The Eighth Day

"I have a history of making decisions very quickly about men [...] fast and without measuring risks.

I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone,

but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of reaching his highest potential.

I have fallen [...] more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man,

rather than with the man himself."

— Elizabeth Gilbert

Day 08 → Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like sh*t.

Of course it would be a man (although, in this instance and most others, I prefer the word boy instead). Why is it that I tend to give boys the permission to treat me poorly, and then feel indignant when they do? Maybe there are people who haven't given me what I should have- but I let them. So, to clarify, the fault here was mine.

This particular time, it was a party. There was a ranch house out in the country, with cornfields surrounding it, and except for the people I came with, I knew no one. There was a lot of beer and a horrible red punch spiked with something. Most people gravitated towards the beer pong and strange mix tape playing in the basement. A guy loaned me his sweatshirt in hopes that I would talk to him, and was disappointed when I put it on and walked outside onto the concrete steps with a few other people. Everyone else had found a way to the backyard to shoot off bottle rockets with loud, startling bangs. They were left over from the 4th of July a few days before, but they still felt new and exciting.

Another guy began to talk to me. He offered me a cigarette, and though I'd only smoked enough to count on one hand, I took one and coolly puffed away on it like I knew what I was doing. I don't remember most of the conversation, but we ended up with phone numbers and laughs. The fireworks died down, and I went home dizzy, drunk, and thoughtful. I still tasted the cigarette from hours before.

The long distance part of the relationship was the only non-maddening part of it. Soon after we lived nearer to each other, the craziness began. There were a few nice conversations in downtown cafes. But mostly there was confusion. He was overly sensitive to put it nicely, and would turn any comment into a fight. An evening walk that could start out sweetly would end with his truck door slamming and leaving me in the dust. He would apologize later, or he wouldn't- we somehow kept trying to salvage something that was clearly making me unhappy.

The night that broke things completely was chilly. It was fall. We were going to a concert, one that I had looked forward to before I had even met him. I drove us and we found our space for floor seats, just feet away from the stage. I bounced up and down to the opening bands even though they weren't any good- the anticipation for Death Cab for Cutie, who we were there to see, was too much for me.

He seemed in a bad mood, however. I tried to smile at him a few times, to no avail. When the lights came on and they were setting up the stage between acts, I grabbed his arm and grinned. "Aren't you excited?" I asked him, buzzing with the energy of the crowd. He made some non-committal noise. When I asked him what was wrong, he yelled something about not needing to be excited, and took off. It wasn't the first time he'd been moody or inexplicably up and down with his temper, but it was definitely the worst time.

I watched him climb the stairs and exit. I looked around me at the smiling, excited people. I heard laughs, background music, cheers. I stood there for a minute until tears began to form, and then I slowly climbed the stairs too, and cried all the way to my car. I assumed he'd left, and I drove home in silence.

He called me as I was pulling in the driveway. He wanted me to come back and pick him up from the concert, where he was waiting outside. I stood in the kitchen, holding my phone in one hand and my concert ticket in the other. He yelled, and I yelled, something that is definitely not my 'relationship style'. My dad walked into the room and saw me screaming into the receiver with mascara smudged everywhere. He said, "Leave him there." But instead, I drove back and picked the boy up. I should have listened to my dad.

We fought more. He blamed his moods on his antidepressant. We both knew that it was actually his personality. After another month or so, we went our separate ways. I saw him only once since then, and he wasn't any better. And when I think of that boy, I don't think of the cigarette and conversation in the yellow moth light on that July night, I think of the concert I missed and how I gave him that power.

And if I ever have a chance to see Death Cab for Cutie again, I am going to go- alone.