Some Day One Day

3

My feet felt like a truck had just run over them from all the laborious work I'd been through the entire day. Bending forward from where I sat, I massaged my ankle with one hand, holding a lit up cigarette in the other.
I'd just finished a ten-hour shift of work. Everyone had left two hours ago. I stayed behind because I needed the.
Since no one was around, I felt no need to hide and removed my long sleeved shirt that I wore beneath my uniform because it was too hot to wear it. Placing the cigarette between my lips, I inhaled deeply as I looked down at the spotty blemishes on my arm. An unsettling chill went down my spine as I looked at the dotted skin.
When I was certain the smoke had filled up my lungs sufficiently, I exhaled and shook my left arm slightly when I felt it tingle. Suddenly I felt a little bit more relaxed and calm than before.
The urges had only returned after my visit to Shawn. They hadn't been this bad in months.
Smoking was a way to ward off those urges, but it only worked for so long. I sighed and looked ahead of me while letting my head repose on the whicker chair.
Although it was ten to seven o'clock, it was sundown and I could see the big, fat sun hiding behind the forest of trees that grew around the fence of the restaurant where I worked. The smoke I'd breathed out obstructed my view, as if forcing me to remember my past.
Funny, I remember how I used to scrunch my face up and wiggle my nose in disgust whenever I was around anyone who smoked. Sometimes the stench alone would give me a headache.
But I'd gotten used to it.
Everyone who I worked with at the hotel smoked too There was only one explanation for why they smoked-stress.
At first, when they offered me a cigarette, I'd kindly decline, stating that I didn't smoke. I'd even extricate myself from them and sit inside the building just so I wouldn't get tempted.
Then the stresses of my strenuous job finally caught up with me, as they did everyone else, and I began the ritual of smoking when I got too tired.
The sound of a door opening turned my head sideways to glance at my manager. He was about six feet tall with a receding hairline. He was a hardworker, and a very kind man. He was probably the only reason why I'd scored this job so easily. He was flamboyant, to say the least. But I didn't mind. I didn't care. I wasn't a homophobic like some others.
My husband, Lee, had turned out to be gay. I hadn't been hurt or angry the way everyone had expected. In fact, my support of him coming out had seemed to anger some people at some point. That was the only time in my life when I was glad that my parents weren't alive because I knew their hearts would have broken.
But I suffered no stress or tears when I found out that he'd been having an affair with another man and I couldn't blame the suspicious eyes that found that suspicious in itself.
I even started to fractionally wonder what the hell was wrong with me.
Maybe it was because I loved him more like a friend or even a brother than I did in any other type of way.
Maybe it was also because the entire time that we were married, I was in love with someone else.
But my story with Lee wasn't as simple as others.
Lee and I were childhood friends through the 'family-friend' of our families. Coming from a family of all boys, all of who had followed his father's footsteps and joined the NFL, Lee was different. Instead of inheriting his father's inborn, tough persona, he had the congenital passion and delicacy of his mother. He'd never been into sports like the rest of his bravado brothers. He didn't care too much about video games, often opting for art and music-he'd taken a great liking to playing the piano too.
What I think covered Lee's uniqueness was his exterior. He was handsome, but with a rough, rugged edge that he claimed from his father. No matter how hard he tried to serve himself to the public as this chiseled, definitive individual, it never seemed to work that way for him. He dressed just like every other black man that I knew, and talked like them too. When I was younger, I saw his insightfulness and lack of interest of what every other man stereo-typically liked as intelligence and strength to stray away from the norm. I saw it as goodness. When a few spectators accused him for being homosexual, I'd quickly come into his aid and say that just because he wasn't like the rest of them, that just because he didn't like to play tough, that didn't have to make him gay.
When he'd asked me to be his girlfriend later on in our college years though, I had been reluctant because it was right after my fall out with Shawn. I suppose my parents had badgered his parents about it, eventually forcing his parents to pressure him into finally dating a girl...any girl...as long as it was a female.
He confirmed my suppositions and told me straight forward that he was asking me to be with him because he wanted his parents to get off his back due to his sexuality; apart from the fact that I was truly the only female that he claimed he'd ever cared about. He said that he wanted to prove to them that he wasn't gay, and now as I think back on it, I think he wanted to prove it to himself too since he was at that prohibitive state where he didn't know what was right or wrong.
I'd been reluctant to accept his proposal at first because all of this was coming right after my incident with Shawn. I was still confused, very indecisive, hurt, and even scared at that moment. Scared of my future because Shawn was suddenly not in it.
But by then the poisonous seeds that my parents had planted into my head began to sprout.
I thought that ending things with Shawn and I had been the right thing to do.
I'd always been taught that a man's background mattered no matter how much you loved them. I'd always been taught not to be fooled by the romantic, fallacy love stories that love does in fact conquer all no matter the situation. I'd seen the proof of it too. My uncle and auntie had married young, one coming from a strong family background, the other coming from a broken, abusive home. They loved each other with every passionate fiber of their body, but it hadn't worked out because of bills, because of the disability to take care of their kids, because of the inability to pay the mortgage of the home. Out of depression of not being able to provide for his family, my uncle shot himself in the temple and ended his life. Before pulling the trigger though, his last words to his wife were that he didn't want her to hurt anymore because of him and he apologized for ruining her life.
That, along with many other tragically ending stories made me feel like letting Shawn go had been the right thing to do.
Growing up, I watched many girls idiotically disobey the lecturing words of their parents in exchange for a life full of frivolity and spontaneous fun.
I always told myself not to make that mistake, so when my parents told me that Lee was the right choice, I agreed. They stressed that I had a sturdy, fruitful future ahead of me by being with him. They'd even manipulated me at some point to believe that a future with Shawn was as concrete as the sun always shining. A future with Shawn was incorrigible.
A future with my love couldn't happen...
I swore up and down that I'd been doing the right thing.
Who better to listen to than your parents?
So I started dating Lee. And Lee knew that I wasn't fully into the relationship as he because I was still in love with Shawn.
Lee had always known that.
I think that's why I felt safe with him-because he knew that I was in love with someone else but didn't reprove me for it.
I later on found out that another reason why Lee was so comfortable with it was because all that time, he'd also wanted to be with someone else whom he obviously was too ashamed to be seen with.
So the fact that we were both traveling the same road, experiencing the same hardships and portholes, we found solace in each other and some sort of loving grew.
Our relationship was strange, but we understood it. I'm glad someone understood me and that's probably what kept me latched onto him.
In six months, he asked me to marry him.
Under the impelling eyes of my parents, under this repressive need to always make my parents proud, under the expectance to do the smart thing...to think with my mind instead of thinking with that other thing that makes us do crazy things...
I accepted.
And that's what led to the biggest wedding my family had ever had in generations. The amount that the wedding cost was unlike any cost a wedding in my family history had ever cost.
Too bad the wedding didn't last.
My manager now hung his head to one side as he looked at me disapprovingly, all the while fishing for something in his pocket. He confirmed my assumption when he pulled out an entire pack and shook out one cigarette.
"Beyonce," his voice was muffled as he held his cigarette in between furled lips, a silver lighter glimmering in the sunset while he lit it up, "Go home."
"I'm going." I said as I now focused on dabbing the excess ash from my cigarette with a gaunt index finger.
"Honey child...what are you doin' here still?"
"Just chillin'...thinking for a little bit."
He pursed his lips at me pensively before parting them to slip his cigarette between them.
"Mhmm," he hummed as he breathed in his cigarette, "Who you thinkin' bout girl?"
"Huh?" I shook my head immediately, ridding the sudden image of Shawn too, "I ain' thinkin' about nobody."
"What you thinkin' about then?"
"Life." I answered with a laugh.
We talked for a little bit until finally he urged me to get my stuff and leave. I knew that he couldn't leave before all the workers left, so I only did it as a favor for him. The reason why I really didn't want to leave work that day was because I'd received a call at work from Angie telling me that she needed me to go to her place so that I could help her make a couple of decisions for her wedding.
I tried to be adamant with refusing but she wouldn't allow it, but she wouldn't have it. Just to have her stop hounding me, I decided to go see her, but not before I made a stop at home to take a good clean shower first.
As I drove warily and tiredly into my newfound home, I thought of that damn word called irony.
Irony was a very funny word to me because it was what summed up my life right now.
It was what was painted like a picture before me as I drove to my acclaimed home.
I lived here.
This was my home.
This place had once always given me the chills whenever Mother and I had to drive past it on our way to the general store. I remember feeling sorry for those who had to live under the poor circumstances. Graffiti with blasphemous words were spray-painted rebelliously on the walls that were powdered with age-old dust. Mold from rain of decades ago clamored the broken apart rooftops. Sidewalks were littered with everything from broken beer bottles to loitering shopping carts from the homeless who picked up the wasteful trash to make it useful for themselves.
This is where I lived.
Pushing those thoughts aside, I got out of my car. Guarding my belongings by holding them close to me, I went up to my apartment, thankful that it was on the first floor.
After making sure the door was locked behind me, I went to the bathroom, stripped myself of my clothing, and stepped into the shower. Clumping my mouth tightly shut, I turned the facet and poised myself rigidly so that I wouldn't flinch when the icy, cold water hit my heated skin.
There would be no hot water for the next two weeks.
My shower was quick, but not painless. I was shaking like a leaf in the middle of a Siberian storm.
It didn't take me long to get ready like it used to. That was one thing that had always annoyed Shawn, I thought with a faint smile as I sat on the cold porcelain and dried myself. The fact that I always took long to get ready was something about me that Shawn hated. He told me that there was truly no need for me to hide behind the piles of make up and designer clothes, but I felt like I had to. There was an image that I felt I had to live up to.
Not for anyone else, but for myself.
Sometimes, my meticulousness of self used to irritate the hell out of Shawn. He told me that he wanted to see me, not the other person that I felt I had to put forth. He said he liked me with my hair all crazy lookin', in a pair of gray sweats and a wife beater.
I remember the first and only time Shawn saw me in the morning. He'd woken up right next to me and told me that right when I'd woken up was the most beautiful he'd ever seen me.
Just as quickly as the thought made me happy, it saddened me all over again. After oiling down, I moved from where I sat, wrapping the towel around myself and securing it by tucking the edge inside, I looked at myself in the mirror. I frowned upon the way my eyes were wet. Sighing heavily, I combed my hair back into a simple ponytail.
In no time I had left my apartment and was back on the road, headed for Angie's place. When I got there, I sat in the parking lot for a while, admiring wistfully at the neighborhood that they lived in. Having worked hard, both Ojay and Angie purchased a house in the suburbs. It wasn't by any means a mansion, but neither was it a ramshackle.
It was somewhere in the middle...it was perfect to me. Not too much...not too little...just perfect.
And they deserved every bit of it because they'd had their share of a drama and craze in life. They were living in the calm after the storm, that's why I couldn't even hate on them at all.
After a while, I finally stepped out of my car and stepped out, only when I stepped out I felt suddenly dizzy. I could feel a headache coming on and I knew it was because I hadn't eaten all day.
Usually at work, we could take breaks whenever we wanted to as long as you got your work done.
I never took breaks because I was much slower than the other women. It was ironic because I was the youngest there, so it was expected that I be full of energy and agility. But my stamina was much lower than theirs. I guess it was not only because they'd done it for years, but I was still yet to accept what my career had become.
Rubbing my closed eyelids, I trudged towards the front door.
I rang the doorbell, and in a matter of seconds, the door flew open.
Angie appeared and she smiled at me, but I guess when she examined me, her smile faltered.
"You look like crap." She said honestly and I nodded.
"I know. I'm just too tired to give a damn." I replied, just as honest.
She stepped aside to give me room before speaking, "I don't understand why you're working there."
?" I answered, bending over to fluff up the furry hair of her black and brown terrier. I'd always loved pets but couldn't afford to have one.
When my addiction got so potent, I'd sold my white terriers in exchange for money that I didn't have.
"Gosh Beyonce, apply to somewhere else. Someone is willing to take you." She said, walking past me and into the living room.
"With my drug-related past? You sure about that?" I asked and her shoulders stiffened shortly like she'd just been stung. Finally, continued walking again.
The only place that had accepted me so far was the housekeeping the hotel and I knew it was because they were in dire need of peopel to fill in the spot because it was really not a glamorous job.
Even if I somewhere else, I knew only a manual labor place would accept me. And manual labor was the same everywhere--it was hard. So it didn't matter if I got a different job. It was still be minimum wage.
Out of everyone in my family, Angie had been most affected when I'd become a drug Reader/Writer.
The story is simple, cliché if you will. It's a story that explains my weakness.
My five-month, drug free anniversary had been a week ago.
To put it simply, I'd been a heroine addict for a couple of months.
Some say, 'well, at least it was only for a couple of months', but those short months had altered my life for completely with possibility of return.
It happened right after my parents died.
I'd had problems in my life before, but that's truly where the hardest to deal with problems started.
My parents passed away two years ago when they'd gone on vacation. It seemed like some sort of punishment that was being heaved upon me, but I didn't know why. I loved my family a lot. Unlike most people, I grew up with a very healthy childhood.
I loved my family to death.
I loved them.
I can't stress that enough.
My family came first...after God of course. But they came before education, before friends, before anything else that I ever cared about in my life.
Even...at some point...before Shawn.
When they died, the whole thing seemed unreal to me. It seemed like a curse. And the way their death happened was as rare as lightning striking a human being.
While I had moved away into my new home as a new wife, my mother, father and older sister had gone on a Christmas vacation. I couldn't go at the time because I was unwell with a fever. My fever had me delirious and unaware to the happenings of the world for a week or so. When I woke up, I expected my mother to be by my side.
Instead of seeing my parents when I woke up though, I'd woken up to a teary eyed husband at my bedside. I started out with asking him concernedly what was wrong. Then I worrisomely begged him to tell me what the matter was. Impatience forced me to demand the truth out of him until he surrendered and told me my parents were dead.
I'd laughed at first because it just had to be a joke.
Things like that didn't happen to me.
When he told me how they died, I laughed even harder and told him that his acting lessons in highschool had definitely paid off and hadn't gone to waste the way everyone thought.
He told me that on Christmas morning, a tsunami had claimed their lives along with thousands of others.
Since when did natural disasters affect real people? That had been my initial thought after I realized that Lee was serious about it.
When I saw the coverage on the news, I thought that I was still amidst one of the many nightmares I'd had during my fever-even though most of them pertained to Shawn.
The more I watched the news, the more I started to think that none of it was true.
The weeks that followed had been the darkest days of my life, and it seemed like I was struggling with those days still.
Since I couldn't handle it, since my only source of strength was gone, I turned to something that I'd seen my fellow college students partaking in. At that point, I was hurting so much that I got tired of hurting. I'd tried everything from prayer, to seeking counseling.
None of those things seemed to erase the pain that always seemed constant.
Mom and Dad told me that they would always be there no matter what. They'd given me that sense of security since the day I was born.
Most people didn't have that, but I did.
And I trusted in that because I'd never ever had a reason to doubt my parents.
So when they left without warning, I didn't know what to do.
So one night, I tried that very drug that I'd always been scared of. As I did, in the back of my head, I remember Shawn once telling me...Isn't it scary how sometimes the one thing we're afraid of...or the one thing that we hate...is the one thing that tempts and draws us in the most?.
At that time, he had been talking about me and how he never thought I would be someone he would love so much.
His voice wasn't loud enough, because I went ahead and did it.
Once.
Just once.
I should've known not to take the term 'one time is all it takes' lightly because the price that I paid for that was something that to this day, I was still battling with. It cost my not only my whole future. It cost me my life.
When I got busted, I got kicked out of college. When Lee couldn't handle me anymore, when he said he couldn't support funding my habits anymore and I fought him back because of it, he kicked me out of our home.
No other family would take me in for obvious reasons.
I tried to go back to the home where I grew up, but living inside that house with the haunting memories only drove me to do more and more drugs. My trust funds were wearing thin and although I had the house in my name, I wasn't doing much for it with the way I didn't care about anything.
My turning point came when I saw Angie crying so lugubriously one night like she'd lost a loved one that I knew I couldn't do any of this anymore.
Another thought that helped me decide to come to terms with myself was knowing that my parents would have been broken hearted by what I was partaking in.
And another factor was...well...Shawn.
Just the mere thought of what he'd think of me if he ever saw me the way I was drove me to put an end to that madness.
I'd tried rehab for three months. With the refusal to go home-the only materialistic remains of my parents-I lived with Ojay and Angie for a while. But the stresses of the real world got to me, and I was back to square one.
I wasn't as bad as before, but I took drugs on occasion.
Ojay and Angie even nearly broke up one time because Ojay would get beyond fed up everytime Angie gave me money when I hungrily asked for it. Knowing that they had worked too hard to get to where they were, and knowing that I was still going through my dangerous path, I told them that I would simply move out and be on my own with nobody's help.
The other choice was to go back to rehab, but I truly did hate that place. It made me embarrassed, angry, and ashamed for evolving into the person that I'd become. The person that was supposed to become a doctor...what a fucking joke I was.
I didn't even contact them after I'd left, knowing that I was supposed to. But I simply didn't want to go back because it seemed like imprisonment even if in truth I knew that they were just trying to help.
That's why I ended up where I was at right now.
I'd made the decision to be on my own, since I'd always lived off of others. Off of my parents. Off of Lee. Off of my relatives.
I had to be on my own even if it meant starting from the bottom.
It was difficult; being on my own was difficult more than anything I'd ever known. But the only positive light of it I could say was that for once in my life I had the choice to make my own decisions without having someone breath down my back and watch my every move.
That's what Shawn said was one of my flaws: the incapability to think for myself because I always used everyone else around me as a crutch.
He surprised me further when he also added to me not to use him as a crutch because he said even if he loved me; he couldn't make the promise that he'd always be there. His reason? He said that was an unrealistic way of thinking. He that what I could do if I ever got discouraged, was use the thought of him as a crutch to inspire me to move on my own, but to never, ever depend on someone else for my source of living.
At that time, I had laughed it off, saying that we would never be apart.
Shit Shawn...if only I'd listened to you...
"You know I've asked you three questions and you haven't answered me yet." Angie finally managed to break through the wall surrounding my thoughts.
We were now sitting in the comfort zone of her living room.
I snapped out of my daze and blushed at the embarrassment and possibility of her knowing what I harbored in my thoughts.
"I'm so sorry," I apologized, blinking sporadically and rubbing my eyes as if that would rid the headache with I thought distressfully would turn into a migraine, "I'm just so tired."
"Why don't you come and stay with us?" she asked just below a whisper. The dry look that I gave her made her tilt her head at me optionally.
"Look, I'm sure we can talk Ojay into it-"
"Nope. Angie please just I cant-"I cut myself off when I heard the opening of the front door.
"Aye! What's up?" we heard from the doorstep and that's when I looked up to see Ojay emerging into the living room.
Shawn followed close behind him, focusing on something on his shoes as he walked up to us.
My heart stopped.
Shawn hadn't seen me yet because he was inspecting something on his shoe, but I knew that Ojay had by the way that he froze.
He turned to Angie and mouthed an angry, 'what the fuck?'
I guess I wasn't supposed to be there.
I stared at Shawn, waiting nervously until his striking, swarthy eyes collided with mine. His brows rose up a notch before a small frown dawned on his lips.
The entire room seemed to have come to a stop.
No one said anything and no one moved as if we were all afraid that if we did, an explosion would be set off.
And let me just say, the devil was taking his sweet time passing through.
"Hi Shawn baby." Angie chirped, and the gleefulness of her voice made Ojay grimace and shake his head while scratching the crown of it in discomfiture.
I wanted to tell Ojay that I wanted to smack her too for sounding so damn happy.
"Hey, sup." Shawn murmured before clumping his mouth so tightly that a slew of muscles appeared on his jaw line.
I was transfixed.
I had never seen Shawn like this...dressed so elegantly like this.
Well, except for that prom night ...
He was arrayed in a smoky troReader/Writers and a baby blue shirt, unbuttoned until his white wifebeater was teasingly peeking at me. It seemed like I hadn't seen him a day ago. I was still submerged with the awe of how much growth had done him well. So well. Too well in fact. And I envied all those years that I hadn't seen him grow...
I couldn't help but stare at him as he stood tall with his hands in his pockets. I wasn't used to seeing him wearing those clothes, not that it mattered. I knew that it derived from his job--working in real estate. Still, the look made me wonder what of him had changed. When I'd seen him yesterday, he was dressed in the casualness that I was used to, that's why I hadn't been so surprised.
As the clock ticked by, my headache had become worse because of the way my heart pounded mercilessly against my chest.
The room started to sway before my eyes.
"Shawn it must have slipped my mind before," Angie began cheerfully, "but I never told you that Beyonce is my bride's maid. Since it's a small wedding, I only need one."
She turned to me, ignoring the ire burning in Shawn's eyes. Too scared to continue looking at him, I accommodated Angie when she called me.
"Shawn's the best man in case you haven't already figured it out."
She smiled sweetly at all of us before adding, "Since the main body is here...We can get this party started. I think I'll start with what the color theme is..." she turned to an uncomfortable Ojay, who was obviously not expecting my presence,"Baby what you think about that velvety red I was talking about?"
Ojay pursed his lips and gave Shawn an apologetic look that said he hadn't had anything to do with this.
Reflexively, I looked at Shawn who hadn't seem to notice because his eyes were set on me. His chest distended as he breathed deep, vacuuming his bottom lip and worrying it with his teeth as he turned away from me.
His right leg shook.
Something he always did whenever he was trying to suppress his anger.
I knew he didn't like any of this.
And I didn't like any of this at all either.