Is Not What I Want, Right?

I try my best to push all of the confusion of thoughts out of my mind and then my phone buzzes and I don’t even need to look to know who it is and what they want from me. Well, actually that’s not entirely true. It’s one of two people, both of whom apparently want the same from me.

The last thing I want to do right now in this world is go out dancing. But that’s what they both want from me and what they both expect, that and a whole lot more no doubt.

God I wish things were simple. Falling back onto the bed in this room I can close my eyes and almost remember when they used to be. The first time I was in this bed, just lying here after the day I’d had and the worst thing I had to worry about was that I was a little drained from the day. I had so much hope, so many plans that were just spinning up, and in a month or so they’d all be forgotten.

But there was a simplicity to the life I lived back then. Everything was far more streamlined, for lack of a better term. Of course that was because for the most part my circle was far smaller than it was right now.

Rachel. Blake. Lucas. Three people who wouldn’t give me the time of day in my old life but now were pressing in on me from the outside. Two of them demanding my time and one of them occupying my space and all of it far more confusing than when things were so much simpler.

When it was just Eddie and me, the two of us alone against the world. When he could be bitter and I could be conciliatory and it could all make some kind of sense.

Don’t get me wrong. I know that things made a little sense right now. I understand how the world works, you know? Boy and girl and all the rest of it. Insert tab A into slot B or sometimes slot B against slot B, if that’s your jam.

But none of that was what I wanted, what I felt in my heart of hearts. It’s none of what I’d needed in my entire life and now here I was in a body I’d barely even begun to understand and I had to contend with multiple people trying to set me up to get me alone and all I wanted to do was curl up under this blanket and give up on things but I won’t.

This life isn’t mine, but I’m making the same goddamn mistakes.

I don’t need a jump forward into the future of this body to know where she winds up if I just spend the night in bed curled up under the blankets hoping for the world to go away. I wind up alone in a bar nursing a drink on my birthday while across the bar someone else is happy because they’re celebrating their birthday with friends. I wind up bitter and alone and too lonely to even admit to myself that is what I am. I wind up right where I was when this whole mess began.

I don’t know that I believe in second chances. Maybe this whole thing is some kind of spasm my brain is having, a hallucination as I lie in an alleyway somewhere after having had a massive stroke. Or maybe a strange lady in a tent really did make me a woman and send me back in time. Either way I don’t know that I have the luxury of wallowing in my own pity. If I don’t want to wind up screwing up my life again, if I don’t want to wind up screwing up Emily’s life for her, then I need to make a different choice this time.

At the very least I need to choose.

Dancing. Drinking. Fun. I’m going to go out tonight and I’m going to have a good time and yeah this is the same choice I made last time but this time is different. This time multiple people are reaching out and trying to make sure that I’ll be there and yeah some of them I don’t want to see but they sure as hell want to see me. The only question now is which version of me they’ll see.

I turn to my boxes, to the ones that I share with Emily, and start tearing through them with a passion trying to find just the right outfit for me that will make me turn heads. I work myself into a tizzy, sweating beneath my heavy sweater as I try out all sorts of different combinations to try to suit the theme because if I’m doing this I’m doing all of this, I’m going to buy in as best I can.

But no matter what I try and no matter what I put together I know it just isn’t working and god I know why, even if I don’t want to admit it.

I know what I need. I know who I need to be. I know what I need to do.

And so I turn away from the boxes that we share and to the other ones, the ones that are hers alone.

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