XX. Now She's in Me, Always With Me

In The Most Dangerous Year, She writes about me “coming out” on a morphine drip after my horrific car accident. Let me clarify, I never came out as anything. Perhaps In Her eyes I did, but to me, I wasn’t in a closet. I was never ashamed or tried to keep my attraction to women a secret; I simply never had the desire to talk about it with Her.

She had spent years building a life with Her Husband and his views overpowered the household. He and I battled enough over gay rights and the women’s right to choose. He openly criticized my circle of friends and didn’t understand why “gay people flocked" to me. I knew my bisexuality would never be accepted under that house so I chose not to let them know certain things about me. The last thing I wanted to do was fight with him, it seemed like that's all we ever did. We could blame it on the morphine or the trauma of the evening for my confession to leak out but perhaps it was just time. I thought my connection to The Girl was important, just as Her connection to The Boy was. I wasn’t in love with The Girl yet, but we were already going down that road. I knew she would be special to me.  And she was.  But she also hurt me more than anyone else ever had.

My accident was December 19th 2009. Truth be told, most of the details of that evening are blurred. I felt paralyzed lying on the gurney while I waited for Her and the Husband to arrive. I lie there alone, tears steadily streaming down my face, and I was terrified my legs were broken. If I moved the slightest, excruciating shooting pains caused me to wince and cry harder. I feared the worst. I knew this was the last thing I needed; my life had already been hard enough in the months prior.

All the while, my phone kept beeping and buzzing. I knew it was The Girl.  Between the snowy driving conditions and her anxious nature, I had promised to text her the moment I arrived at my parents house safely.  I never made it there, a patch of ice and an old guy not paying attention to the truck he was driving, made sure of that. By the time She arrived the nurses had already loaded with me drugs. When the sobbing subsided, I heard Tegan and Sara's Like Oh, Like H resonate in my ears; it was my ring tone in the distance. I frantically pleaded for someone to give me the phone. I was injured and scared yet all I wanted to do was ease The Girl’s anxiousness. All I wanted to hear was her voice. Even then, I put her first above everything else, a pattern that would continue for the next few months. She was the type to text around the clock and expect an answer within a few minutes; it had been hours since she’d heard from me, I knew she was worried.

I pleaded with Her to text The Girl for me, “Please just tell her I’m okay, I know she’s freaking out”.

“Texting your friends isn’t important right now!” She insisted.

With a heavy sigh I spat out, “I’m sort of dating her Mom.”

I couldn’t see her face, all I heard was the word “Nice” in a bitter sarcastic tone,  and then they wheeled me off for tests.

It was days later before we talked about my confession. She made a few assumptions and accusations that bothered me, but She took it way better than I had imagined. I suppose The Boy helped with that.  I don’t remember the car ride home or where I slept but I do remember texts The Girl sent me that night. I had saved them and about a hundred others over the course of our relationship. They documented the rise and fall of our relationship, starting with confessions of love and need; ending with  confessions of betrayal and selfishness. As trite as the expression, like mother, like daughter may be, we do share our love for words. I held onto those words The Girl had said to me, even after I knew we’d never be. I saved the texts and voice mails to prove that she really did say those things; she wanted to forget them, I did not. I wanted to remember, to know that it was real, not something I had imagined.

The one I cherished most from that snowy December night was, “I don’t know what I would have done if I had lost you”. It’s almost July, nearly eight months have passed and the saddest part is, The Girl and I are strangers. Any love we had was thrown away and forgotten, but that’s a story for another day.   ~Braticas