“You can’t avoid me forever,” his voice wafted through the thin bathroom doors. I chewed roughly on my lip, hoping that the pain would provide a sufficient enough distraction. It didn’t and I ended up chewing through part of my lip entirely. Eventually, I decided to leave the bathroom, my hair in a frizzy mess and my lip now swollen and beginning to bruise. “What happened yesterday?” he asked, giving me a once over. “Shit, did I do that to you?” Harry traced his fingers across the tear in my lip. I flinched away from him, avoiding his gaze as I walked to the other side of the room to put some distance between us.
“I don’t know what’s happening here, Harry. Sometimes I feel like all it is, is just you teaching me how to do things that I would otherwise be inept at; and sometimes I feel like you take it too far and you don’t stop when I ask you to, which makes me feel uncomfortable,” I mumbled, stumbling over my words as my heart beat picked up. I was never one for confronting my emotions, much less sharing them with other people. Harry frowned as he watched me, guilt flashing in his eyes.
“I’m not trying to use you, Nadia… I thought it was what you wanted. I’ll stop if you ask me to, I’m sorry,” he mumbled, coming closer to me. I wanted to turn around and run away, but there was something trustworthy in his jade eyes that made me stay.
Something about Harry drew me in, but I also knew that he was dangerous and most likely bad for me. He was alluring, mysterious, and made me feel safe. Most of the time. I enjoyed the feeling of comfort I got whenever I was with him, but then he’d take it too far and it felt too dangerous and too familiar. It made me want to push him away and distance myself from the danger, because it was a reminder of what happened before I met him.
“Nadia, say something…” I didn’t realize that Harry had wrapped his arms around my waist, until he spoke. I breathed deeply as I stood my ground, not letting myself slump against him and search for the comfort that I knew he could provide.
“I’m not sure what this is…” I mumbled, playing with the seam of his shirt.
“It’s a hundred percent cotton,” Harry responded, smoothing his hand over his shirt. A smile broke through the distress on my face as I looked up at him.
“Be serious, Harry,” I murmured, lowering my eyes back down to the edge of his shirt, to distract me from everything else.
“You’re thinking too much, Nadia. I’m just trying to show you what you don’t already know about yourself. I’m sorry if I took it too far and I’ll listen to you from now on, but you need to stop over thinking everything. It doesn’t have to mean anything if you don’t want it to. People do this kind of stuff all the time-”
“Yes but I don’t! I’m not that kind of person. I’m not normal. I’m not comfortable being touched and I’m not good at making friends. I’m don’t show emotion and I do weird things. Like sometimes I talk to myself and sometimes I just keep repeating the same word because I find it funny, like falafel. I’m weird and it’s not in a good way. I’m notgood for you, Harry. We’re two completely different people and I don’t think that whatever this is, between us, is a good idea,” I paused to take a deep breath, trying to calm myself down as I finished spewing my stream of consciousness. Harry smiled, before tapping my nose lightly with his forefinger.
“You’re right, falafel is a funny word to say,” he murmured, placing a kiss against my forehead. I frowned, pulling away from him.
“Look, I know that you’re trying to be my friend and my teacher at the same time, but you need to pick one. I can’t handle this kind of complex relationship, as ridiculous as that may seem. I have definitive categories for everyone and I force people into the separate boxes into my mind. You have to choose which box you’re going to fit into Harry, because I can’t have you in both the ‘platonic tutor’ and ‘sort-of friend’ categories at the same time,” I insisted.
I’ll admit, even for me, it sounded crazy. But that was the way my mind functioned. I liked organizing and labelling things, even in my own mind, and I had rehearsed certain ways to act around different categories. I was professional and aloof around teachers, and I was playful and caring around friends. I couldn’t be both with Harry because it would make me feel… kerfuffled.
“You know what I think?” Harry asked, brushing my hair away from my face in an absent-minded manner. “I think you’re over-thinking again. You put everything into lists and categories and try to organize your life because it’s your way of controlling something that you know you have no control over,” Harry explained.
“No control over what?” I asked, feeling my skin prickle with irritation and anxiety. I knew what he was going to say, because that’s just how women are. Women know, we just know. Even if we didn’t know, we would know. Men might not get that, but women will, because we know.
“Your life,” he answered. I felt my eyes narrow as my jaws grinded together.
“You think you know me, don’t you Harry? Who are you to judge me, and tell me what I can and cannot control? This is just your misogynistic way of suppressing my value and my freedom, by telling me that I’m not even in control of my own damn life. Just because I have a particular way of structuring my life, doesn’t mean I don’t have control of everything in it,” I snapped, pushing him away. Harry tried arguing his case but I ignored him and waited silently for him to leave the room.
He was right, of course. I organized things because I felt like if I broke everything down into categories, and then organized those categories, I could somehow control things.
I felt like if I could understand and rationalize everything that happened, somehow it would make everything ok. That’s how I dealt with everything that happened to me before. I’d break it down so that it would make sense rationally.
For example, I’d apply Darwin’s theory of evolution and analysed the psychological stimulation of men, and come up with the theory that I couldn’t really avoid what happened, because men are just biologically wired to have se.xual urges that they are not able to control.
I knew deep down my theories were bullsh.it, but I didn’t want to think about anything else. I already over-thought enough. When something bad would happen that I couldn’t control, I’d try to explain it scientifically. If I could understand it, I would know why it happened and it would be ok.
It wasn’t ok, though. It never was. I just used science and reasoning as a comfort blanket that I could hide under, when the truth was too difficult to deal with. Rationality was my super glue. My whole life had been ripped apart by the people that had been in it, and I tried to piece it back together using reason.
Everyone had deep rooted reasons for committing sin. My problems – my social anxiety and inability to form functional relationships – were based on fear of abandonment and rejection, which I’d experienced throughout my life.
The only defence mechanisms I’d built were avoidance – avoid people, avoid problems – and my sarcastic humour, which was owed more so to Chandler Bing, who was the poster child for sarcastic wit, stemming from a troubled childhood.
I sat down softly on the bed, playing with the fingers as I thought about my life. I shouldn’t have kicked Harry out of the room for pointing out something that was so obviously true, but I didn’t feel comfortable with the fact that he could understand and analyse me so easily, because it meant that he would learn more about me than I was willing to share.
My head fell into my palms as I tried to think of something other than the sh.it that happened in my past. I could try to get over everything that happened, but I was angered by the fact that it left me so f.ucked up. I couldn’t have one decent relationship with another person without completely freaking out.
I wanted to be able to be a normal person. I wanted to know what I liked and what I didn’t, and where my boundaries lay. I wanted to know how I felt about Harry. I needed him, I couldn’t deny that. Harry may not fix me, but he could take away the confusion I felt around men, and that was more help than I’d ever received from anyone else.
I didn’t realize then, that the confusion I felt around Harry wasn’t actually confusion. He was pulling out emotions from me that I had locked up and stored in the back of my mind long ago. The feeling of safety that I felt around him made me feel less guarded, and my emotions were trying to break free again. It wasn’t confusion at all. Harry made me feel.
Ooooh I like that little cliffhanger there :D is it the end of a sentence, is it not? YOU’LL NEVER KNOW. Feel what? Feel emotion? Feel something else? Or just simply ‘feel’? SO AMBIGUOUS, I LOVE IT.
Wow I sound like a flamboyant, gay male fashion-designer. Sorry :P I’m just a normal, 18 year old teenage girl who spends too much time writing and not enough time doing things with actual human beings.
f.y.i. kerfuffle is a real word. It’s in the oxford dictionary: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/kerfuffle?q=kerfuffle
(or just type in ‘oxford dictionary kerfuffle’ into google)
Also, sorry this chapter was so deep, dark and depressing. I did try to lift the mood by using my ‘chandler bing’ humour :p or should I say… Ms Chanandler Bong ;)