Something I Lost In The Woods.

He always reminds me of boiled chicken and always has. Everything about him feels, looks and smells like it. His skin, especially the skin on his face, hangs in weird pouches and make it seem it he's been bouncing around in a pot of water for years. He even smells like that. Like that horrible smell that tells you that this is not the proper way to cook this particular ingredient. That strange smell of a cooked but unseasoned and raw smelling piece of meat. Even touching his skin felt like running my fingers over thready, watered down chicken. Because of him I cannot stand the smell of boiled chicken. Time was that it was so bad that I couldn't boil chicken without throwing up or inexplicably retreating into myself. Everytime I boiled chicken, my past smelled so real that I had to turn down the gas and hug myself at the knees. That scent reminded me only of everything I had lost.

I don't think I was conscious to that loss until I spent a long weekend on vacation with my family and his. The horrible things had already happened but I hadn't changed because of them yet. At least, I like to think so. There were horrible things yet to happen but I didn't know they would so I felt like I had already survived the storm and learnt to live well within it. When your state of reality is altered you find a way to locate the normality within it so as to keep on surviving and maybe even laugh once in a while. A couple of years ago, for instance, I was in a zone that was hit my a major natural disaster. Nothing about the situation there was normal; not only had it been devastating but also it was being so difficulty managed. It was mayhem and fear on a second-to-second basis. But it was one of my most fun assignments I've ever been on because somehow once we accepted that as normal, we were able to cope with it. We were able tondo our jobs. We were able to find a way to make it less grave that made us laugh. It's horrible, I guess, but I think that's how people survive war. By people I don't mean the army or the people who have the reasons that make war worth it and the power that allows them to play with these toys we call human life, I mean people. Not people who die at war, but people who live at war.

In a nutshell that is where I was in terms of survival, I had been living at war for long enough that I had found things that made me happy there. I had found coping mechanisms that allowed me to believe there was nothing wrong with my life, it was just "different".

And in that state of being I went on a trip. With my family and his.

Our families were close. Thick as thieves, as they say, and just as dense. We took vacations together very often. He was my father's dearest friend, my mother's "special" friend and the man I lost my virginity to and because of him I no longer have the ability to not find that sentence hot. On that trip we took to a golf resort in the mountains (that doesn't sound right but I am sure that's what it is), I finally found out what I had lost because of this man.

We got one of those giant cottages. There was a barbeque pit in the back and a garden up front. High ceilings, the highest I have ever seen actually, and trees all around. Stables around the corner. I should really revisit. Unpleasant emotional experience waiting to happen aside, it was a beautiful place. We got there in the afternoon and we walked around. I remember a basket full of apples and I remember a horse going down a mountain. That doesn't sound right either but that's what it was. I remember T and me running around getting wood to light a fire. T was my best friend, by the way. Back when I could still say that word without cringing a little bit. T was the son of the man who (still hard to say, I'll admit it) raped me. T and I grew up together. We went to school together when we were kids and we met every day. He protected me from bullies and ran away from home to be with him. I stole his toys and he broke mine. But it wasn't until much later that I realized I lost him to that man too. At that time, i didn't know I would be told one day that I could never speak to my friend again. Nor did I know that one day there would just be so much history I wouldn't know what to say even if I could talk to him.

That night we just had a barbeque and I was being a teenaged girl and telling my father he was wrong about every political opinion he held. My mother was shaking her head at me and telling me to cut my nails. My sister was playing in the dirt and crying a lot, she was a really cranky kid. T was wrapping potatoes in foil and putting them in the barbeque pit. His wife was talking to my mother and my mother was laughing. It's amazing. Anyone who saw us that night would say we seemed like such nice happy people. Nice happy people who fuck the other's children and cheat on their husbands and beat everything in sight. Maybe it was the barbeque. Maybe the heat and the smell of meat makes people believe they have just the same lives as anybody. It's the war-zone. You do what you can to survive.

Early next morning, I woke up to take a walk and walked out of the bedroom I was sharing with my sister and past the bathroom. There were two corridors and one of the doors of one of the bedrooms I walked past was open. He was standing there and so was his wife. They were fighting. I could hear them all the way down the corridor. I don't know what the fight was about. I don't think they even saw me. I walked past the room and out the door in seconds. All I saw was her crying and I couldn't even see his face.

When I came back his wife seemed sullen and he was actively ignoring her. These situation they make me so uncomfortable, even now. I say fight as much as you want, but why the facade of happiness? What's the point? If we carry our baggage with us wherever we go, we will never really be happy anywhere, then why go? Why go to the mountains and sanity if you're bringing all your crazy along? I just know that from that point on that trip, all I could think about was his wife. She seemed so upset. I was never crazy about her but she didn't deserve to be treated the way he did. It bothered me. I felt like it was my problem to sort this out. Like I was responsible somehow.

I spent most of the day reading and writing and playing. In the early evening my father took everyone out for ice cream. My mother didn't go. Neither did he. My mother asked me stay back too. She did this often. Asked me to cover for her. Be there to warn her. I accidentally learnt how to do it. I wasn't trying to, when I started I didn't even know what I was doing. I was sitting in the little garden patch right behind the cottage. Not really doing anything. Just sitting. Planning to read. Planning to write. And I heard my mother scream inside the house so I ran inside to see what that was about. I still don't know. It seemed like he hit her. Obviously later my mother told me he did but then I didn't know what it was. He just stood there and looked at her, and she looked at me and said it's okay, I should go away. I said I was sorry. I don't know why. I said that and I went back outside. My mother followed soon after. I felt that weight again. That weight that it was my job to do something about this, but I didn't know what. Or how. Or why I felt so wholly responsible.

My mother told me not to mention anything about any of this. She told me if my father asks what we did I should tell him she was with me all the time and he was taking a nap. She didn't need to tell me, of course. But she's a worrier, my mother. When everyone came back I could still see that his wife was upset and my parents were spoiling for a fight. My sister was cranky. T was sleepy. I just wanted to get out of the house. I asked my father to take me to the stables. He said he was too tired and wanted to take a nap. I asked if I could go alone and everyone was a little resistant because apparently I would be eaten or attacked by an animal. It's ironic, the vultures live amongst us and we're afraid of forests.

"I'll take her," came the voice of the boiled chicken. Even his voice sounded like boiled chicken.

I asked my sister if she would come and I mentally begged her to say yes just like I mentally begged T. In what universe are kids not excited by horses? I tried to get out of it, but I didn't try that hard.

We went out the door a few minutes later. There was a bit of a walk through the forest to get to the stables. I don't think he was guiding me to the stables anyway. He didn't say anything about what had happened with my mother, of course. He never did. We just pretended like she wasn't madly in love with him and I wasn't really her daughter. I still couldn't get the face of his wife and my mother out of my head.

"I've fucked all the women in that house," he said

I looked at him. He said unbelievable things that man. Things you don't expect to hear from someone you've known as your dad's friend most of your life.

"I'm a girl," I told him, "Not a woman."

He stopped and held my wrist and slid his hands between my legs. I looked around immediately. I always felt it was my responsibility not to get caught with him. Like this was all my idea. And I was the dirty little slut. He slid his hand inside my tracks and touched me till I started to forget the war. You've got to find a way to survive it, right? I found it between my legs. You have to find something to like about reality if you are going to survive it. Every now and then I opened my eyes to look around. Just to make sure no one could see the shameful thing I was doing. Or he was doing. I came on his fingers. He could make me come so easily. It's never been easy since. Not once.

"Aren't​ you a woman?" He asked after I came.

And in that moment, I saw his face and realized exactly​ what I'd lost. I saw the faces of all the women in his life and my face along side them. I understand why I felt responsible like it was my fight. We were women, all of us. Standing against each other and some sort of odds. Yet somehow in it together.

But I didn't know what to do with this information then. I tried to concern myself with cocks, fingers and orgasms. I had to survive the war.

I did.

And even though I lost a girl, I became a woman I can finally respect. Sometimes it just takes a while before you understand your own life.