Paranoia

The movies have not been kind to me.

I'm stuck here in this place. It's not a city and it's not a suburb, it's ten years before its peak or ten years after it, the industrial outskirts of a transient people. Somehow this place keeps on existing, but the every block feels like ruins. Cars never move, lights seem dim and faces seem to dissolve before I can see them. The sky is gray and where it meets the asphalt is the faintest, jagged edge of a horizon line in the brief gaps between smokestacks where we can see it. Torrential rain has fallen for weeks in skirmishes and if I believed in a higher power I'd pray for them to mix some soap up in the rain, in the desperate hope that it might dissolve the decades of dinge and dirt built up impossibly on every surface. I am stuck with the realization that I'm the only person here, and the previous owners lost pride in her a long time ago.

Right, the movies. I wasn't in them, but boooy, are they in me.

They've taught me something, and I'm not sure I'm all that pleased to have learned it. The thing about knowing is you can't un-know, and irrevocabilities pretty dangerous I guess. It starts with the basics, and all these crime shows, ya know? The essential fact that no matter how hard you try, we're reactionary, if someone wants to hurt us, they can... and we only have control over how we handle it, if we can. So you start looking over your shoulder, just to be safe.

And that's good, ya know? But you're not the only victim, there's everyone else. Maybe I'm the only one who thinks this way... that might be a good thing. Someone leaves, and if they don't come back soon enough I start wondering if they got jumped in the hall, if they've been dragged somewhere, or worse. I pull at the thread like lightning, rapidly unravelling the whole thing, ya know? Trying to figure out who, why, what, and nothing's happened.

I push food around on my plate because I've been a little sick for a real long time and I can't really taste anymore. My tongue's been burnt a few too many times.

It's the big twist in the movies. The best friend, the lover, the business partner is working for the other side. You're exposed. Vulnerable. And here's where they've been so horribly, tragically abusive to me. They've broken it.

How's it supposed to work when every time you open your mouth, you double check your sentence to make sure they don't know too much? When you're watching them for any sign of a secret, in casual conversation? How can you be close when everyone's gotta be evaluated like an enemy?

I haven't been burnt that many times. Almost wish I had, it'd make it all make sense. Someone broke me, but I know that's not the case: It's always been broken, by the nature of it, and I'm the only one I've met who really knows it. All love is trust, ya know? Romantic or friendship or affection for your kid, or your dog... hell, school frickin' pride. It's all love, and it's all trust. You think you're safe with those people and in those places.

Love isn't a word that has a damn to do with affection. It's about how much you're gonna let yourself be vulnerable to another human being, how much of yourself you're gonna expose and the whole thing gives me the heebiejeebies. The movies... I've watched the main guy lose everything so many times I've learned that you ain't got nothin' but yourself. So how all these people do it I don't know, except that they're probably on a slow train to getting fucked over. I try not to make eye contact with 'em because I can't bear knowing that they're gonna walk into it blind.

I close the curtains and kiss her on the forehead. She's asleep. My little girl, her little green eyes are the only thing with any color in a world that's gone gray. I feel like I'm naked in the cold and the rain, I can feel the eyes all over me, evaluating, aiming.

I swallow hard, and my shaking hand brings a cup of cold coffee to my lips. It slides down my throat without me noticing, and I sit there for god knows how long, eyes stuck open.

The movies have not been kind to me.