Writer's warning: This is a peice of nonfiction and one that even if you know me you likely have never heard before. It is likely that when you read it you will see me differently. Read the entire thing if you start at all. It isn't pretty but it's all true.
Disease.
This is one story I have never told anyone, not my girlfriend, my best friend, not even my mother. It was about a month ago, couldn’t be longer.
A long time ago a woman gave me an illness i never sought treatment for. A disease that I have suffered for ever since.
I stormed out of my apartment before I had to suffer even one more second of inane conversation. I loved my friends and my girlfriend but I had limits to my socializing. When I hit those limits every word, every single word, rubbed me like thistle. When I need to be alone I write, but my apartment is too small to be alone. So I head to a coffee shop. Never the same one twice, I don’t like to be found.
The handle on my car door was cold on my fingers, which made me realize the snow still caked the ground heavily. “Black ice...” I muttered irritably.
I opened the door and fell into the drivers seat heavily letting my backpack fall wherever it may on the passenger side.
I turned the key over but the engine refused to do the same. I turned the key over and over until I struck my head on the steering wheel. “Good thing I wore boots...” I snarled and snatched up the strap of my backpack. The train would get me where I was going.
The icy air hit my lungs hard and I doubled over coughing before I could step out of the car completely. As I recovered I reached into my pocket and fished out my headphones. Tiny little bits of plastic and wire that miraculously provide isolation and emotional distance from the world.
But there was still a good mile of cold, bleak walk ahead of me so I huddled deeper into my black hoodie and got used to shallow breaths.
The hard rythmic thumping of my music matched my footsteps. The only break was when I slid on a hidden patch of ice. After a moments wild flailing I reset my feet to the tempo.
It wasn't long until I found myself walking onto the D.U. college campus. It was a little while out of the way but my girlfriend went to school there so habit turned my feet without my even knowing.
Collegiate gothic spires and marble columns everywhere. Immaculately kept lawns and trees, many of which found colorado weather to be lethal without costly help. Shining domes of copper and crimson. Every building bearing a burnished gold plaque with the names of wealthy alumni emblazoned on them with pride. In short the campus was a place for the children of the wealthy to roll about in their affluence like so much pork.
The concept bothered me but not half so much as the rich kid students of the school. The majority of them being the entitled children of spoiling parents they always treated the difficulty of work and school with derision and snobbery. Taking time for granted. Partying so hard you heard every word at night all the way until work began in three hours. The very people that made my girlfriends life, someone that worked their way into college and paid dearly for every minute there, so damn difficult.
The very people that, as I slipped and nearly found myself singing a higher octave, I realized it wouldn’t be late enough in the day to avoid running into, even in the dead of winter.
But if I was to avoid them I would have to go all the way out to university, a busy street about six blocks east, and back. In my current mood I found that to be unacceptable.
