Neurosis

Cerulean

"I remember how seeing the shape of your mouth that first time, I kept staring until my blood turned to rain. Some things take root in the brain and just don't let go." - T. S. Eliot

• • •

The thing about Alex was he was always there when I was not ready for him.

I had begun to wander around the city with Jennifer many days, and I told her it was to spend more time with her, but all I really wanted to see was him. He was growing on my brain like mold, faster and thicker by the day. I did not know where he lived or what colour his post box was or what he called his mother or where he liked to drink, but I knew that he was somewhere in this city, and I had to find him.

And I did.

I was drawing and walking with Jennifer each day, and she would talk for hours on end and I would listen, saying a word where needed. Already, at that point, I was numb and sore in a way that was not simply cured by medicine, but I didn't dare say anything.

I started saying a few words to my parents here and there as well, and I came as far and showing my mom my drawings. She had looked up at me and then back down at the book, running her long fingers over pictures of Jennifer and the main road and everything I had managed to indent on paper, except for Alex; he was mine. It made me nervous, having her see the drawings, but she had smiled at me while I scratched fervently at my left arm, digging cut nails into skin.

"Sarina, this is wonderful," she had said simply.

I remember looking at her and feeling a comforting pain as I peeled skin from the strip of my arm, and then suddenly I was grabbing the book and walking out, my chest aching.

She hadn't complimented me for years.

I began to forget tiny things about him as the days came and went like water; it was little things, like the way he held his cigarette that time when I first saw him or what his hand looked like as he pushed it through his messy hair, and more than anything, it scared me.

I was beginning to think that maybe, I had overreacted, and he wasn't as wonderful as what I had perceived. How could he be? I barely knew him. I drew him less and things like Jennifer more, and soon I was wandering around the city to spend time with Jennifer instead of to look for him.
I called my friends from school from my house phone - I had been ignoring them for weeks. I was close with all of them, Jennifer and I being inseparable, and I starting making plans to see them, wondering why I hadn't done it before. I began to brush my hair and eat again, and my hollow cheekbones disappeared more each day. I left my daily spot by the main road, feeling tired of the dust, and I deliberated how I had spent so much time there. I couldn't understand who I had become. It felt as though for the weeks before I had been someone completely strange to me.

But even between it all, the strings never left. Everywhere I went, there they were. Red, black, red, black.

Thinking back, it seems almost as if he knew. He could never let me go completely; he always had to have a part of me caught up in his essence.

It wasn't enough to forget about him, no. He had to stay away, but who was I to expect something like that? That was the thing about Alex; he didn't spare a thought for anything short of himself.

How could I have known? My god, how did I not know?

November of '09, I remember everything as though it's a movie playing before my eyes. Jennifer had knocked on my door at 9:02am, and I walked through the long house to let her in, wondering why she hadn't just stormed in as usual. Alena was busy doing her hair, humming as she walked around the house, muttering about not being able to find her hair tie.