I've found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often.
-Brian Tracy
Losing My Innocence
Created on 11/04/01 from free prose written about Jen. Response 2020.04.27
I work and work at this perfect little relationship, the kind that girls should swoon over. I was loved but it wasn't love. Now that I love, no one cares. Jen doesn’t love me. I know it. She looks at me like I am saying I raped her cat every time I say that I love her. Well, you know what? She will lose me if she doesn't learn how to treat me. I simply want her to treat me as though she cares. I should not be an annoyance to her. I should be the one she loves, so why the hell aren't I? Goddammit, I love her and all she can do is call me a girl for caring about her. What can't she understand? I love her. I love her and she treats me like shit. She insults me and ridicules me for treating her decently. Just because everyone else treated her like a she was worthless doesn't mean I'm going to. But if she keeps it up, I'll leave. I'd leave now but I'm scared. I'm scared she'll just go to Nick and fuck him. I see the bond the two share and I hate it because she submits to him. Does she want to me a heartless, fucked-up cynic? Is that bastard happy? So why the hell do I sense him in the back of her head? Why can't she just be happy and treat me well? Just care about me. Is that so hard?
Just treat me well, treat me 1/8th as well as I treat her, and I would continue to love her forever. She is willing to throw that away for what? To be a boy? She is a 17-year-old girl! Why can't she act like one or act like a person, not a mindless parody of what they sublimate onto her? Show the feelings we all know she has. Even her mother thinks she is heartless. Did that even touch her? Did it get through those levels and levels of pretense or was that just another game? I do care. Would I put up with all this shit she heaps upon me? I'm not just going to sit here and let Jen neglect me and ridicule me. Are any of those assholes she worships happy? Kev, Mark, Nick? They are depressed, sick children. I wish she would develop a personality of her own. Make time for me. An hour a day. A half hour. A kiss. She can't even give me a kiss. And whom is she thinking about when she does kiss me? She dares for a moment to even question how I can feel so passionately. She does too, but she hides it and it manifests itself in her getting bitchy and heaping her stupid shit upon me. I am not going to put up with it. She will never find anyone who treats her as well as I do and she is willing to throw that away for nothing. Why is she doing this? Does she truly not know that she is doing it wrong? That she is slowly killing me and the love I hold for her? Well, she is. She might as well be slitting my wrists with her callous words. She'd care for Nick. I've seen her. She can't deny it and keeps listen to him. He doesn't matter and if she thinks he does. He doesn't care for her. I have seen the glances the two share and his animosity toward me for keeping her away from his tainted fingers. He would never care about her. He would screw her and leave her. Does she mean the evil she spews at me? That she couldn't care less about my history? Why? Why the hell am I so damnably unimportant to her? Why does she sound so depressed to hear from me? If she hates it so much, I won't trouble her by thinking she cares about me. What do I have to do to get through to her? Why doesn't she understand that once you love someone you can't stop no matter how much you grow to hate them? That stupid, apathetic loser Nick loves every girl he's ever been with, which is why he says he hates them so much. The only reason he pretends to care about Jen is because I have her and he would hate her as quickly as he would kiss her. Why doesn't it matter to her that I want to give her my innocence? That is the greatest honor and gift, aside from marriage, you can give someone and she doesn't care. I saved myself for her and have cared for her for years. I've loved her for nearly half a year, why doesn't that matter to her? How can it not matter to her? It matters so much I could cry, but then she'd insult me for showing an emotion I can only presume she has because she will not be a human being. She will not let herself have a heart. Why the hell can't she just love me? I never did anything against her and I treat her better than anyone I've ever met. This means nothing to her. How can it matter so little to her that someone loves her? Am I just a piece of flesh to her? She likes me well enough when I am going down on her, why can she love me when I write a whole story about her? I try to delude myself that she'll come around and stop taking me for granted but if that is ever really going to happen, will I have to leave her before she sees my worth and how much I matter? Or at least how much I should mean to her, but am I nothing to her? I think I am.
reading: the story I wrote.
listening: the clicking of the keyboardwanting: Jen to admit she loves me for once.
interesting
thought: I know too much to ever be happy.
Thomm Quackenbush is an author and teacher in the Hudson Valley. He has published four novels in his Night's Dream series (We Shadows, Danse Macabre, Artificial Gods, and Flies to Wanton Boys). He has sold jewelry in Victorian England, confused children as a mad scientist, filed away more books than anyone has ever read, and tried to inspire the learning disabled and gifted. He is capable of crossing one eye, raising one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. When not writing, he can be found biking, hiking the Adirondacks, grazing on snacks at art openings, and keeping a straight face when listening to people tell him they are in touch with 164 species of interstellar beings.
He likes when you comment.
