Wild Little Hare

“I was just telling a friend of mine the other day,” he began to tell me a few weeks ago from the bar stool next to mine, “Man, she is so chill, all the time.  The most easy-going chick I’ve ever known.”

I could feel my eyes begin to roll with annoyance, as I picked at the paper label wrapped around the beer in front of me.  The usual discomfort that consumes me when I receive a compliment, in addition to the discomfort of being uncertain how to remain unbothered by something that clearly bothers me.

It’s comical that I’ve used “easy-going” to describe myself almost my entire life but hearing it in your voice bothers me.

If I’m being honest, I hate that you think I’m easy-going.  That cool, calm, and collected personality that you love so much doesn’t come easy for me when you’re here. 

“Easy-going” is not how I would describe the Sunday mornings that I was telling you to FUCK OFF for having shown up at our bar with another girl the night before.  “Easy-going” is not how I would describe the novel-sized text messages I would send you telling you what an asshole you are for dating everyone but me, since 2019.

It’s not “easy-going”, it’s waging a war within myself just so I can sit in your presence for an hour or two.

I remember laying around on your couch about a year ago, when you stopped mid-sentence to answer your phone: “Hey Magen.”
I laughed out loud, and immediately hoped she heard me.
Of course, it’s Magen.
The reason I constantly heard “No” since the day I met you.
No, you can’t come over. No, you can’t talk right now.  No, we can’t date.

But you’d still fuck me in your shower anyway.  You’d still lift my dress up after you tossed me onto the bar in your guest house. On the floor at 3am after the bar. Over your kitchen counter with our clothes thrown all over the living room. In your driveway over the hood of my car.  You’d still pay for my drinks, and fill up my gas tank, and take me to breakfast on my birthday. Tell me I’m beautiful and kiss me at the bar in front of everyone, anyway.
“I’m just dating this girl right now,” you told me for over a year. “It just wouldn’t be right.”

Of course, she’s calling.  Of course, you’re answering.
“I’m just sitting around the apartment with Micaela,” you told her.
She said something back that I couldn’t hear.

I remember sinking into your couch. Surprised that you called me by name, and grateful I couldn’t make out what she had responded with.

“I don’t think so,” you told her, before pulling the phone away from your lips to look at me:
“You’re not obsessed with me, are you?”  You grinned at me.
I could feel my cheeks suddenly burning bright red.  It felt like all the whiskey suddenly hit me at once.  My legs suddenly felt weightless in your lap.  I had to say something, anything.
After all, the three of us were just sitting there, waiting.

“Clearly, I’m madly in love with you.” I said, giving sarcasm my best shot. I put my whiskey glass back up to my lips.  What was I supposed to do? Awkwardly fumble denial?

She ended the call without saying anything else.  You chuckled in response and tossed your phone back on the ottoman. I forced a smile back at you, and quietly finished my drink.

I’m so easy-fucking-going.

I’m tired of pretending it doesn’t bother me when you look for a reason to disapprove of who I’m dating:
He’s too old for you, He doesn’t treat you well enough, You can do better.

I’m tired of pretending it doesn’t bother me each time you say your current relationship “isn’t that serious”.  I’m tired of pretending it doesn’t bother me each time you call me beautiful, or creative, or strong, or smart. Any time you tell me it’s so much fun to hang out together.  I’m tired of pretending it doesn’t bother me when you leave the bar at 2:00AM without me.  I’m tired of pretending it doesn’t make me boil over with laughter any time you tell me she did something that turned you off.  I’m tired of pretending it doesn’t bother me that you didn’t check on me the morning after.

“You’re 110 percent right. That’s super shitty of me. I’m sorry. I should have been communicating.”

I’m tired of pretending that I don’t love you, or that I’m not in love with you, or that I haven’t been in love with you for the past three years.  I’m tired of pretending that this type of unconditional one-way love isn’t completely unhealthy for me.

Your silence is screaming. Hope we’re ok.

No no no we’re fine.

I’m tired of being so easy-fucking-going.

I remember the first time I laid eyes on you. I swear it caused an electric reaction within me.  I wish I could pinpoint one specific thing about you that drove me wild, but just your presence felt like being thrown into rapid white water.  I tried to ignore you, I tried to behave.  Each time you caught my eye I had to physically force myself not to physically force myself onto you.  You appeared to be alone.  I was not.  I was with my mom, but I didn’t care, and it didn’t matter.  I’d already told her about the internal war I was waging.

“Okay, that’s it.” I finally muttered after 30 minutes. The tone in my voice made it obvious that I had lost in the battle of trying to ignore you and try to behave.  This was her Mother’s Day gift, and for some reason, I was treating it like a fucking bachelorette party.  Sorry, Mom.

I jumped down the stairs and couldn’t stop moving until I was immediately in front of you.

“Hey!” I called out, even though we’d been smiling at each other since I was halfway down the stairs.
“Hey!” you repeated back to me, maintaining the same flawless smile I would spend the summer lost in.
“Are you here with someone?” I held my breath for the answer I wanted.
I don’t know why I gave a shit what he responded with; I was already breaking all the rules I had at home.
You leaned in closer to me, and I could feel the warmth of your breath at the top of my ear.  Your voice was raised just barely over that of the opening band on stage: “I’m not here with anyone.”
Then you took a step back and gave me another smile.  Waiting for me to take my next turn.
I thought about the view my mom had: She was undoubtedly watching all of this unfold from the upstairs bar I had just abruptly abandoned her at.
“Okay,” I pressed further, “are you married?”
You put the back of your left hand between us to display a bare ring finger. “Divorced three months.”
Now what?  I taunted myself. What’s your game plan now?  What’s your end goal?
“Okay.” I dared myself, “Can I give you my number then?”
You already had your phone out.

I kept it a secret.  I kept you a secret.  Or so I thought.

“Are you moving in with Tim?” My mom asked me two months later, while we were standing in her driveway as I was picking up moving boxes.
I laughed out loud at the capacity of an alternate universe: “The guy from the concert beer line?”

In reality, I’d intentionally picked a house just down the road from yours.

One of the first times we had sex, I had come by just to borrow some power tools from you.  You had your rifle set up in the yard and had clearly been shooting at the targets across the field.  I parked my Chevy next to yours and walked into the guest house through the back door, grabbing a beer from the fridge on the way to the front.
“Cute dress.” You greeted me.
“It’s not for you,” I laughed as I took a swig of beer. “It’s laundry day.”
You rolled your eyes, bit your lip, picked me up by my ass, and dropped me onto the bar top: “I don’t care what day it is.”

I wanna love someone the way I was obsessed with you. I wanna go absolutely batshit crazy for somebody the way I chased after you. I wanna lust after someone the way I pined for your attention. I wanna be so incredibly unapologetically honest with someone the way I melted in your arms. I wanna anticipate someone’s behavior the way I calculated my day around yours. I wanna care for someone the way I dropped everything in the middle of the night to be with you.

I have never felt so confident as I did showing up at your house at 10pm on any given night.  “Hey,” you’d tell me, without a raise of the eyebrow, as I walked in through the back door of your house.  Just your silly neighborhood scamp looking to get her ass spanked against the kitchen counter.  “Whatcha havin’?  Whiskey or tequila?”

I had never felt as alive as I did that summer with you. Fleeting, but so explicitly drenched in passion.

I wish my biggest regret was not taking the time to learn to love you.
I wish my biggest regret was walking away too soon.
I wish I wondered what-if.

I wish I had treated you like shit.  I wish I had cheated on you.  I wish I had lied to you.

I wish it was you installing security cameras at every angle of your property.  I wish it was you going through 573 surveillance video clips before bed each night.  I wish it was you filling out RO after RO, and running down to the courthouse after work to make it before they close.  I wish it was you that had to explain to our friends and family that I’m drunk and willfully off my meds, unwilling to seek the proper help, and wreaking havoc on those around me whenever and however I saw fit.

I’m sick of talking about you.  I’m sick of hearing your name.  I’m sick of writing your name on restraining orders.  I’m sick of worrying that you’re going to show up at my house.  I’m sick of worrying you’re going to harm my animals.  I’m sick of being worried you’re going to put water in my gas tank, or nails in my tires.  I’m scared you’re going to try to compromise my sense safety further than you’ve carelessly destroyed it so far.

My biggest regret in life is responding to your text message in 2020.  My biggest regret is letting you know where I live.  My biggest regret is telling you my real name. My biggest regret is letting you get to know me.

You didn’t deserve to know me.  You didn’t deserve to know my friends, my family, my coworkers, or my animals.

You are my single regret.

June was a tough month for me. I’d say I went through a lot, but I managed to stay in survival mode the entire time, and feelings don’t seem to exist so much when you’re just going through the motions of your own life, week after week.

“Where’d all the bruises on your legs come from?” my mom asked me two summers ago, during one of the biggest transitional phases to date.
“I don’t know.” I told her, “I’ve just been drinking a lot.”
“Ugh. This is my least favorite version of you.” She told me on the porch of Tim’s guest house one morning.
“I’m just going through a lot.” I reminded her as I avoided her glance. “It’ll be over soon.”

A few weeks ago I was crying in your sister’s backyard.
“When you find the right guy, you’ll know.” She told me. “You have to stop wasting your time on the relationships you know aren’t right.”
“I just don’t think I’ll ever love anyone more than I loved your brother,” I told her. “I’d never been more sure of anything in my life.”
“He loved you a lot, too.” She told me, “That was obvious.”

Two weeks after I moved out, I asked to come back to pick up a laundry basket of clothes I’d forgotten in the garage. I got there after work, and used the garage door opener on my visor when I got there. I put the basket in my trunk, and then used the stairs in the garage to go up to the house. The first thing I saw was a garbage bag of photos I’d wiped off the fridge door in unmitigated anger, magnets and all. I’d thrown the photos into the trash bin in the garage when I’d left. Our first photos together of when you would visit me in the bay on the weekends. Photos of brunch with your parents. Photos of our camping trips. Photos of every holiday together. The photo Jessica took of us, slouched over and asleep in each others arms on her couch on your 37th birthday.
“You’re keeping these photos?” I scoffed with a twisted face.
“Yeah,” you told me, without looking up from the dinner you were preparing for yourself.
“You don’t wanna just pretend none of this ever happened?” I asked, sourly.
“No. I don’t.”

I saw you a couple weeks ago for the first time in two years. I wanted my anxiety to overwhelm me. I wanted my nerves to make it hard to breathe. I wanted to get so nervous I barfed. I waited and I waited and I waited, and as your truck pulled into the driveway I didn’t feel a single fucking thing. You let yourself into my back gate, and I wish I had been so nervous I started rambling about nonsense. I wish I had been so nervous I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. We stood there, 3 feet away from one another for the first time since I moved out, and I couldn’t feel a fucking thing. I chased after your beautiful blue-gray eyes trying to get them to impale me, and you wouldn’t even make eye contact with me.

Recently I came across copies of the letters I wrote to you. I’d stuffed them into the top drawer of one of your cabinets the day I moved out. I’d been living part time out of my car, and part time in one of the guest rooms for a week at the time I’d written them. I’d already signed the lease to my new place.
“I found your letters.” You text me, a few weeks later. “Probably the most honest thing you’ve ever written.”

I had so many favorite things about our love story. The way we met. The way we reconnected. The way we immediately signed a lease together, and neither of us had any second thoughts on it. The way we pushed each other to not only pursue our dreams and hobbies, but turn them into a means of financial income. The way we built our house together. The way we could just exist with one another without any doubts, without any anxiety, without much work. My absolute favorite memory though, was waiting during the evenings for you to come home from work. Hearing your truck pull into the driveway, and dropping whatever I was doing. Before you had a chance to even close the car door behind you, I’d already wrapped myself around you, and we’d just hug for a few minutes. We’d just stand in our driveway squeezing each other. Relieved just to finally be together again after a day of being apart.

How could something so pure, be so tragically irreparable.

It was 10:00PM by the time I finally left the house. My stomach twisted with anxiety, which seemed silly, but it honestly was such a relief to finally feel anything at all.

The nostalgia flooded my mind as I turned the last corner, and I immediately realized the entire town was already here too. The bar parking lot was crawling with cars also looking for a spot. The empty lot on the other side of the highway was lined with trucks parked any way they’d fit. Out of habit, I pulled in near my regular parking spot and laughed out loud when I immediately found an empty spot. I quickly pulled in and a moment later realized I had just parked right next to a blue Chevy. “Oh my god,” I scoffed as I finished my drink. “What year is it.”

I met up with Kelsie who had parked at exactly the same time as me, and we rounded the corner of the bar to be met with a line of people against the front of the building. “Whoa,” I said out loud. “I’ve never seen a line out front before.”
“Sorry,” said the girl at the front door. “We are at capacity, we’ll let you in as people leave.”
Kelsie slipped in the front door to use the restroom with a promise to be right back, while I hopped in the line at the end of the building to wait.

It had been maybe 10 whole seconds when I saw the new bar manager come around the corner, obviously on a smoke break. “Hey girl!” I called out to her, not knowing if she’d actually remember me from my two-beer pit stop a few days before.
“What’s your name again?” She asked me on her way to the parking lot.
“Micaela!”
“Come with me,” she said as she headed to the back gate of the bar. The live music got louder along with the roar of voices. She unlatched the back gate, and opened it enough for us both to slip in.
“DUDE, YOU’RE SO COOL.” I told her as she latched the gate behind us.
“You’re welcome!” She smiled, “I gotta get behind the bar.”

I dodged through the swarm of cowboys, somehow all in long sleeves even though it still felt like 100 degrees out. Through the crowd, through the back door to the bar, when I finally saw Kelsie’s red hair standing in line for the bathroom still.
“HEY GIRL,” I smiled excitedly. “I’ll be at the bar!”
“How’d you get in already?” She asked me, laughing.

I had just made it to the front room of the bar when I felt an arm slip around my waist and pull me back. In the split second before I turned around, I already knew who it was. “Hey!” He smiled his normal perfect smile. “Glad things are back to normal!” He squeezed me tight and then immediately let me go.

I slipped in towards the bar, and scanned the room safely below a sea of cowboy hats. Kelsie met up with me soon after, and then Tim passed by again. “I have a tab open!” He called out in passing as we met glances. I put the backs of my hands under my chin, “Thanks!”

We stayed til 2:00AM laughing and dancing and spilling drinks, which is insane; I can’t remember the last time I closed down a bar.

The next afternoon, I was on the phone with my mom. We’d been missing each other’s phone calls for a couple of days already.
“Hellloooo,” I rolled over in bed while answering the phone.
“Oh god.” She said, “You sound hungover.”
I laughed. “The Wrangler reopened last night!”

She filled me in on her new life in Texas, and having just been able to finally move into their house after living out of a hotel and truck for two weeks.

“It was wild,” I told her. “Everything was perfect. I made a bunch of friends, and ran into old friends, and I flirted with everyone, and didn’t spend a dime while I was there.”

She laughed: “Good! Life is good!”

Not to be dramatic but, you saved me.

I remember passing by in the car on the way to his parents’ house.  A homemade casserole or dessert held on my lap.  It was always an hour drive from no matter where we lived, and I never knew the backroads by heart, but I always got so silently excited when he decided to take Grant Line Road back to his hometown.  We’d pass this old wooden bar on the side of the road, in this tiny town that popped up out of what felt like nowhere.  Four corners in bumfuck, which somehow always felt alive in this town that somehow just existed.  The gravel lot of the bar was somehow always full of trucks, the oversized wood door was always open, the inside always packed with cowboy hats.  I’d smile to myself and imagine my world in a parallel universe.

Just a cowgirl from a podunk town.

It’s not that I was unhappy with the life I was living.  It was the happiest, I thought, I’d ever been.  And if we’re speaking of wrangling, my man had done it.  He had shown me what it was like to be loved when I felt like I didn’t deserve it, and he showed me what it was like to be taken care of when I felt like I couldn’t do it for myself.  He was my bestfriend, he was my savior, and he was my future.

But the truth of the matter is that he was sick.  He was sick with a disease that neither of us knew how to address, or communicate about, or manage.  And so we were making it up and making it work the best I could, in the only way I’d figured out so far:
Watching my life from the sidelines with a homemade casserole on my lap.

“I don’t know how I got by without him,” I remember telling Kalista one afternoon.
“You did though,” she reminded me. “And, actually, you did it really well.”

Several years later I’d finally walk into that bar when I was completely lost at sea.  Everything I’d known, everything I thought was my future, had just come to a clamorous and abrupt halt.  I was sad, I was poor, I was lonely, but… no one here knew that.
I could do anything.  I could be anyone.  I could be the happiest I’d ever been.

Just a cowgirl from a podunk town.

I remember working overtime at that shitty job I hated, rushing out the door at 8pm to make sure I got to the bar by 9pm to catch the beginning of the live band.  I remember waking up on the weekends feeling the loneliest I ever had in my life and walking into that bar just to feel like I belonged somewhere.  I remember sitting around that bar waiting for my crush to walk in.  I remember dancing with strangers at the bar, singing with strangers at the bar, making friends from strangers from that bar.  I laughed the loudest in that bar.  I felt the most at home in that bar.  I met the most friends in that bar.  I felt the most like me in that bar.

So, not to be dramatic, but you saved me.

Before I met you, I didn’t want a relationship. I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend, or a partner, or someone to explain myself to.

Before I met you, I felt safe in my home. I didn’t feel the need to deadbolt every door in my house. Before I met you, I didn’t lock all my windows before bed. There was no padlock on my back gate.

Before I met you, I felt independent. I felt liberated. I felt confident. I felt sure of who I was, and content with who I am. Before I met you, I felt proud of my past, and the person it’s made me. Before I met you, I felt happy with where I had made it mentally, and emotionally in life.

Before I met you, I had never been in such a blatantly toxic relationship. I had never been blamed for someone else’s behavior so frequently. I had never been called so many names, or been apologized to so many times. I had never experienced so many highs, immediately followed by so many lows. I’d never broken up with somebody so many times. Before I met you, I didn’t think a romantic relationship had the capacity to be so burdensome. Before you, I’d never been ‘the girl with the crazy boyfriend.’ Before I met you, I’d never regretted leaving my ex.

Before I met you, I didn’t feel the need to check over my shoulder while out in public. I didn’t feel the need to check the surroundings of my car before I walked out from my office.

Before I met you, I had never begged someone to leave me alone. Before I met you, I had never shouted at someone to leave my house. Before I met you, I’d never feared for the lives or well being of my animals. Before I met you, I had never called the cops on anyone.

Before I met you, I didn’t feel the desperate need to keep my social media locked up and off limits. Before I met you, I was proud to write, and offer people the chance to read. Before I met you, I felt free, and carefree, and safe and secure.

I’m struggling every day, just trying to be the same girl I was before I met you.

Being easy-going is both a lucky blessing and an unsuspecting curse.

A blessing in that not much is inconvenient to me.  Not many things are troublesome or a struggle for me. Not much is bothersome.  I can float whatever current shows up that day, and I will be just fine if that current changes.  Everything has a solution.  I can adapt and overcome literally anything.  I’d prefer to spend my time and energy problem-solving a new trail, than waste my precious time being upset that the original route was destroyed.

A curse in that I find myself typically not having a say in much.  Not many things are curated just the way I’d like them, because it was easier to let a loud mouth have their specific way instead.  I’d rather be mildly inconvenienced than deal with the tantrum of someone who cared much more than I.  A curse in that some days I wake up feeling like I haven’t seen myself in months.  Like I haven’t felt like myself in weeks.  I lost myself countless days ago, because I was so focused on riding the changing waves of those around me, that I drifted too far out to sea.  I can’t tell which direction is East.