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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781481753494 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 07/03/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 350 KB |
Read an Excerpt
Nostalgia
The Director's Cut
By J.A. King
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2013 J.A. KingAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4817-5351-7
CHAPTER 1
Annie's Got A Gun
"The Liar, The Bitch, And The Warhog"
The Preamble
Wow, it feels weird to be sitting here typing on my blog. I haven't done this in over a year. I've noticed something about myself however, when things are really good in a sector of my life I tend to not sit around dwelling, or moping, or doing anything really besides riding the wave. With that said despite the hardships I've faced in my life recently, the sector I was most secure in this go round was love. I, for the first time in my life know what it means to love someone more than you're very self. To want the best for them so much that you're willing to ignore the best for you. Mind you, I'm 27 years old at this point in my life and I've had many women I was with that I felt love FOR-but this? This is something wholly new to me.
"So why if he's so happy would he be here, on his illustrious blog when he just stated that he only writes when he's depressed?", you might ask. Well, the relationship that created this new level of love has ended and I find writing through things sometimes is extremely cathartic for me. Moving on though, due to arrogance, stubbornness, and missteps on BOTH parts it has boiled out into nothing. One year to the day exactly it started and ended.
When I say this has been the hardest month of my life I don't say it lightly. In one month during my sixteenth year on this planet I lost my mother and a man who was the only father figure I've ever known. That wasn't easy not by a long shot but despite how crazy it sounds this hurts infinitely more. To grow together and know a person on the level I feel I achieved with this woman is nothing short of hard work especially in the case of a man like myself. I'm arrogant, rude, pig headed, short tempered, and capable of intense cruelty in the span of a very short sentence. With all that said though I believed I found a person who really understood me and returned the love-though not perfect, that I gave to her. I couldn't have been more wrong.
The Signs
When the relationship ended and the dreaded "I need a break" phrase was uttered, me being the man I am thought, "She needs time to clear her head." She asked for space and I slowly agonized as days turned to weeks and weeks turned to a month on this day. I bought a new phone early on in the break due to water damage on my beloved iPhone and decided to keep a promise that I made that I would either get her a phone or pay her bill. The replacement phone that was used for the longest nontechnical week of my life was now hers. I insisted that I didn't have her number, that I not know it, that there be no way to contact her, as to give her the space she wanted. She insisted that she wanted to hear from me, that we needed to talk and that it would be fine. I wonder if she regrets that decision now. As time passed I found that she never EVER called unless she needed something and when I'd call she'd be busy or "sleeping". As you can imagine having someone in your life everyday for a year and then suddenly gone can be tantamount to having the top layer of flesh ripped off of your ass. You can try to ignore it and be strong but eventually you'll have to sit down. This was my first sign of something amiss but through the crying and the questioning and the long sleepless nights, she offered a small promise and solace in two words: Trust me. Trust that she would return, trust that we could rebuild with a fresh start, bigger and better as a couple than ever. Trust that she loved and needed me and like a fool-I did. There's an expression that's fairly popular that I don't think is exactly correct, "Love is blind". I think it should be rewritten slightly as "Love can blind you." Seeing things with clearer eyes once again everything was evident at certain critical points.
One thing I took pride in is the little nuances I knew about my ex. Things that I'd never say aloud simply because I didn't think they were too flattering. One of those things was this: I can count on one hand how many cold sores she's had in the last year, 2. The only one she had in our relationship was right at the beginning when we first started making out heavily. I guess it was her bodies way of adjusting to the new foreign agents it'd encounter on a regular basis. Anyway, I found it odd that one night when she asked "Do you want to buy me dinner" and we sat down she had a beautiful new visitor on her lip in the exact spot the one made for me was created. Immediately I called her on it. "Why do you have a herpe on your lip?" I asked to which she replied without missing a beat: "O, I went to the dentist and got my teeth clean and he put something on my lips and then I got this." Love can blind you.
The next sign I really didn't ignore and mentioned on a constant basis was that she never wanted to talk or see me. If a person is saying we're going to be together again someday yet never wants to call or see you that's usually a bad sign. It got so bad that I turned the phone off twice because not one day was it ever used to call me. After the second time she started talking and texting back but I had already seen this sign. She's in this not for us anymore but what I can give her that she doesn't need to see me to enjoy. Love can blind you.
The last sign I'll mention or I'll be here for hours is that everything ever said was forced when it came to us as a couple. Her "I love you's" became tight and strained, her "I miss you's" were non existent. On more than one occasion I had to say it more than once to get her to put some feeling into it, but she's an actress that's easy with minimal effort, so why did it seem so hard? Because what she once felt for me was dying and being replaced with what she was feeling for someone else.
Anakin Rising
I've said this on multiple occasions numerous amounts of times. I don't believe in a heaven or hell, angels or demons, good or evil. I believe there's a God in heaven, but I'll not debate the clockwork universe theory I follow. Anyway I believe in energy, pure and simple. I believe that if enough thought, focus, and spirit go into any idea you'll receive feedback from said energy on things you desperately want to know. When I was young I used to have premonitions and déjà vu all the time and I honestly think it was because I wanted to be older. I didn't have the greatest childhood set up and "The Future", being older, being independent was the greatest idea to me. I expended tremendous amounts of thought and feeling into the idea. I remember I used to take the phrase "Time flies" so seriously I'd sit in one spot and blink repeatedly hoping it would make ten years fly by. It's a little weird but I've never attested to being normal. I say all of that to say the visions and déjà vu slowed down as I got older and have stopped almost completely until recently.
Like I said earlier this has been the hardest month I've had in my life. All I've done is think of my ex girlfriend. Constantly and with rarely a break in my thoughts for much else. I've always been a night owl, but the 4 or 5 hours I can usually consume and still function had suddenly become short hourly spurts that left me fatigued, sad, and in an all around foul mood. I had come to accept them however and dealt with the erratic new pattern by drinking massive amounts of coffee and cherry coke which in turn exacerbated the insomnia. Vicious cycle. Anyway, that's how I thought things would stay for a while, but I briefly considered moving to Virginia to escape the madness of everywhere and everything in the city reminding me of her. I stayed in Virginia for three days with my Aunt Jarena and my cousins and really felt my spirit lift considerably. I was around unconditional love and support and it went a long way towards improving my state of mind. I ate three meals a day without forcing myself to, but what's most important I was getting amazing rest. I think if I didn't take that "Almost relocation" as I like to call it, none of the dreams would've started.
As I said I was in a much better state of mind in Virginia but I still thought of my ex and being with her constantly. The energy I expended came back to me on the morning of my last day in Virginia in the form of one of the most vivid dreams I've ever had in my life. It was so strong in fact, I did something I've never done with dreams. I propped up quickly on one shoulder grabbed my iPhone (which is never more than three steps away from me) and wrote it down, it went as follows:
Timestamp: Monday, August 27th, 10:37 AM
Dreamed I lived in idk what felt like jersey and Ex and I were separated but she was still living at my old apartment on Jerome. I came into town for some reason or another and she was with some lame. I don't know if they were talking or not but just the thought drove me insane. I waited in the house for her and when she came she had two guys with her. I slammed the door in their faces which was kind of hard because for some reason there wasnt a hinge on the bottom of the door and that made it swing a little uncontrollably. Jonah understood my anger but wanted me to relax. Regina wanted me to see that how I was acting wasn't going to get her back. I started screaming at Ex super upset and just trying to say all the things I was feeling. Betrayed, angry ... The list goes on. I walked out of the room and then stormed back in and told her to get her shit and get the fuck out. Regina screams "No, you can't do that!" Ex starts crying and packing. I go out to the hallway intent on telling this tall slim piece of shit to stay away from her forever or I'm going to kill him literally kill him but I open the door and he looks like he's no older than 15. I rush back into the room grab Ex, apologize and hold her telling her I'm sorry ... That's when I woke up.
I read and reread what I wrote almost twenty times making sure to leave nothing out and being exact in every detail I remembered. Once I felt I had everything I needed, I texted my best friend and shared my dream with her. She admitted to not knowing very much about dreams and couldn't offer much about it except a brief discussion about what we both thought it meant. Personally I took it as a sign that I shouldn't give up on the love I felt for this woman and packed my bags and headed back up north to New York with a promise to my Auntie that I'd return in a couple of weeks to spend more time with the family.
Timestamp: Tuesday, August 28th, 9:58 AM
I went to Ex's to tell her it was over I couldn't wait anymore and to say some really foul shit to her ... She had to Do her laundry she said but we wound up going to Jordan l Mott high school for a quiz she needed to take. We get to the school and she immediately starts acting different introduces me to one of her friends who nods cordially but doesn't speak. It's a female and Ex doesn't bother to tell her my name as if it doesn't matter ... I'm getting upset because we left her moms house to go do this laundry and now we're here. I tell her I came to talk to her about something and it cant wait. She blows me off and starts talking to her friends. Later she begins taking the quiz, handed to her by an Asian woman and I walk out of the school. I walk back in and my keys or change or something in my pocket is jingling I see Ex and she says "don't scare me like that" I think it's in reference to my keys because it's a math quiz and maybe she thought the professor was going to come back and take it from her. Ex hates math. I go back outside again and wind up in a small room. My Best Friend sitting there with her head on a desk and it's changing very weirdly from her to a doggish/ monkey looking thing. She says she's upset with my Ex that all she wants to do is smoke and that she's smoking with these dikes later. I get fed up and tell her I'm going to go talk to Ex ... I wake up right when I burst through the door with anger in me.
This dream shook me more than the first one did simply because it was longer yet I remembered everything with intense accuracy. Once again I propped up on one shoulder half groggy from sleep and grabbed my iPhone. I then texted my best friend this time more shaken and asked her opinion. She took it as my frustrations with my ex over the fact that every time I wanted to see her or spend time she would be "busy" with friends or doing something that required her being alone. I took a couple of positive things from this dream however, the fact that my friend was transforming from herself into a dog and then a monkey though scaring me with the visual at first was actually showing me something I've known about her since I've met her. Whenever I think about dogs I think of loyalty and man's best friend and she is insanely loyal to her boyfriend, her family, and those lucky enough to be in her inner circle. Whenever I think of monkeys I think of intelligence and although I rarely tell her I know she knows I think highly of her opinions and mindset. What really made me happy in all of it though was her anger and frustration towards my ex and how things were going. Even in my dreams she rides with me and that made me smile.
Timestamp: Wednesday, August 29th, 9:34 AM
Had a dream I was in someone's house can't remember who's and Ex was in the living room with a "friend" I walk in and he has his head on her shoulder I get closer and he's saying come on just give me a kiss. I walk over there and ask him why would he be doing this and does he know the chick he's begging for kisses is my girl? He says no she didn't mention it. I say well I'm mentioning it right now and grab him walk him to the door and throw him out. I go back to Ex she's transforming into my friend Nicole and I don't really understand it. We get into a huge argument about respecting me and she says don't worry about me worry bout your little brat. I then ask her what's Achilles name and she doesnt know. There's a brief exchange and then I woke up.
This dream was the least clairvoyant of the three but I still sat up and wrote it down half asleep, my sister Erica said I looked like a man possessed as my fingers worked furiously to capture as much as I could before it left me with bits and pieces of the whole. As I'd done twice before, I texted my friend with the dream and she felt that this one was a little more understandable. "I think it's your frustration with Her about not being able to get a straight answer" she replied and on this one I wholeheartedly agreed.
Everyone knows Darth "Luke, I am your Father" Vader, iconic villain of the Star Wars film franchise, but most people don't know or ignore the first three Star Wars movies which are my personal favorites. As a young man Anakin's force readings were off the charts, he achieved a skill level masters take years to reach before he was really an adult. Anakin fell in love with a woman, loved her so intensely, and focused on her so intently, that when he slept he had prophetic dreams of her dying. I often like to mind fuck myself with the following questions, "Did Anakin's obsession with the idea bring his thoughts to life? Or was the inevitable set in stone and he just had so much of himself vested in it that he was able to see past the normal boundaries of a man's mind into what he wanted to know?" Whatever the answer, things came to pass exactly as he foresaw them and the very same would hold true for me.
Dreams Fulfilled
On Thursday morning I awoke alert and focused after having a dream about the X-Men. I can't remember anything of the dream except Cyclops and another member of the team were standing there looking battle ready. Something in that dream made me sit up on the couch I was sleeping on and grab my MacBook. The phone my ex had was under my name after all and I wanted to see what kind of time she was spending on the phone "being tired" and as "busy" as she was. I looked through the phone logs and instantly felt my anger rising when as I scrolled down, the same number kept popping up. A 973 number ... JERSEY area code. The first line of the first dream anyone? I then put the calls in order by minutes and saw that this number was getting an insane amount of call time. One hundred forty-one minutes here, one hundred twenty-four minutes there, ninety minutes here. What hurt me on a different level was the calls roughly began around my birthday and on MY birthday there were one hundred twenty minutes logged to that number and a measly fifteen to mine. I immediately called my ex intent on finding out what was going on. If I've said this once I've said this a million times, she is insanely intelligent and the quickest person on their feet I know. She picked up the phone and the conversation went roughly like this:
Me: Who are you calling in Jersey this much that you've spent four hundred minutes in August talking to them?
Her: It's 6:30 in the morning bro is this really what you called me for?
Me: Answer the question.
Her: call the number, it's my friend. *click*
I called the number and it was a females answering machine. I hung up immediately thinking to myself "I have to call from her phone for the nigga to pick up." A new and simple plan formulated in my mind immediately: "Get that phone Jack."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Nostalgia by J.A. King. Copyright © 2013 J.A. King. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
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