Fire
Ok, now that I wrote that last piece....

It was Memorial Day weekend of last year. By this time, I didn't see most of my friends anymore (they either felt too guilty or mad that they didn't bother to call me back, which is not a perception of mine, but honest confessions from them), and the relationship I had was slowly deteriorating. The whole weekend I was restless. I didn't want to be at home, yet I didn't want to go anywhere. I spent time at my coffee shop that weekend. On Monday, I went there, but as soon as I was there, I felt like leaving. I left there early, which was unusual because I had the next day off and could sleep in. The restlessness had made me tired, so when I got home, I went to bed. (I also had a touch of depression, which made it possible to go to sleep.)

And then there was a commotion. I heard things in my sleep, like yelling and chaos. It was so far away and muted that I thought that I was dreaming. Suddenly, my door flew open: "Get up! Get up! The house is on fire!" I didn't understand. What was that? "The house on fire, get UP!" I got up and ran...no glasses, no shoes, nothing. I could barely see, I'm pretty nearsighted and I have a bad astigmatism. I ran down the stairs, where the living room was filling with smoke. My mother ran past me, trying to turn on the phone, which turned on with no dial tone. She ran across the street to the neighbor's house. I was standing in the vestibule of our house...it was a townhouse, and oddly, I didn't know if the neighbors were home or not. A woman and her three children lived there. I banged on the door loudly and fircely. No one answered. Then I heard my father and boyfriend in the basement trying to put out the fire. I could clearly hear their voices, which was odd, because the fire was on the other side of the house. It sounded like they were right below me. And then I heard the sound of breaking glass. My foot hit the floor so hard and I hoped that I was yelling, "Get out of there!" but you see, I can't remember if I was yelling at all. Then I heard my father yell. I think I was screaming at that point. But then I heard them say that they're getting out of there. I turned to run away from the house. The last image I had of the house was the smoke in the living room, all of the lights on, the television off, the smoke alarms blaring their warning. I ran across the street to my mother. I don't know when it happened, but suddenly the house was dark. I could hear the guys outside, trying to get the hose to put out the fire. Mind you, I could not see them at all, but I could hear them.

And then I heard the most terrifying sound in the world coming from the direction where I had heard them shouting. The power lines to our house crackled.

"Get over here!" I yelled. And kept yelling until I saw them in my line of vision. Then the fire department came and put out the fire.

We managed to save that house. Our landlord should have bowed down to us. Why? We saved it. Our stuff was okay. We didn't lose much...except for piece of mind, money, and the rental unit. My parents gave up after five or six months of construction and we moved. I won't bore you like I've bored countless other people with the details of the fire or life after the fire. It's a moot point now. I stopped acting like it was a big deal, learning to hide my revulsion whenever I smell wood burning, sirens blaring, or people shouting. Fires happen all the time...and some people never escape from them, let alone have all of their belongings safe and sound but a little smokey smelling. What right do I have to complain?

But I still see myself wandering around in the dark, nearly sightless, looking for my loved ones, terrified because I didn't know where they went and I didn't see clothing I recognized. I see the shadow of the voyuers who sat and watched the fire being put out, the man on the lawn next to me who was videotaping the excitement. I see the smoke billowing out into the night sky. I still hear the glass breaking. I still see my bare feet stomping on the tile of doorway. That was not the beginning of the change, but the last piece of it....

No, I am wrong. It was the final insult.

By the time we moved in, I had a lot of things stored in my car, among them, my favorite CD's. And then my car was broken into, CD's and a few other things were stolen. I don't know why they stole my frisbee and water guns. They could have left those, at least. (And John smiled at me and said, "I sent my specially trained ninjas to steal your CD's to teach you a lesson about loving material goods more than people." Of course, he lives in a fantasy world. He thinks he's God.) By that time, I had given up...after the final insult, nothing mattered anymore...and it still doesn't. It just doesn't matter anymore. And that's when I broke up with the love of my life. That, too, didn't matter anymore. Nothing, now or ever, matters anymore. I'm tired of pretending I care. I just don't care.

Let that be a lesson to everyone: God works in mysterious ways, but know too, that those ways may cause pain and suffering.

And that's the end of my hideously boring story.