The Wicked Game

When I was going out with Illinois we used to listen to Damien Rice a lot. We listened to 'O.' When we broke up, Illinois thought he was doing me a favor. That I was going to meet a nice guy, the kind of guy he could never be and that I would have children and live happily ever after. I don't know who he was reassuring. It wasn't me. I wanted him to be that nice guy. But as time puts everything in perspective, he could never have been that guy and his decision was the smartest decision I didn't make for my life.
Back to Damien Rice. Whenever I listen to 'The Blower's Daughter,' I hear Illinois' words to me, about how great my life was going to be, without him in it. The lyrics to the song begin with:
"And so it isJust like you said it would beLife goes easy on meMost of the timeAnd so it is ...
Whenever I hear those lyrics I feel his words mocking me. How I'd be okay. How it would all work out for me. How he was freeing me from a life I wouldn't want and couldn't lead. How I would get those things that I want out of life as soon as he extricated himself and got out of my way. There has not been one easy day since we broke up. Life has not been easy on me. Yet my life would never have been anything with him in it. He kept me docked on shore. And I needed to be at sea and find my way to the life I was meant to lead. Without him. By myself. Only I bought in to his promise that life would be easy on me. I believed that our break-up and the babies we lost was the worst thing that could happen and things could only get better. I had no idea what life still had in store for me. It sure as hell wasn't the nice guy and the kids and the normal family life or the fantastic writing career that he predicted would happen. It was being a shell and crying every day and being so lost I don't know how I remembered where I lived, and sometimes I didn't and would end up in our old apartment, asleep next to him. It was having a new job where I never felt comfortable and never felt confident. It was having knee surgery and learning that I might never run again. It was my world spinning and spinning and spinning like I had the spins, like I was drunk, my world was a blur of misery. It was me fighting with myself all the time and faking to everyone else that I was happy, that I was okay, that I believed things would work out for me, that the worst was over and there was a light at the end of the tunnel. But bad things kept on happening. And I couldn't ever see that light. I couldn't even see a glimmer, a trickle, a spot of light. I was completely in the dark and my eyes just wouldn't adjust and I had to go to work in the dark and get dressed in the dark and start my life over in the dark.
Then came the fateful day when he called me and told me we needed to talk. That was September 17, 2005. It was almost to the day 8 months after we broke up. He came over. He insisted. We sat on my stoop. He said, "Briana, I got married yesterday." My response, "Why'd you go and do a thing like that for?" Him,"You know how I am." I came back in the house crying, in shock. I sat by the window as AC poured gin in my glass even though I hate gin and I drank it down because it was alcohol and I chain smoked and and stared out the window and felt like I was going to throw up and my heart was going to pop out of my chest and I was breathing so fast and so hard and couldn't stop and I couldn't say anything except, "he's married. Illinois' married," in wonder. It was as if I had been told that my entire life I had been living on Pluto instead of earth.
"And so it is.
Just like you said it would be
Life goes easy on me
Most of the time
And so it is ..."
On October 18, 2005 my grandmother went into the hospital. She never came out. We sat vigil at her hospital bed as she went from bad to worse to feisty to weak to frustrated to feisty and back. We sat vigil because we didn't know what to expect but we knew we wanted to drink in every last drop of her, the matriararch, the funniest woman we knew, the meanest, most unpredictable, woman we knew, the coolest woman we knew. We were there before work, at lunch, after work. We knew where she was headed. We didn't know when but we knew it would be soon. Finally on November 11, 2005 after being in a hospice for four days, she finally died. I was at a party. My sister was there. She collapsed and had to leave. All I wanted to do was still be at that party. Good that my sister and I never fall apart at the same time. She fell apart at the party and I felt nothing. I fell apart later. I slept next to my sister at her place that night while she grieved.
"And so it is.
Just like you said it would be
Life goes easy on me
Most of the time
And so it is ..."
Need I continue. My sister and I moved into my grandmother's apartment soon after with designs on keeping it and moving in there. It made us feel closer to grandma and ourselves and our past. That apartment had been in our family for 60 years. After a protracted battle with the management company and our family (my father said he would never set foot in that apartment where he grew up in ever again), we were forced out on May 31, 2006. A devastating blow, it felt like losing her all over again. Now I would no longer be surrounded by her walls and the safety of the apartment I had known my whole life which we left intact; it reeked of her and I always felt she was there with me in the apartment, one room away. On June 2, 2006 I got fired, or I like to say, 'liberated,' which might be the first of Illinois' predictions coming true because it jumpstarted me in a good way. And then I got sick. And that brings us to the present tense.
"And so it is.
Just Like you said it would be.
Life goes easy on me
Most of the time
And so it is ..."

I just want to shake Illinois because it's not just like he said it would be.