Here are some things that I don't like interrupting my morning: lawn mowers. Construction work. Car alarms. Stalkers.
And so it began, and so it ended. I descended the stairs to the train platform cautiously, not quite awake to the task that I had already spent my night alleviating; 'how to extract oneself from the kind of relationship you didn't even know you were in'. Stalkie sat on a bench at the bottom of the stairs. I wondered, not for the first time, whether I should have started going to work earlier. I waved, but it was a hesitant sweep of the hand rather than a friendly gesture.
I'd told her that I had some "bad" news. I had asked her whether she wanted it in person or via email. She settled on email. Then she changed her mind and turned up at my station, demanding I speak. Why did I spend my night constructing a well-worded email? I had emptied myself into the words already, I had nothing to say for a few moments as I grasped at a hazy memory of typed reasons.
Have you ever tried talking to someone who doesn't listen? They hear you, but something in them just doesn't trigger. Have you ever tried talking to someone who thinks they know what you are going to say and has already made up their mind about the things you have not said? There's nothing you can do to change their mind because it has already closed on the pre-emptive conversation that they have already had with you in their head.
Stalkie began the conversation by putting words in my mouth, weaving her own platitudes and excuses into the mix. Suddenly, I remembered why I was there and halted her stream. I told her I was in self-preservation mode. I searched in vain for her eyes but all I found was an uppity nose and pursed lips. Gone. Selfish, I remember calling her, and conceded 'with reason'. I can't take it any more. Where was the goddamn train???
She said she'd warned me that she was difficult and wielded the statement as if it was some kind of caveat amicus that I had failed to notice. How does that work, exactly? Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Well I'm damned, then. The train pulled in and we forked to mount different carriages. She folded her arms and huffed that I had not given her a reason for my departure. I had, but she hadn't listened. A perpetual problem. So close to escape - the doors opened. Email, I told her, check your email.
But it was not over yet. Log in, sit down. She writes that she wishes that she had told me she didn't want to be friends before I had. The petulance spread itself to the outer reaches of my immediate vicinity and then collapsed, exhausted, at the finish line. It was over. I was finally free.
