Table for one

I have been 21 for one month and four days. I suppose something magical is supposed to happen when you turn 21, why else would the government entrust me with alcohol? Though the interesting thing is something has happened. For one, I haven't been drunk since my birthday. It's not for lack of trying, I go out at least twice a week, but more from lack of desire. I believe there are moments when everything changes in your life. Now, you might not realize that a moment has just occured and the effects might not be felt for weeks or months; but with the benefit of hindsight you can see that moment for what it was, life changing. That night for me was July 29. It has become so infamous that my roommate and I simply refer to it as "that night". I can't explain what all happened that night, nor do I want to. What I will say is this; I pushed my boundaries to see where they might lead and when I found their inevitable end, it freaked me out. I swore off alcohol the next morning but that ended the next weekend when my friend Anthony came to town. And then my best-friend flew in from Montana and so we had to party it up. Every time I woke up in the morning I wished I had had one drink less (or two or three some nights). It wasn't that I found anything wrong with drinking in and of itself. It was that I didn't like the way I acted when I was intoxicated.
After Mike and I had been dating for about 9 months he proposed. Granted, he was incredibly wasted, yet he got down on one knee in the middle of a pool hall and asked for my hand in marriage. He told me that "a drunk man's words are a sober man's thoughts". I believed this. I still turned him down, of course, but from that day on I believed that the way I acted when i was drunk was the real me. What was I like? Well I loved to dance, could talk to anyone, and was superb at flirting. I was a riot. My friends bought me drinks if I didn't have cash because they loved the ball of energy I turned into. Then things began to change.
I would sit watching people, wanting to be real. I wanted to say things I couldn't say before and wanted people to believe them. I remember falling head over heels for a friend of mine and finally telling him...when I was drunk. The next morning I felt like a fool. I had meant everything but the alcohol had voided all of it. Two days later was my birthday...
Now here I am. It's a friday night and I am writing on my computer instead of going out. This is probably the first friday I have stayed in since school began. Truth be told, I haven't had a drop of alcohol all week. I even bought my favorite wine to eat with dinner and ended up not opening it. Maybe something magical does happen when you turn 21, alcohol is no longer forbidden so I no longer crave it. Though I know that is a load of bollocks. I was England all last year and I partied with the best of them. Maybe I'm just growing up. I'm not saying I want to give up alcohol. I love sitting back with friends and drinking a cold Shiner Boch.
What I know is that I already have enough regrets to last a lifetime and I don't need any help making more.

I was raped.

This is something I can write, but I've never been able to say. Something that I hadn't thought about in years but was reminded of last week. I was on campus at Poor Yorick's Coffe Shop when I saw him. He was standing a couple people ahead of me and when I walked by, before noticing him, he had non-chalantly said "Hi". Remember how in those movies, moments like these are always shot in slow motion? Well it's true. I felt like I stared at him for hours, but it was only a second of hesitation before I responded with a tentative "hello". I quickly shuffled back into line, clutching my sandwich desperately. I wanted to run away, I looked around hurriedly, hoping there was someone else I knew. I felt trapped as if all the air was leaving the shop. Slowly the line dwindled and he paid for his order. Afterwards, he walked up to me and said "hello" again. I looked at him, unsure what to do. I hadn't seen him in over two years and I had so much to say but nothing was coming to my mind. Then he said it. He said he was sorry. "I've changed a lot in the last year and I want you to know I'm so sorry about what I did". I wanted to tell him that that wasn't enough, that I was 18 when it happend, that I had been a virgin. That I had thought of him everytime a friend recounted her story of her first time. That he was why I had become Pro-Choice. But I just stared blankly back, which prompted him to apologize again, assuming that I wasn't hearing him. Finally, I smiled (I don't know how but I did) and I told him I forgave him. I told him that it was two years ago and that people change and I accept that. I told him I had changed, that I was older and stronger. I didn't want to give him credit for all that I had gone through since then. I didn't want to confess my depression that had left me immobile for months. I couldn't let him think that he had been a positive change in my life but in reality the result of that depression, the counseling, my turn as a couselor to other young girls. It made me wonder if all that would have happened if I hadn't agreed to date him.

He walked away and I was left thinking all these things. I remembered what I had written on my facebook profile about "shit happens". I knew I had to live by my own words and retain the forgiveness I had given him years ago. But his confession had an opposite reaction on me. Now that I knew that he knew all along he had been wrong I wanted to make him feel worse. I wanted to tell him that I didn't forgive him, that I never could. I wanted to scream about how horrible of a person he was. Then I remembered my words again. "Shit happens, not forgiving someone only ruins your own life and proves how selfish you are to think you are the only one who has ever been hurt". And I knew that I would forgive him.

I've seen him twice since, he works in a building I have class in. He always says "hello" and I always respond. I have no desire for more or less. His presence reminds me of all that I have done and been forgiven for.

"Forgive them father, for they know not what they do"

and even if they do, forigve them anyways because life is too short to be angry.


Update: I saw him a lot that semester. It turned out that he worked in the same building that I had a class in. I thought our meetings twice a week were a cruel joke being played out by God at first. Then I realized that there had to be a bigger meaning. With each tentative 'Hello' I began to see him more as a person. There is something he took away from me that night but the ability to humanize him is what gave me the power to truly forgive him. Before, I had marginalized his actions by assuming he didn't know what he did. After he apologized, I had to come to grips with the fact that he had known full well the consequences of his actions- and he had still committed them. That was the hardest thing to forgive. I feel sorry for those who are never able to confront those who have perpetrated against them. These people have to live in the fear of the unknown. It's times like these that I know there is a God.
This entry has stayed as a draft for far too long and I'm submitting it now because...well, it's the truth and sometimes the truth needs to be heard.

State Street Residential

holding fast until
the rent checks wear thin
because it hasn't sunk in, so far
when it's a drab routine
the dust starts building
until its hard to come clean
then my months stack up to an addictive crush
as if the drink weren't enough
a stagger cannot compete
there's no charm in being
a residential state street

and if i was sober
would i kill caution and stay over?
and if i was sober
would i rip hearts apart like paper?

wish you could know
better than you show
with parted lips pointing down
that the whiskey soothes more than you could ever do
and if i was sober
would i kill caution and stay over?
and if i was sober
would i rip hearts apart like paper?

er what a difference it'd make
and what a different it'd make

and if i was sober
would i kill caution and stay over?
and if i was sober
would i rip hearts apart like paper?

what a difference it'd make
and what a different it'd make

may you only touch lightly
upon my broken dreams
a thought, a mind of you
given to me in weakness and truth

years past the simple words
spoken in, may I still claim
to know your thought
in the way i knew myself that day

you write on simplicity
and I am complicated by it
had I believed once you would only
touch lightly, i had been mistaken

response to seconds, and I am left shaking