Fast As You Can

I texted Mike about my late period and 50/50 results on the home pregnancy tests, and he responded by saying the most humiliating thing possible. -There's just no way Jose. Over the many many years i have had a handful of major "whoops" and nothing ever happened. I slept with you twice. I'd say immaculate conception is more likely. Or your just pulling my main to get a reaction from me.
I was without words at this. I read it, read it again, closed my phone, drove home, sat on my couch, waited for the shock to wear off, and then I texted him back that I wasn't trying to get a response and that was a really mean thing to say. This is worse than everything else that has preceded it. Apparently, he only remembered a percentage of the times we kicked it, and I am really bad at sex. I didn't realize this was true because I am running for the title of World's Biggest Idiot and I think I am winning.
I did not even allude to how offended I was that he would suggest I was making it up just to get a reaction from him. I knew that if I did tell him how insulted I was, that I resented his implications, I would just look more guilty. I am offended, and I do resent it, but goddamn if those two responses don't sound like something a guilty person would say. I am relieved I have nothing to worry about, but now I am just freaked out by what my body is doing to me by making me think I have a situation to worry about. I still haven't gotten my period, I still have to figure out why I got a false reading on a pregnancy test, and I still have the nausea and constant headache to remind me that my body is just wrong right now. And I have the reminder of Mike's harsh-ass words resounding in my head. I should have known that I would end up getting hurt in some new, creative way, but I will never learn.
In the midst of the fistful of annoying errands I had to tackle the other day, I sat down for a minute with my friend Rebeca and caught up with her. Once I was finished with my latest monologue on the topic of "My Hurt Feelings", she asked me, jokingly, "Why don't you just do what I do- when you start to feel something, just run the other way in fear?"
I laughed and said that running the other way is just not my jam. I don't run away from something scary, I go to the other extreme and run head-first into it with my eyes closed. I can't help but think of Cedric the Entertainer's joke about how white people always get into trouble because they don't follow when a crowd starts running. White people, according to the bit, will run in the opposite direction, toward whatever everyone else is running away from, because they just have to see what's going on. If that is the main distinction, I am an extremely white person. If a whole crowd of people started running away from something, I probably would run toward the problem just out of curiosity, and I would probably get smacked in the mouth. When Mike told me how he felt, I was a little scared of what might happen, but instead of being smart and telling him that maybe now was not the best time to be telling me this, I went for it. I got smacked in the mouth by reality eventually, but life is just that way. I knew Mike was going through something, emotionally, that I probably wouldn't be able to help with. He all but told me he was scared and messed up about women in the same conversation where he told me he had a crush on me. Still, I went into it thinking that even if it didn't work out, it would serve me in some way. The day I found out that I had the wrong idea all along about what was between us, I thought to myself, "Use it, feel all of it, don't shut it out. This will teach you something."
This comes, of course, after Gino gave me such a shock by asking for a divorce and I had to slowly learn that the pain that comes from having your heart ripped out can be useful. I did not react to that news by immediately telling myself that I would learn from it. I cried and chain-smoked and completely shut down for weeks. It is only after the numbness wore off, which took several more weeks, that I felt anything. When I talked with Gino last night, I told him about this, and he hugged me up against his chest and said, "I'm sorry. I didn't want to hurt you like that."
"You didn't have a choice," I said, "You were looking out for you. But it hurt like hell and it still does."
I don't know where this hyper-awareness of how pain can be useful started, or if I am even doing it right. Neil Gaiman once made a comment in an interview about how being a writer makes you stop feeling things genuinely, how you are always mining your own reactions to things for source material. Because writing has become my therapy, I have just recently started to recognize how much I tend to do this. I start crying, and I am paying very close attention to what my body is doing, if my eyes are tingling or if they are burning, if my stomach hurts, if my nose is running. I get disappointing news and catalog every physical response, file it away for the future, when I can use it to describe a person who is in agony from getting sucker-punched by another person's actions. It's the only way I can get through it, take away its power, make the pain my bitch.
I will never be someone who is smart, who runs away from something scary, or genuine, or that looks like a terrible idea. I have been hurt, but I will keep getting hurt, and when I do get hurt, I will feel every bit of it and use it to create something else. I will keep getting smacked in the mouth by whatever the crowd is running away from, because that is just the way I am.