Van

We were at the point where it actually started to become something, and that's when it all went wrong. Not wrong, I guess, but different. When things changed. Things were speeding up and clarifying and then suddenly everything happened all at once. I got too busy at work. Her ex moved into her neighborhood.  Student loans were making their presence known. Everything was getting soft around the edges. And it halted, it just halted. But we had enough there to work with, we had enough where we had to do something about it. I wanted to do something about it. To try. I think we owed ourselves that much.

She didn't see it in the same way. This was, in her eyes, a clear indication that we shouldn't try. That some things just aren't meant to be, and this was one of those things. We were one of those things. But no, I said, that's bullshit. Even though I understood where she was coming from, I got it. Maybe more than I wanted to.

It was a rough conversation to start so late at night. She was using her early meeting as an excuse, which again I understand, but also this is us we're talking about. Be tired for one goddamn day. But she already was tired. She'd been tired. She didn't want to be doing this right now. This conversation, I asked, or this us? She never told me. She just opened the door.

I started to go, then stopped. I stood there in the doorway. One foot on her polished wood floor, the other on the stained hallway carpet. She asked me what I was doing, why I couldn't just leave. But I wanted to say something. And it seemed silly, but it was the only thing I could think of. I would've said anything really, just to stay there in that doorway.

"My mom, she had this ugly purple van. I mean this hideous, this awful, bright rotten purple kind of color van, and she took us everywhere in it. We drove everywhere in that terrible thing. I hated climbing in and out of it, being eaten and birthed by it so much. It was a grotesque thing that acted grotesquely, sputtering fumes and cancer everywhere we went, which was everywhere. Then, one day, Mom and Dad told us they were selling the van and getting a new car. And I went into the garage, into its gaping purple maw, and cried for the rest of the night."

It's always easier in your head.