luke
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The likes of Asari bumping into Ashton and I before, then her being brought to one of the meetings that day seemed so predestined, as though the universe had been looking out for us, pushing our pieces into a whole puzzle - or rather, Michael pushing her into the puzzle.
I couldn't tell if I wanted to curse at Mike or thank him endlessly for bringing her. Anyone but her, I wanted to think - but please only her, another thought invaded.
It felt almost so lackluster to suddenly meet her in the hallway, all of colliding shoulders and goosebump arms making themselves known. I myself had goosebumps but not due to the overly cold air conditioning, but rather seeing her face as though I'd seen a ghost.
She stood before me and I thought I'd finally lost my mind. The bus station girl was right there wide-eyed and gaping in utter shock. Plus the fact that she donned all in white, I was one step away to convincing myself I'd died and she'd been there to greet me.
Anyway, I thought the interaction to be a slight bit lackluster due to the sole reason that I knew her more than she knew me, so I had more the confidence to strike up jokes and extend a friendly gesture more than she. All she knew was that I was some guy she bumped into in the hallway, since I recall she'd been in too much of a hurry back in the bus station to even look Ashton or I in the eyes.
Asari.
I thought the name suited her.
It sounded curious, adventurous, perhaps daring to the point of danger - but these were just my presumptive ways shining through.
I happened to read through the notebook pages she dropped, thinking that I wouldn't get another chance of stumbling upon her again, and found myself entertained by the inner workings of her mind.
She liked to trail off about what she noticed that day, whether it was a smoker's yellowed teeth or the dirty undersides of some janitor's nails then what she thought about the unkempt habits of people. I found her to be quite observant.
From one journal page she wrote on, she seemed to have been detailing out on a list all the things she needed as though she was planning on going for a vacation. She wrote down an address beneath the name Darlene Hood, even underlining it harshly with her blue ink.
Her handwriting seemed just as flustered as she had been on the day she bumped into Ashton.
The girl remained a fixture in my mind as I cleared the meeting room of its cushions and chairs, tucking them away in a cupboard so the next therapist would find them neatly stored the next day for their meeting.
It was a task I did almost mechanically, something my mind could shut down to as I did my work, let the afterthoughts of members, family, business fill my head instead of counting just how many threads there were unraveling from each of the cushions. I'd count and bore myself to death.
At 24, I found myself as a group therapist to ex addicts of all sorts. Drugs, liquor, smoking, sex - you name it. Hence why my groups tend to be the largest out of all the rest.
There's usually a separation between the addictions in normal group therapy. How there's one group for ex drug addicts, then another of its own group for ex alcoholics, so on and so forth - but my dad decided that an addiction was an addiction, that it mattered less if it was to smoking or sex, or some like it.
So he made it all for one group, pushing the responsibility unto me since I'd already been studying psychology. Albeit it was just under my free time, I had no plans of being a therapist in the future, and yet I still found myself taking on the job and filling my Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays with the meetings.
I'd been doing this for a year, finding some sense of normality in how abnormal this all was.
I supposed that it looked fine and as it was from the outer perspective. We were just some people trying to help, gathering others, grouping in a church, housing some - and it sometimes made me uneasy of how dishonest it all was.
But I couldn't leave now, could I?
I was inherently going to be some larger part in it despite my not wanting to, I was weaved into its creation and I would be weaved into its finishes. There wasn't any way out. I could be a loose thread here and there but my past would still be intertwined in the same tapestry.
It was a frustrating thing to think about - the whole thing with the organisation and my part in it, what I contributed, what I was meant to contribute.
"Knock, knock," A friend's familiar voice chided in between my thoughts and I turned to look at the doorway. There stood Mariana, leaning against the doorframe. "You still busy?"
I shook my head and cleared the tables, throwing in the trash into the bin. "Not anymore, no. You need something?"
She gave a light laugh. "No. I just have some donuts and coffee in my room. No one else is around so I wondered if you wanted some, maybe talk,"
The idea sounded tiring, if I was being honest. I just wanted to sit outside beneath the night and doze off until some gardener woke me in the morning or something.
But I liked Mariana, too. She was the person you could go to anything with and she'd tell you some ground breaking advice that you'd remember for the rest of your life. She also had a knack for making you remember that the organisation, the church, the garden, whatever bullshit we grew in the land, it wasn't all that was in the world. Unlike our fairytale block of meetings and comfort cries, Mariana was cold hard facts and frustratingly right reasons. I liked it when she grounded me terribly. I liked to float upwards into my own bubble atmosphere of smoke and complaints, she tended to burst that bubble and drag me back to the cold, hard soil.
I appreciate it most of the time.
"Sounds good," I replied after a second or two of thinking. "I'll just finish up some things and I'll meet you there,"
She nodded and turned to disappear.
As I fixed the chairs back to the side in a stack, I couldn't help but notice the shy hint of some florally perfume, strong in its sense but timid in its coverage.
I stopped to think for a moment, sniffing once to investigate where it could possibly come from, until I leant down on the collars of my jacket. Evidently, it was there at its most pungent.
I chuckled at the realisation that this must've been Ase's doing, her perfume having rubbed off onto my jacket, now asking for my attention.
I continued to linger in the scent of her as I made my out of the meeting room, closing the doors and walking through the main hall. I kept my hands in my pocket, my mind in its own pocket in some thought of Ase.
Her journal pages needed to be returned, I recognised that much - assure her that I hadn't read them just for her comfort, maybe strike up another conversation if she didn't think I was a creep.
Then to the Grief and Loss meeting room, I stopped by the doorway as Mariana did by my meeting room.
My eyes scanned the room and spotted her squatted on one of the cushions, half-bitten donut in one hand and her phone in the other.
"Do you have sugar?" I asked as I made my way silently through the room, squatting across her and grabbing the waiting coffee cup in front of me.
"I already put in two for you," Mariana responded, putting her phone face down on the floor and leaning back, snagging a bite from her donut. "Take one. There's a glaze, chocolate one, and uh... I think two with sprinkles,"
I kneeled to look over the donut box sitting between us, examining what was left. "No jelly filling?" I asked, slightly dismayed.
I took a glazed one and sat back, starting on it and keeping the coffee warm on my knee.
"Did you get any new members?" Mariana asked, sucking at her finger when she finished with her donut.
"Yeah, three. Not that eventful, honestly - though, one of them was a little hard on opening up to everyone," I bit off a large portion of my donut. "I get it. Twenty people around, complete strangers, but we were all pretty supportive and made sure to show it. The other two were hesitant but they gave in anyway, seeing that everyone else was too,"
"But the tough one?" Mariana inquired, taking a sip of her coffee as she leant one elbow on her knee.
I shrugged, not knowing what to say. "He didn't say as much as the others, but everyone made sure to be friendly. Maybe he'll come back Saturday, who knows,"
I recalled on the new member, his hesitant face beneath the overhead lights, almost furrowed and frowning, his arms and legs crossed as though he was warding away some ghost. He'd been stiff and unresponsive for most of the meeting until it came to his turn that he had to speak up.
Introduced himself as Calum. No last name, no age, no job, not anything about his past. Calum who's addicted, or was addicted, to "drugs". That was all anybody knew. His name and that he had been, at one point, taken by some unnamed pill or substance.
It was obvious he wasn't ready to open up to such a large group, and I couldn't blame him for it. I saw the way he screwed up his face when someone talked about their addiction, the way he looked at them so intently as though he were right there with them witnessing it all.
He held great empathy for those who'd been through addiction, even when it wasn't to the same thing. I knew he understood the pain of diving into uncharted depths, be it the bottom of a liquor or pill bottle.
He, however, came up to me at the end of the meeting and apologised for giving everyone a harder time, swearing that he'd only ever told one person before of the whole thing.
What a difficult whole thing it must've been, I thought, but he wouldn't have been the first to be so close.
I hated to think so instinctively, matter of time.
"You? You got anyone new?" I asked in return, though knowing that Asari would probably come up sooner or later out of this reciprocation.
Mariana nodded eagerly, leaning forward as though she were about to tell me a scary story between the campfire. "Two girls, one hesitant, one kinda closed off,"
I wondered which of the two Ase was.
She seemed quite open when I met her, playful, even. She smiled a lot at me in the hallway, though was more tense after the meeting, I still held hope that she was the former of Mariana's two troubles.
But she did nothing to confirm nor deny my thoughts, as, to code and conduct, we couldn't legally share information (specific as names, details, the like) of anyone from our meetings.
At least she couldn't.
She'd been through uni for this, had a degree, and was a licensed professional. Something I and a lot of other group "therapists" were not.
Nobody needed to know that, of course, but it mattered that I depended on sharing such details.
"Second girl, it must've been some hard shit she went through. She was a lot... less together, compared to the others. But that's my observation and opinion anyway, I don't know what really happened," Mariana continued, seeming to get lost in hazy thought.
I shot up a brow and looked at her inquisitively. "What did she say in there?"
She shrugged, as though she herself wasn't sure of the words uttered in her own meeting. "Not much, but a lot at the same time. Said that there was a lot of cleaning up?" She looked across at me, a horrified look across her brown eyes.
I had a feeling we shared a similar thought on the second girl. I knew she didn't often get very messy deaths in her meetings, but the simple muttering of 'a lot of cleaning up' seemed to imply enough to shake her.
"Jesus," I sighed out, imagining her terror at the words when they were only newly whispered. "Did you get to talk to her after the meeting?"
We usually talked with the members who didn't say as much, put it out that we weren't put off by their guardedness, that, in fact, we thought it was okay and we weren't in any rush to hear their story if they weren't comfortable with sharing.
Most often, they shared considerably a lot more on the next meeting.
"I didn't get to," Mariana answered with a disappointed look to her. "Everyone was swarming around, she was practically arm in arm with everyone else,"
I nodded, dismayed for her.
"Shame," I huffed, grabbing my coffee.
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"I don't feel your love, but I can't ask you all my questions," I played around with the lyrics and matched it to different melodies, tapping my fingers against the bone of my elbow trying to imagine what it would be like if it was played with a drum.
"The words keep piling up when you show me my reflection,"
I sang the small portion of a song I'd made up a few minutes before, pacing back and forth in the garden right behind the church, cigarette between my fingers, smoke escaping my lips.
It was a nasty habit that my mom kept asking me to stop, but I never really did. I liked the feeling of the smoke's warmth in the back of my throat as though it was setting my insides in a fire, the unnatural aftertaste it left on my tongue, and the way I just looked cooler in general with it in my hand.
One vice after another, at the time, I simply put my 'cool look' before my health.
The enormous garden on the block wasn't all that bad. Though I didn't give much thought to gardening and all the effort put into the flowers, I certainly liked using its complicated maze-like turnings as a hideaway after meetings.
I liked walking through it, smoke in hand, thoughts ablaze, and reaching to the end point with the remains of my cigar crushed under my foot.
The house far across was something I admired, too. It looked more beautiful in the night, especially when the moon hung, its light sheening gracefully over the horrid thing.
I turned to look at it, indeed seeing how it almost shined against the evening darkness, its yellow-lit windows glowing like multiple eyes.
I sighed and took a drag from my cigar, tapping it lightly afterwards and watching it slowly burn itself to ashes. There was something poetic about that, I found, something profound in burning oneself for someone else's toxic habit, only to find that you've reduced yourself to ashes by the end of it.
I kept that thought in mind as I walked past a row of bush of flowers, golden yarrows, california asters, and something else from behind - hibiscus, I recognised, their pinkish shade desaturated in the night.
Once again, I'm reminded by the girl I bumped into, her hibiscus blush caused by the embarrassment and the chill entirely noticeable from where I was.
Could that 'one kinda closed off' girl, as told by Mariana, been her?
I worried myself with the different scenarios if it actually had been her. What happened? Who had she lost?
Mariana hadn't shared who the girl had lost as we started talking about the Saturday meetings, who we thought would return, and if my dad would make an appearance.
I was concerned more for the newer members more so than anyone else. Seeing them walk through the church doors felt like watching mice inching their way to the mouse traps, bright, unknowing smiles plastered on their faces.
Ase snagged my thoughts once again. Little mouse already staring the mouse trap dead in the eyes.
I wondered what she thought about this all, if perhaps everyone's friendliness might ward her off. I hoped it would, anyway. But who gets scared off by support? None that I knew of, but hoped she was some miraculous exception. She and that friend of hers, Calum.
I stared at the cigarette within my hold, watching as it fell apart at the tip - becoming a muse to my smoked state.
I felt some sort of a broken melody coming to me, the way most melodies often did - broken and in portions, like a savoured meal. I always had to put them together like some torn piece of cloth, slowly revealing if my idea of a song was good or complete trash.
"Go on and light me like a cigarette, even if it might be something you'll regret," I sang, dropping the remains of the smokey poison onto the soil and grinding it with the heel of my foot.
Just as I did so, something buzzed hysterically in my jacket pocket, making my heart stop for a second at the surprise.
"Jesus!" I hissed, stepping aside to take out the phone from the pocket then furrowing when I realised I still had my phone in my pant pocket and that this phone looked nothing like mine.
Must be Ase's, I figured, turning it over to see its cover. It was rather dark to see clearly but I saw enough of its design, something white with black orchid outlines.
I turned it again to its screen, someone named 'Darlene' calling and not giving up.
I hoped she'd find this useless and would end the line, but she continued until voice mail probably came up.
Note, return to Ase tomorrow at the diner.
I stared a little longer at the phone as though it was some polar bear in the middle of the desert. Now what? Put it back in the pocket? Let it sit there?
It felt small in my hand but I imagined it fit Ase's just right. She touched this, the thought passed my mind and I shook it off, pressing the home button and revealing her lock screen.
There was the time, the date, the day, and her face, holding a cup of tea or coffee to nose and squinting her eyes to an exaggerated smile. Beside her, someone I didn't recognise, someone far younger, a boy caught off-guard at the photo being taken.
Ase's hair was a few inches shorter and there was something more youthful to her. Perhaps it was the smiling eyes. The Ase I met as of late didn't seem to hold the same sort of brightness.
Once again, I'm interrupted by the Darlene caller popping up on the screen, buzzing and buzzing to no end even when I let it stay as it was for a whole minute.
She ended the call then called again.
This must've been the Darlene Hood that Ase wrote about. They lived with each other but besides her address, I didn't know much about her.
I contemplated going over and returning Ase's phone, seeing that she probably needed it, but wouldn't that just be creepy. Stranger comes over, hands you your phone, tells you he knew your address from your journal page that you so fatefully dropped the actual first time you met.
This is a great way never to see someone again.
I opted for visiting her at work the next day.
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yay a chap
sorry this took kinda long
i was in a bad place uh
mentally ig and doing stuff
gets hard. im still there tho
but writing helps, also, oddly,
seeing crackhead comments
is such a great mood lifter.