Waking Up
By Julia Gergely
- 322 reads
I was shaking. I was wearing a thick long-sleeve shirt, a sweatshirt and long pants and I was shivering. I was boiling, yet I had a visible, uncontrollable shake. My teeth were chattering, and I couldn’t keep my hands still even if I sat on them. I tried to freeze myself, but my muscles were so tense I could feel them, tightening in my legs and flexing in my arms. All my energy was focused into keeping still, and I couldn’t do it. I was pulsing, more alive than I have ever felt. My hands were surging with electricity, through my fingertips. My toes were tingling. I was focused and yet unfocused, my whole body alert, but my mind was a blur and I remember nothing except for how tremendously I was shaking.
The room I was in was even less than a room, even less than a closet. It’s size made everything seem louder and larger and deeper than it probably really was. The room was essentially a shower, a curtain, and a sink. It was tile and cold and hard. There was absolutely no comfortable position for me to sit in the cramped little space I had, and even more so because I was not alone. Yet I was comfortable. I was unaware of myself and the area I was occupying. I was not calculating every word I would say. I was hot and I was freezing and I was relaxed and I was shaking but I was comfortable.
I was undoubtedly out of my comfort zone. I was thrown into a tiny room with no time to think or plan and no warning to prepare myself, but somehow I was. I was open and I was free and I could do anything I wanted in that moment of time. I had no expectations and no disappointment and I was in control. So I was cramped and surprised and comfortable.
I am not so sure how I got there, in the shower room, in the middle of the night, shaking uncontrollably and talking to a boy I just met about God and school and drinking and divorce and anything and everything that flowed.
The conversation never turned to me and him, but somehow it did. As much as I am not so sure about how I got into that room and when I started shaking and what time it was, I was also not sure about when my life and his life stopped and suddenly it wasn’t about what I wanted to be when I grew up, it was about the right now.
Everything, all the words and talk and connection, had been flowing around me. I could see the conversation dancing in front of the my eyes and feel it tickling the back of my neck. But without warning it stopped in its tracks, dangling in the air. The entire room turned up a notch, all that I could see and even what I could not see became startlingly focused. I see and hear and smell and feel him and me in the room, conscious of ourselves together. His whispers hit me, a favorite song that I didn’t know I had playing through my ears and vibrating through my body and bouncing up and down my ribcage. Every sound was a new note singing in my veins. I could feel the air resting in the room drifting over my fingertips and fluttering around my ankles. Everything was real and beautiful and vibrant.
We were, together, him and I, sharing this paused perfection. Anything outside of our small room had disappeared and it was our number of square feet that was not only what mattered, but it was all that existed.
It was blurry and rich with emotion and not enough thinking. Because thinking makes decisions, and there was no time or thought or deciding in that cold, hard room. Because at some point or another the only sound was a heartbeat, thumping in time with my trembling hands. Quicker, quicker, quicker. It was so loud that I could hear nothing else, and soon my whole body was one motion, one whole beating heart, and so was his.
My eyes were closed, maybe because I was tired and it was late or maybe because nothing seemed real, but I didn’t need to see. I felt my lips on his and it felt ok and right and wonderful. I inhaled deeply, willing my senses to not forget his scent, his skin, his hair. And soon I realized that I was no longer shaking. My inner earthquake was over and I was still again.
I was happy. I was relieved. I was astonished. I was somewhere I belonged. And I felt him. It was more than words. I could see his emotions, now mine, filling up the room, expanding to each corner and under my skin so I was floating. Mine and his, they were heavy and light at the same time, so that they were pressing upon us but we still felt delicate. They were unbreakable and yet they were fragile and unequivocally precise.
I didn’t feel bad. No, I didn’t feel bad for one second. I felt like I was exactly where I should be.
I should’ve felt bad. I should’ve felt bad because he had a girlfriend and she loved him and he didn’t deserve her. Because I should not have been that person. I wasn’t stupid. I knew what I had gotten myself into and I didn’t try to stop it. I wanted it. I wanted him, and I was selfish and impulsive but I got what I wanted. I wasn’t thinking about other people or their reactions or anyone outside of the strange room we found ourselves in. It was just me and him, and him and me, in our small space and if only given those details on that one night it was worth it. And no one was given those details, and no one knew exactly what had happened, and so no one understood why I laughed at my actions and why I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried, regret it. They couldn’t know something so magical as living, they couldn’t understand sharing such a perfection, giving yourself so wholly, so undividedly, and being received.
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I was shaking. I looked at the people I had called friends and I almost screamed. I almost marched right up to an inch away from their faces and I could’ve so screamed so loud and so long that their ears would be ringing. I almost did that, but I didn’t. I was frozen and I was shaking and I was filled with fear and anger; the kind of fear that churns in your stomach and the kind of anger that electrifies your veins. I was exploding but I didn’t scream or yell or punch a wall or anything else I could’ve done. I cried.
I cried loud and long and relentlessly. I cried for a minute, an hour, a day. I cried until I couldn’t catch my breath. I cried until I didn’t want to catch my breath. I cried for anyone who has ever felt alone or abandoned or betrayed. For the people who had spent their whole life thinking that someone would be there for them when it really mattered, only to be disappointed. I cried for the people who now had to live in that reality. The sad, smart souls who learned the hard way that anyone can claim anything, best friends forever, always there for you, I love you so much, but words can go as quickly as they come and will dissolve into the empty air.
That was now me. I was forced to accept a world where people were paper thin and nothing was ever going to be the same. For what? I had done something horrible, but not that horrible. Not that horrible in that three days later details would be blurred and one week later it would have been like nothing had happened. In that I hadn’t harmed anyone physically, not myself, not anyone involved, (of which my friends were not included) no one. In that the only person coming out of the situation burdened with regret would be myself and no one else and that was all that mattered. I didn’t do anything horrible at all actually, just stupid.
They claimed months later that they weren’t mad at my actions, rather my reaction. And what was my reaction? I had laughed. I had done a stupid thing and I was sixteen and in high school and I was on a trip and for all those reasons I justified myself. Of course I felt bad and knew it was wrong and was never going to happen again.
Another thing they didn’t realize, these “friends” I had, was that I was just as upset with myself. Upset because whatever I did I did and there was no one to apologize to, and no way to fix it. Upset because I had laughed. If I had laughed, I must not have cared about anyone or anything or myself enough to regret what I did. And that scared me. I didn’t care, not really.
On some level it was completely fine that I laughed. I kissed a boy I just met and it was stupid but it felt real and oh well silly me look at what a dumb decision I made. I laughed because I was stupid and I fell for the same thing everyone falls for and what can I do now?
But I was wrong. I knew from the minute I opened my mouth I was wrong. I should’ve told them what they wanted to hear, I’m sorry, I regret that decision, won’t do it again. That was all true at the time and in hindsight, but apparently not obvious. I should’ve taken it a little more seriously, but what is it worth to be so serious about something so fleeting.
And still, after I have admitted my faults, I believe I shouldn’t have been so ostracized, shouldn’t have been given a berth only wide enough that I was still able to hear the whispers about me. Shouldn’t have been left in a busy airport, left in a cafeteria, left at a restaurant. Crying, crying, crying. Alone, alone, alone. Hour after hour, tear after tear, I held out hope that someone, anyone I had called a friend, would thaw the teeniest bit and make good on their promises. Their best friends, pinky swears, hug when you need it promises.
Yet no one came. My hope burned a little inside of me, crackling away into nothing. My faith in other people was jolted and I felt like a part of me had died, a naive part of me, an innocent part of me, and a new part of me woke up, a part of me that was keenly aware and overly skeptical. These are the moments that, if one sentence, not even a sentence, just a simple string of sounds had never been uttered from my mouth, in three days details would have been blurred and in one week it would have been like nothing had happened, but they had to occur and had to screw me out of everything I ever thought, and for that I guess I should be thankful.
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