"Can't you see? I'm just like Scarlett. Everyone who has the guts to care about me, I destroy... except I'm not even as brave as her. I'm a coward, I can't go out there and face the world, I can't make myself care anymore.
"And in place of courage, I have self-awareness, but what good does that do? All it does is give me an assumtion of superiority and the knowledge that I'm a worthless human being."
My breath seems endless, but what else is there to say, now that he knows everything, now that I've bared what I know of my soul to him? I turn my head and look toward where I expect him to be, and he is there, with his head in his hands, unmoving but for the gentle rising and falling of his chest as silhouetted by the late afternoon sun.
Eventually he seems to come back to this room from wherever he was, and he raises his head and looks toward me. The sun streams from behind him directly onto my face, so I can't make out his features.
Whatever he sees in my face makes him frown. "Kaia, do you really expect me to believe that? Scarlett is a fictional character, representing in one woman many of the flaws which can individually occur in real women. You have flaws, yes, but who doesn't? And more importantly, why would you let yourself believe this?"
"It's not a question of letting myself believe something, it's facing facts," I interrupt.
"You think these are facts? You tell yourself they are, and they become set in stone. If you wanted to, you could be the most loving person I've ever met, but you choose to wallow in your mistakes and your flaws instead of trying to learn from them."
"And that's my greatest flaw."
He shrugs. "Only you can make that choice."
My legs ache. Funny how I didn't notice that before. I sit down woodenly in one of the deck chairs. New bug bite on my leg -- scratching it through my jeans won't help.
Suddenly, I'm angry, furious at him for trying to change me, for only thinking of my inadequacies. He may be my best friend, and I do trust him, but -- "Why do you insist on trying to make me change?"
He'd turned around, now he turns back to face me again. He's about to speak but I stop him with "Hal, I can't see you when the sun's behind you." I sound incredibly selfish, but thinking about others was never one of my strengths.
He moves toward me and sits down, near enough to touch me but far enough to maintain the sense of conflict and tension.
"Because I believe you can change, and I refuse to watch you destroy your life and the lives of everyone who cares about you." He hesitates, then adds, "And my life, I guess, although I don't have much besides you and my violin."
I pause to consider this, to let these words seep in. Have I destroyed his life? Will I? I am struck with the immensity of my behavior, the effects that I have on everyone around me. Is this who I want to be?
Do I still have a choice?
***
I was 18 when I first realized how destructive I could be. My boyfriend of almost six months broke up with me essentially because I'd been ignoring him, and my mom was furious. My dad never said anything, but she told me that he thought I'd treated Andy pretty badly.
Relationships are hard work, not just the romantic ones, and for a while I was adrift with only my 16-year-old sister to anchor me. Then she and my parents died in a fire at the end of my freshman year of undergraduate, and suddenly there was no one who cared about me as a person -- all of my teachers and peers were concerned with my musical development.
It took three years for me to get over my sexual nervousness and moral objections. It took another five to realize that I sucked at committment but didn't want to screw someone I'd just met, and there was no middle ground, so I retreated back into my shell.
Friendships were even harder: everyone who had something in common with me ended up disliking everything else about my personality, except Hal. He became the rock I fell back on every time someone else rejected or dumped me. He never complained.
But now I find myself questioning our relationship. Was he there for me just because he wanted to change me? What does he see in me that no one else has ever seen?
***
"You tell yourself they are, and they become set in stone..."
"Because I believe you can change..."
"Only you can make that choice."
What he doesn't understand is that I chose long ago, when I was with Andy. What he thinks I have the ability to do, I could have done then -- worked harder, put more into the relationship -- but it's too late now. I let myself be lazy then, and now those habits are set in the concrete of my behavior.
My life isn't over by any means; I still have the ability to play the cello, but any chance at a great human love is gone for me.
