S A R A

Ch 42

42

Then I turned towards the hallway and I took one step away. Then another. I got to the end of the hallway. Maybe he went down to meet me and we missed each other. That was it. Maybe he was on his way back up right now, convinced that I didn't come to him, disappointed. Then how we would both laugh when he got up here. As if we could ever let each other go. As if it was one terrible, big mistake.

But no elevator came. I walked back to his door, leaned towards it but heard nothing.

I looked at the time on my phone screen. 11:16pm.

All of a sudden, it was as if I had woken up from a very bad dream. As if I could let go so easily of what I had been holding on to. As if, being so poignantly and clearly rejected for something I could never tell gave me the permission that I was so badly missing to just let go.

So I walked away. I got in the elevator and I rode it down all the way to the first floor.

Passing my signature on the desk and the concierge without a word, passing all the pretty people and walking out of this building. A completely different person then I was 16 minutes ago, and into the rain.

I felt like for the first time in months, I could breathe.

As soon as I stepped out, I sort of stood there. Letting myself get wet from this supernatural rain to hit California. Letting myself be entrenched by this feeling. I just walked. It was so dark now and there were no cars on the road. So I walked a block, feeling nothing, entering the nearest hotel. The Hilton.

I walked through that lobby a new person.

I walked up to the front desk asking for a room.

"Yes we have rooms, but starting at $250 a night," the woman began.

I wordlessly took out my credit card and placed it on the counter between us.

I must have looked like a mess but I didn't care. I must have looked like I couldn't afford a room at $250 a night, even better.

I stared at nothing in particular as he entered the details form my card and drivers licence.

"Okay, Miss Clementine, Room 203, down the hall and take the elevator on the left," he pointed away from us.

Even at that rate, I was to take the less fancy elevators in order to get to the 'budget' room in the Hotel.

I swiped the key and turned the knob to enter into a room with a plush white sheet bed and a bathroom covered in mirrors. I turned on all the lights in the bathroom. I stared into my eyes, black liner creating a dramatic effect in the rain. I stared t myself as I removed the dress, the dress that he was supposed to take off. And the tights, the tights that were supposed to get left on his floor. I left all my jewelry on. I stripped bare and for the first time in a long time I felt thankful to be myself, to be in my body, to be here alone. I realized that the strength I carry within myself is much bigger than what I imagined. I realized that I no longe had to second guess myself, to doubt myself the way that I did whenever I was begging for his attention his approval his time anything to get any sort of acknowledgment from him.

I created him into a sort of God, a religion which required the full sacrifice of myself in order to worship. I created it so that I would never be enough no matter what I did. No matter what I did for him or for my self to better.

Now, unattached, and woken up from this nightmare I felt whole. I felt complete. As soon as I backed away. As soon as he did that to me by doing nothing, by being a coward, he made me understand exactly the kind of person he really was. Underneath all the intellect and the beauty of he is incapable of love, then there is nothing for us.

How amazing, someone so beautiful, someone who I was convicted I could love forever, could be eliminated from my heart so quickly by showing me the ugliest side of his nature. The ugliest thing he could have ever done to me.

I left the bathroom, shit all the lights off, got underneath the sheets and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep in between the pillows which I paid way too much to spend a night with. All the while knowing that somewhere, less than five blocks away, he was there, alone in the deepest way behind his brick walls. Alone in his tower.

I didn't' want tithing about. I didn't need to think about. I had no reason to waste an ounce of my energy thinking about him any longer. No energy to even dedicate a single song to him. In a place of complete inspiration, there was a complete drought. Devoid of all the love I could have ever given him. In its place I found all the love I've ever kept away from myself.

I don't know what switch was flipped in me, but I felt liberated. I felt free! Like I could do anything, be anything. As if I could get together with any of the men in his apartment and beyond and be loved accordingly. I felt a sort of elation, no matter how sick it was, at this new-found freedom. Maybe this was the paradox and the problem the whole time. This unnecessary attachment, this thinking within my mind which did not allow me any room to breathe. The last thing I thought of before I went to sleep was nothing.

And anyway, isn that the thing about pain? It cant reach you if you're not thinking about it. When you hurt your finger, eventually you stop thinking about it when it heals because those pain signals are no longer being transmitted by the neutrons to your brains so you don't think about it because there is no pain to think of.

Thats what happened here, this clear and blatant and stark end was all that was necessary for me to see through the smoke screen that I spent such a long time building around myself only to learn how to tear it down in the most valuable sixteen consecutive minutes of my life.

I felt as if I had the license to dream again. To believe in anything. To believe in something bigger than all this.