Strange Tides

2.

Runnin' Away - Sly and the Family Stone

It was date night again. With me approaching eighteen and Terence already nineteen, we were both given more freedom in our relationship. It was almost like we were adults; full grown adults who could vote and legally have sex and drink and live away from home. All these were all things that appealed to me. I wasn't sure if it was teenage rebellion or the desire to live, but I wanted a change and I wanted it desperately.

Terence knew my 'struggles', but didn't really understand them. He'd been doing all of that and more since he was fifteen. It was another reminder of how different the two of us really were.

I sat in my room, feeling slightly overdressed for a date night. We were just going to Henkies, but I didn't want to dress like a hermit. Dressing like a hermit was reserved for when we were alone at home. I didn't want to look like I was attending the Grammys either and even though I was in between, it didn't feel like it.

Not only did it not feel like it, but I didn't feel like it. I didn't want to go to another date night and smile and laugh and pretend that everything was okay because it wasn't. For months I'd been pretending to be fine, to be happy with Terence. I was, but I wasn't. It was a paradox that even I didn't know how to explain. I didn't know how to even explain it.

I was so open to loving him and being with him, but I could never shake the fact that he'd slept with another girl. I still didn't know who she was.

On most days I was angry, but during the remainder I was oblivious to the world.

Shortly after we got resumed our relationship things went well. Better than they ever had. I didn't know why things were the way they were, but I wanted to do everything I could to keep things that way. We never spoke of the affair. To be honest for about a month I forgot it had ever happened, but the amnesia faded and the memories and hurt came flooding back like Niagara.

I never looked for closure, it was never important to me, at first. But as the months pasted by while I was alone, questions resurfaced in my head; questions I didn't know the answers to.

It was easier to cope with the infidelity when I wasn't with him. I could wish him dead, I could throw darts at a picture of his face and nobody would've judged me. It would have been 'normal' behaviour.

To do all those things when I was supposed to be fond of him, when I was supposed to love him that would have made me a hypocrite and I was a lot of thing, but I wasn't a hypocrite.

With him in my life, with no closure, I noticed a change in my behaviour. I began to hate him passively, and the feelings from our 'break' came back in full force, except this time I couldn't express them.

Words failed me.

There was no one around to give me advice, nobody to talk to. Toni was gone, my parents weren't an option and my two sisters gave me very different advice.

Jade fought for our relationship like a lonely teenage girl who lived her life through her 'ship' and June told me to leave him high and dry.

I laid on the floor waiting for Terence when I heard a call.

"Jasmine! Come and wash the dishes!" screamed my mother.

I called back about three times, but she never heard me and carried on yelling. It was the fifth time I'd washed the dishes, that day.

It was all I ever did in the house. I was painfully aware that there was more to my life than washing dishes.

There was no fighting with my mother, so I quickly went to go wash the dishes, but while washing the dishes Terence decided to come.