I didn’t want him to find me.
For the umpteenth time, I looked over my shoulder to see if he was following me. Despite the fact that it was too late for him to have noticed where I was going, paranoia insisted that I was underestimating Karl. I hadn’t wanted to go on this hike. That fact made me feel guilty. Love should be beautiful. This wasn’t beautiful. It felt like a stretched out moment in time. I wasn’t the only one who wanted to end this relationship, to put my life back into play, but I was scared. After spending this much time belonging to someone, the thought of being single seemed foreign. Did I remember how to be single? I hated myself for agreeing to go on this hike. Time alone with Karl and me was dangerous. The mild conversation made me remember why I wanted to break up with him. I could talk with my friends for hours. Talking with Karl took more energy than the hike, as if I was straining for every new word in the conversation, so that we wouldn’t run out of stuff to talk about.
I wondered if that’s why my parents got divorced; maybe they ran out of stuff to talk about so they decided to argue instead. Arguments were something new, and you hardly had to work for them if you fired yourself up enough. However, arguments hurt, and people could only take so much hurt. I was too young to sacrifice hurting myself to keep a relationship going.
Running away from Karl was probably wrong but I couldn’t take anymore of his words. Every word he said made it harder to talk to him, every sentence he finished was one less thing to talk about, and I didn’t want to run out of conversations today. We could be happy in our land of love for a little while longer if he only stopped talking. I just wanted to be happy. This isn’t what happiness was but I still had time left to pretend. He told me to wait on the big boulder next to the tree with the raven’s nest. My feet were tired and I didn’t want to continue walking. So he told me to take a break while he tried to find cell phone service so that his sister knew to be waiting by the entrance to the path by the time we made our way out. He used so many words, so many sentences, and I felt our relationship speeding away. I used to like that he was articulate. The next guy I dated, if I dated again, would be quiet, that way it would take longer for our conversations to get this stale.
When he was far enough away from the boulder, I crept into the trees and walked in further through the trees, following the sound of running water. The trees had given way to a river. I knew further up the trail was a waterfall, but it was late in the afternoon and if we didn’t head back soon we’d end up walking in the dark. For some reason my feet had stopped hurting as I walked away from Karl, and I hardly cared that the branches I had had to walk through had scarred my arms. The view was beautiful, more beautiful than love. I could learn to be single again if I could keep finding this kind of beauty. But what was beauty without anyone to share it with? Was it even real? I loved the sound of rushing water; I found it exciting for some reason, and it made my heart run quicker. As I sat down and brought my knees to my chest in a childish manner, I looked around at the green and yellow hues of the leaves under the bright sun, and the murky blue-green colour of the water. The colours soothed me. Soothing colours and stimulating sounds, oh how I wished it could still exist if I was single.
My mom saw no beauty in the world anymore. Love was beautiful, she said, but I think she might have been wrong. There was no beauty in a life where you talked alone, laughed alone, cried alone, ate alone, walked alone, or did anything without someone at your side to share all those moments with you, she said, and I believed her because it didn’t seem to me like she lead a life worth living. Her life without love was miserable. I don’t think I had been miserable before I started dating Karl, two years ago. When the divorce happened, three months after we started going out, I wasn’t so sure. My mom was miserable so surely that’s what I’d become, right? I’d rather see my life in colours like greens and yellows, instead of the life she saw in black and white. Biting my lip, I hugged my knees closer because I knew what was going to happen. I would go back and Karl and I would go back home. Little by little we’d keep using up the only things we had left to say to each other and then it’d be over. Then I’d be alone just like mother, who doesn’t know how to be alone. Did I know how to be alone? Could I know how to be alone if I didn’t know how to be single? It was too much of a paradox to be possible. I was scared of that, of being alone, of not knowing how to be alone, and wanting to know how to be alone so much that I was miserable. That scared me enough that I’d be willing to pretend I’m in love, willing to pretend I was happy, willing to hike through forest, and reach for words that could only save me for a few more seconds so that I’d have a reason to pretend. I wasn’t ready to lose a life of colour and sounds; I wasn’t ready to be miserable.
I wasn’t ready for him to find me.
This is a rough draft of something I just wrote on a whim. I hope you enjoy it, criticism is welcome and appreciated.
