiplied, the pedestrian habits of pedestrian people does nothing but assault the purpose of other pedestrians.

This is madness in it's most obvious form, to desire one thing while working ceaselessly to it's opposite goal.

They want to be somewhere, rely on the cooperation of the rest of humanity to not negatively impact their journey and then expend energy directly or tangentially to getting in other people's way. Often with arrogant aggression, standing in the path and screaming the antithesis of that which they really need, knowingly or not.

“You can't just come in here and tell me, tell me, tell me...” The end of her sentence is elusive and is soon drowned in nonsensical repetition of a fact that is not only possible but patently true and the opposite of her protestations. She fades to nothing but quickly her rage finds a new trajectory. “Nothing? How can you call it nothing? Are you insane? Are you sick?”

Then she stops and a notion which is absurd seems like a truth to her in frustrated state.

“Is that it? Are you... is there something the matter with you? What am I saying of course there is something wrong, you are mad.” She pushes her feet into the crack, trying to open a door that is really a wall she can't breach. “There better be something seriously fucking wrong with you if you think that...”

Her hands fly to her mouth and I roll my eyes at the melodrama. Nobody really thinks critically anymore, never uses the facts at hand to draw the correct and often only real conclusions available. Not when there is the lazy reasoning path of jumped to conclusions and clichés that even writers of a Soap Opera should avoid like the plague. It's a selfish logic 'why would he do this to me' She does not harbour the possibility that there is anyone else in the equation except herself, what about the needs of the other people involved in this situation?

“Oh my god. Are you? Are you?” She does not say dying, but she is thinking it and almost wishing it were true because of the sense that narrative would make in her world view. Tears are welling in her and that touches me, uncomfortably because I know that it's a glimmer of hope in the emotion but it can't last beyond the moment of palliative care to the relationship before the death blow is struck or merciful death is driven home as it should be.

“I do love you. I do.” I say, and I regret telling her that truth, even though it is really the case. It does not help, it hinders and becomes an anchor holding us back, a new obstacle that needs to be broken down, the links in the chain removed one by one and the the anchor itself excised and the wound, gaping and cavernous is left to scab and heal with time. There's no time for bandaging, the band aid if one has been applied in that admission must be torn fast and hard to let the smarting pass and the after effects come that much sooner.

“Dammit woman, that's not fair. Love is irrelevant in this situation, it does not alter outcome. I need to go. I need it. I. NEED. IT. Can you understand that?

The air bites at it with the ripping away of the plaster. The tears that were for a fatality that was never true now brimmed and spilled to wash over her and blind her to what would happen next.

She can't see me packing through the liquid in her eyes, burning the blush on her cheeks, but from the underwater prison of her tears she knows that I have resumed that job, the suitcase of my intentions is being closed on her for good and she is powerless to stop it.

She is free now, unappreciatively free but she has that freedom on her path and I am no longer going to be in her way.

An obstacle by marriage.