TILL DEATH DO US PART | JENLISA

PART II: ELEVEN

JENNIE

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My Clarity And Reasons

September 10th, 2011

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I stare at my reflection.

I’ve done this for as long as I can remember, read my face and check that the cracks in my mask aren’t showing. It’s here, before the mirror in my room, that I have plastered over the wear and tear that comes with my life and hid from the world. There is a sense of peace in the knowledge that I can still do it so well. The reasons may have changed, but that doesn’t really matter in the end.

Whereas once I did it because it was safe. It was easy. It was totally and utterly isolated. Now I do it so I can head fake myself into thinking I have the strength to do what I need to.

Maybe it does matter, come to think if it.

I’ve worn this look a lot in my life, probably more than I’ve worn anything. There is no piece of clothing, no hairstyle, no life choice I’ve worn longer than this look right here. I wore this face when my sister went away to college and left me to deal with the horror of my family, when everything in my life turned to shit the last two years of high school. It was my expression when I kissed Lisa goodbye in the morning and went to work, when I missed family time and holidays. This grim set of my lips and lackluster in my eyes is the very same as when I buried her, too.

It’s my taking-care-of-business face, the one that makes it look like what I’m about to do isn’t going to hurt me.

But it does hurt, every time.

My eyes grow thoughtful as I steal one last look. What I’m about to do is going to hurt me a lot. I grab my keys and head out the door. My parents don’t look up as I leave, not that I blame them. They don’t care about me; they don’t care what I do to poison my life more. I pull my sweater around me tighter, to fight off the chill in the air.

It’s cold tonight. It’s been cold all summer since I let Lisa go. She was warming my world and I would do anything to have that warmth, the real version of her, back. That thought fuels my fire of determination as I open the car and turn over the engine.

Oddly, because I don’t have her to focus on, I’ve come to a realization about her in the months since I let her go. I’ve realized that in our other life, when she talked about the paths that people walk, it was all true, that my presence here has led her down a different one. One that has changed the very center of her being. Perhaps enough that I’m going to lose the future I had with her. And I am afraid that I do know how to fix what I’ve broken, how to right the universe.

That is why I’m wearing this face right now.
Two weeks ago, I saw Lisa for the first time since our breakup and she wasn’t the same person I knew. How could she be, after all?

She had been standing in the hall, looking for her locker. She didn’t wear my jacket, didn’t smile at me as I’ve felt her do so many times. Her eyes were the hardest I’ve ever seen them. Her lips tight and cold. I could shoulder her animosity if I knew I had fixed things, but I don’t think I have, yet.

She still talks about California. At least I think she does. I’m only privy now to the things I hear as I pass in the hallway. She couldn’t be farther away from me if she were on the other side of the world. And yet, because I know her, I can see the tremble in her lip as she moves through the hallway like she carries a weight too heavy for her to bear. I notice the dark slash in her eyes when she looks past me. I’ve ruined her, physically, emotionally and for forever. So in a way, she and I will always have a horrible kind of closeness. A seemingly unmendable one that stamps us both to the core. It frightens me more than I can say. More than I’m willing to allow myself to think.