Omnipresence

Of course we have a history. People in this situation almost always do.

I saw him today for the first time in almost a year. That is, I saw him in the light for the first time in almost a year. Not on a dark street deep into the navy blanketed morning, not in a hysteric fog shrouded nightmare. In a public place. He was tangible.

And that was enough to undo any safeguard I had felt in this town.

I looked over my shoulder nearly the whole way home. Home. He knew where home was. Of course he did – he moved in two blocks away just to show me he knew where home was, where I was.

Suddenly I hear a text message notification. He has your number, I think to myself over my deafening, rapid heartbeat.

I’m upstairs changing for bed. My blinds are shut but my eyes are fixed on the window where I saw him staring up at me one morning when I was in high school. How could I forget waking up at nearly five in the morning, blurred eyes lazily focusing on the yellow streetlights bellow and seeing that shadow figure looking up at me?

My dog barks. Everyone else is in bed… so who’s at the door? I hold my breath and feel my eyes tear up as I walk down the steps. I noticed the door is unlocked. As I walk over to lock it I can imagine him bursting in with, eyes lit with rage and passion.

Ok, so all the build up and here’s the deal.

I just stopped having nightmares about him a year and a half ago. He’s plagued my dreams since I met him late into my freshman year of high school. Let’s rewind. I’m alone in a hotel room with him, telling him I have to go. He’s pinning me down to the bed, choking me, telling me that there’s no reason to leave. I try to get to classes as quickly as possible because when he sees me, he hands me notes professing his love for me. Myspace, then MSN Messenger, then later Facebook – all modes of harassment. If you don’t date me, I’ll kill myself, he swears every night. Then he tells me about how he gets drunk and walks by my window weekly. He tells me that he hurts himself because of me. He follows me home after class. He shows up at all of the same places that I do. The days in the park, the late night walks – I have to do them or else he’ll kill himself. All of it culminates one ordinary fall morning when he tells me to meet him behind the high school. He chokes me and beats me as he sexually assaults me. When it’s done he swears if he ever sees me again there will be more.

He graduates. Silence.

Then phone calls. Texts. He wants to take me away with him to another country. No, no – he wants to kill me. I start seeing him again. I can’t leave the house because I know he’ll be there. He swears to come see me at school. No… not the university, that’s sacred. He can only exist in my hometown, in my old hell. He can’t be here.

I didn’t come home for almost a year.

And then today. I am reminded that I’m not alone… and I also know that I have not been alone since meeting him. He’s always been here; he’s never left me. And I will never be alone again.

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Um anyway, I guess a lot of the time I think I deserve it. I deserve being murdered or kidnapped or sexually assaulted by him. Sometimes I even wish that it would just happen. It would be a guilt-free way to die.