Lost in Translation

Ever since I was a kid I knew that if someone was suddenly incredibly sweet to me that meant that they probably felt guilty about something cruel they’d done to me.

Like tonight, I said something silly that made Chris roll his eyes. I can’t stand that. It makes me feel…. dumb…. like I shouldn’t speak, like I’m not good enough (thanks for scarring me with that forever, dude that molested me. I really appreciate it). I thought I was doing a somewhat decent job of hiding that it had bothered me, but realized I wasn’t once he went into “super sweet boyfriend mode”, as I like to call it. He grabbed my hand and looked at me with puppy dog eyes whereas earlier he’d been transfixed on the television.

I’m not clever enough to make this make sense, but that little moment of annoyance had made me feel hollow. Not because of him, it wasn’t really his fault at all. This is how I always feel after any similar situation. Hollow, empty, broken, a ghost stuck inside a body with too much emotional baggage. However you want to describe it. Seriously, however you want to describe it, because I sure as hell don’t know how.

Once we closed the door to my bedroom he tried touching me, but I couldn’t let him. Letting him touch me right then would have made me feel too real, too solid. And I wasn’t ready to be out of my head and back into my body yet.

I have a Lost in Translation poster hanging up in my room. I found myself staring at it thinking, “I don’t want to be Charlotte. Please, God, don’t let me be Charlotte.”

I don’t want to be lost. I want to be here. Here in this bed with this boy I love who is telling me how he’s going to take me to Atlanta for Valentines Day so we can go to the aquarium, because I’ve been going on and on about how I want to go there, and to a comic book store he knows I’ll love. And it all sounds lovely. And I want to believe it. So, I’m just going to cross my fingers in hopes that it happens. I realize, as I come back to myself, that’s all I can do.