Rough beginnings.

It was that nauseating feeling of "Oh fuck, it's going to happen" that tightens your stomach in the worst way. Like there's nothing to do but fall to your knees and throw up not only everything you've eaten that day, but everything you haven't even touched yet for the next week and a half. Like some obnoxious little time warp of dread that gets inside you and ignites every cell into a microscopic timer counting down and you've seen the inevitable future already.

That's where I was at.
Absolutely and pathetically defeated, which is a miserable place for any heroine.

I guess this isn't really the greatest place to start a story either, given the great tragedy of the whole situation. By this point I was almost unable to feel anything. I could tell my arm was broken, and probably other bones were too, but I couldn't pinpoint spots of pain past feeling like one giant injury and I hadn't been able to keep up with the damage as it happened.

If I tried hard to peek at the wall, I could see M practically wrapped around his computer. He was still alive I think, but how long was kind of a big question. I didn't even want to know what had happened to his girlfriend, because before the first blurry ambush, I'd seen the state of the place and all the blood had to have come from somewhere.

You see, they say that cliched line about life flashing before your eyes in like... every movie, book, song, play, awful teenage poem... It's everywhere. But either it's not true or it's a fluke, because my mind was going a million miles a second to try to figure out two things: what to do next, and what I could have done differently beforehand. I was always one of those people who thought everything added up, and my current hazy thought was that maybe if I'd had breakfast, I would have been late that morning, and M would have met me somewhere else, and this and that and the other. It was comforting to blame the cheerios, in some sickeningly odd way.

It's funny how quickly you can think when you're panicking inside and funnier how (no matter what you actually think about) you rarely reach a good solution.

So let's start this differently and rewind a little. Back before I finally collapsed to the floor, with that irksome little bubble of blood dripping down my lips, and back before I walked into he house to find it looking like the set of a horror movie. Back before whoever the hell was rolling me over now had attacked M and before our argument that morning that sent him home early to talk to Amy. Before that day, or that week actually.
Back to about three weeks ago, which may just be the beginning.

Half-fictive, skill-free self-therapy.

A curved line. Circle. One stroke here, one there. A small but lively eye slowly appeared out of the graphite marks, and soon its partner came into existence as well. Several whimsical movements framed a freshly-drawn face with windblown hair, and a body started forming below a brand new smile.

And there she was: Thumper. Rae sighed, adding on a pair of floppy rabbit ears and preening the simple outfit. Finished, Thumper blinked up at her expectantly.

"What's up, buttercup?" The miniature image flashed a toothy smile. She lacked the two pointed canines that Rae was somewhat fond of in her own mouth, so she touched up the smile, prompting an indignant nose-scrunch from her two-dimensional likeness. "Hey!" Thumper huffed, "At least warn me before getting out the eraser..." Rae gave a half-hearted smile in return.

"Things aren't really so awesome here." The bunny-girl blinked, waiting for elaboration. "Boys, friends, family... the works. What do you do when life gets... hard?"

"Well..." Thumper twitched her left ear for a moment in thought. "You see, it's like this. We superheroes are always getting in trouble. We lose people a lot - sometimes in fights or whatever, and sometimes... from more permanant stuff. We fight monsters and villains and get hurt in lots of ways. We go through hell. You know why?" Rae shifted in her seat, quirking one eyebrow.

"Mm?"

"Because we exist. Yeah, sure, there are some grudges and sometimes a bad guy is like 'Grr, I'll get you for destroying my super atom smashing weapon of doom!' but I could throw away my costume, become a total pacifist, and lounge in front of the tv nightly. Stuff'll still show up, stuf will still come after me, and life will still be a harrowing rollercoaster ride with the most undependable safety bar ever. So you know what I do?"

"Save the world?" Thumper gave her biggest smile and bounced a little.

"Mhmm! Cause it's all there is to do!" Rae smiled back - Thumper was the real her in a lot of ways and seeing it played out was a good reminder that she wasn't one to spend so long feeling down and out. A good reminder of who she really was.

"You forget - I'm not exactly a vigilante world-saver. Kind of lacking." She drew hairclips at the base of each of Thumper's ears. "Maybe they should be clip-ons..." The mini superheroine's face flashed with horror as she unsuccessfully tried to twitch one of her ears, and Rae giggled, turning them back into a legitimate part of her anatomy. She let out a little "hmph" sound and tested one to make sure before moving forward.

"You're missing the point! My point here is that stuff'll go wrong. Lotsa stuff. But most things are either fixable or heal with time. So stop worrying. Breathe, let things relax, and learn to give it time. If your friend won't talk to you, give them some space and it'll probably work out in the end. If you're feeling down, find a good book to read or go out. If life feels hard, just stop and let it go on around you, silly. You've got all the tools, you're just not using them. It's easy to get scared, 'specially after some of the stuff you've been through. But since Jay left you you've been a wreck constantly and -"

"And it's not me." Rae concluded, sketching on some hairclips.

"No. It's not. And now all these great new people you're friends with now think it is you! And you're unhappy. So... Smile, sillyface!" And she did, because it was true. And that smile was refreshing in too many ways to count.

Because there are ways of dealing with oneself, and therapy is found in a lot of places. She was reaching closure with the entire underlying problem now, and maybe the rest would follow naturally.

She sketched Thumper a cape, then got rid of it again. Attached some earrings.
"How about we get you a story, dear?"

"What's broken, Alice?"

Let it go.
Let it go.
Let it go.
Let it go.

Bang bang, you're dead.

"I am."

Why am I watching Gay Purree?

She imagined herself most properly as Meowrice, really. Not that she wasn't pretty enough to be Mewsette, the heroine, or any of the other sleek, soft felines haunting the streets of Paris, but she simply wasn't soft enough. And, of course, there was the fact that he fit the character so much more fully.

The naivete and blind hope hidden beneath a layer of arrogance and confidence was too obvious a likeness, but if she ever were to tell him, she knew he would turn away, tail in the air, and refuse to speak to her until the comment was pushed aside.

Granted, she was not quite likely to attempt packaging him up to send off as a mail-order bride (though she idly wondered what price he might fetch)... but she was using him for her own needs all the same.

It wasn't that she didn't care about him. She just cared more about herself and things were much better that way. It was like Eve biting into the apple - nothing was really wrong until she selflessly offered the fruit to Adam, and they together realized their state of affairs. If she had kept the dream and the knowledge to herself, it may have gone forever unnoticed.

It took two.
It always takes two for one to get hurt.

He had his own female Jean-Tom too. She didn't know much about the girl - had only seen her briefly once or twice while out and had had to deduct her identity in the first place - but she seemed genuine enough. Almost genuine enough to make her feel guilty for her mastery at what she was doing. But she seemed genuine too, outside of her inner workings. It didn't mean she was.

Not that any of it mattered. It was a game.
The traditional dog and cat and mouse.

Fuck, She thought, taking a drag of her cigarette and turning off the television. I need to stop watching kids movies.

And of course there's nothing quite like delusion.

Sometimes, just sometimes, I find myself wishing for things I should not. Normally I prefer to keep things like this to personal journals, but there's never a good place to think out loud when you're constantly drowned in well-meaning and often (though not always) appreciated advice.

It's funny. When someone is out of your life, you can finally see what it was doing to you. You can see the years of desperation, and the lies whether they were intentional or not. You can see that it dragged you down. Was no good for you.
You can see beyond the hurt and the loss that maybe it is best to move on.

The moment they come back? It's gone.
There goes the reasoning. There goes the new relationship with the boy next door or the cute girl who was warm and made you smile. You'll drop the boyfriend or girlfriend or casual date because you like them and they are cute and they're nice and fun and loveable.. but they're not them.
You get caught up in the phone calls and conversations, and the idea that maybe, just maybe, they have changed. Are ready and willing to truly put you first. You can be together and be happy. Everything will be okay.
There is hope.

And it is the worst fucking lie you will ever tell yourself.

Quite often there is no change. We're doomed to repeat things.
If something happens once, it may be a fluke.
Twice could still be a self-contained incident, but it's not quite likely.
Any more than that? It's not going to stop.

Take it from someone who had the "We're over. Get out of my life. We can't talk anymore" conversation twice before the final fall. I should have seen it then. That it wasn't going to stop and he would never be coming back for good.
It was always going to be short-lived and painfully cut off.

As to the aforementioned in the beginning, my current wish - tugging at the corners of my reasoning and trying to clamber in - would be to go back to someone I have known for quite some time and very well. "Boyfriend" is not necessarily true. We actually officially dated for a whole of twenty-three hours if I remember correctly. "Lover" is an irksome word, but it's as close as it gets.

No one knew me like he did. We were best friends and fought hard to keep ourselves that way. We made it work despite all opposition, and at some point we had synced together so fully and so well that you'd have thought we were made for each other.

I dropped someone good for him too, the final time he came back.
A boy with his own fair share of issues, but who did so much for me and cared about who I was and how I felt.

I wonder why I didn't just say no.
I guess I'm just weak. Maybe gullible. More likely just too hopeful.

We all learn the hard way.