Never My Love

After much thought on the matter I find that there is only one answer that feels correct – that there is indeed a beautiful thing called “Destiny”. A grander design of images we mere mortals don’t come close to making out.
However, this personal discovery does not make me doubt the fact that each must decide which path we are to take at a crossway in our lives, and that whichever our decision –regarded stupid or intelligent- is enough to change our destiny forever.
Take this tale, my tale, as an example. If my father had never been stricken with the cancer that took his life, then perhaps my mother would never have stopped to talk to a troubled neighbor struggling through the same battle…A battle that would lead me to him.
Perhaps if he had not died, I would never have become so obsessed with obtaining the love I had had, and now lost. Perhaps since that whole experience (that would eventually end with my retiring from “the field”) would never happen, I would have fallen in love with a different man and grown to be a rocket scientist or something.
It seems so huge, the death of a loved one- like the whole world is falling down on top off you, and yet it is not. You feel it beneath your feet. It’s still spinning. The people are still celebrating getting jobs or a new car, there is still work to be attended to, they are weddings and births – it is truly as if the person who passed away never existed. As if a warped version of a black hole arrived after his funeral and sucked up the very memory of his life…

But I digress from my true question: is it all part of some grand master plan, or is it as it really seems: nothing but a string of sick clichés?

-five years ago.

A muscle twitched in my face (just a little left of my nose) as I heard the news, though what had started out as shock had now digressed to only thinking about how damn weird it was to have a twitch from a muscle I hadn’t even know existed. Now having totally forgotten I was even having a conversation, I began thinking of the model of a skinless man in Biology class. It was meant to help us learn about our muscles as it gave a detailed image of each of the snake like tendons locking around our bones, but it had always just freaked me out. Now I began to imagine those snake like tendons wrapped around all my bones. Touching my face to determine where they were, I only heard a weak insult drift my way as the girl I had been formally speaking to drifted away into the mass of high school students.

“Hey mom,” I managed to say between a mouthful of cold macaroni cheese and channel surfing. She gave me but a mere glance to tell me that this was not a good time. “I think even you’ll want to know this! The kid next door is transferring to my high school because his dad left them because he’s…” I held my breath for a dramatic pause before uttering: “gay.”
“…I know.”
“Wait… wait you know? How do you know before I know?! I’m in High school; I thought we were the centre of all things gossip?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve been a bit slow on the uptake, honey.”
Now this was most certainly true, just one of many incidents being when I was in first grade and everyone in my class would tease me about my name being Rain Rivers. The thing is I didn’t even notice they were doing it until a year later when my mother had an argument with another parent about it.
“I was speaking to her about it just a couple of weeks ago, she literally had no idea. And God, her son is not doing well. I just hope the boys at your school aren’t quite so homophobic.”
“Well…” I thought about it with dismay as I realized I would not bet on it… and also, a couple of god damn weeks? Where had I been, the freaking Caribbean?!
“Actually I wanted to talk to you about that…” She removed her glasses from her face and for the first time actually turned to look towards me from the assignments she was grading. “I was wondering if you could maybe help him out; just show him where his class is so he doesn’t get completely lost?”
How could I object? A fellow human is in suffering and where there was suffering there she would be- her crazy special powers to control all things water are no match for any opponent… For she is…RIGHTEOUS RAIN!!!
I really have to work on my superhero build up, although in my head I had a whole outfit/theme tune going on… I really think you would have appreciated it a lot more.

I had always been a particularly lonesome child, finding my retreat in nature and animals, fictional realities such as books and films, or just my own mind, rather than the preferred television and video games of my peers. My state only worsened once I reached High School, and I retreated more and more into the safety of literature – where one’s feelings were not one’s own. You never had to truly feel their pain, only the joyous triumphs. He, on the other hand, had flourished beneath the light of popularity – and had to watch its warmth turn to ice and diminish into darkness before his very eyes. He had attended a private boy’s school, but the constant torment from his peers proved too much, and he shrunk to a mere ghost of the lively child he once was. I may have been quiet, but he had not, and his new reclusive attitude had his mother worried. Now I looked at this boy and wondered how the hell she could every worry about him. He was six foot and muscular, and more or less looked like a sexy scary biker guy you would find at one of those pool bars you see in the movies. I could not imagine this boy being teased.
I finished braiding a daisy into my hair, deciding to wait until we were alone to introduce myself. The corner of his mouth twitched as if wanting to smile as he watched me – always avoiding eye contact. As he did so, my stomach burst into flames and a grin formed from ear to ear in excitement. I was feeling attraction, real attraction.
At a younger age I had engulfed myself in finding what my parents had had- an instant attraction.
My mother had been nothing more than a hippy, living in a van with three other friends driving wherever the wind took her and he had been a famous photographer. He had been taking a photo of her in a club when their eyes met, and there it was – instant attraction. When my father retold it, he would always call it love – love at first sight – but my mother was far too feministic to believe that such a thing existed for intelligent, logical woman. She would only refer to it as “instant attraction”, and I had yearned for it ever since.

I decided this was as good a moment as any, “I’m Rain Rivers,” I grinned. “And I will be your tour hostess this morning. May I ask you name young sir?”
“Wow, your parents really didn’t like you did they?”
“Uh yeah actually, they did…! I mean do…! Why do you ask?”
“Well they named you Rain Rivers didn’t they?”