Tug of Love

I think am alone, until another comes. I say, "not yet". You say, "okay", but you push my limits, pulling a rope I hold in my hands slowly and gradually so you can pull me closer to you. I've not felt an attraction like this from someone--someone I don't feel the same about. I don't even realize I'm beginning to fall and starting to accept you until I have to take a step forward to forfend a face-plant. Something's, not right.

Once grounded, I pull back. Viciously. I'm pulling arm over arm as if to rip the rope out of your hands, thinking, 'I may win. He might leave me alone'. Aa abruptly as I had started, I put slack on the rope. I don't want you to leave me. I don't want the rope to burn your hands. I just want to be friends. I need a friend. I'm ashamed. 

You recover. In spite of my actions, you begin pulling the rope very hard to keep me. The rope slithers and flies from my relaxed hands. I scramble to grab it before the red tag crosses the mark on the ground and declares you the winner. You'd get everything your way. You might even misunderstand that I let you win.

You even think you've won. I can see the boyish excitement in your adorable eyes, until you are jolted. You are confused looking up. You thought I had surrendered and let me be yours, but I ran after my independence. I pulled the rope over my shoulder and back digging my heels into the breaking ground to even the rope length on our sides. Though I know it pains you, you loosen your hold to let me do this. Then rope is dead in both our hands.

In the stillness, my mind thinks of all the things I could do if I am not in a relationship with you. Involuntarily, I start pulling to maintain control, invigorating the rope once again.

You begin to pull also, but you are getting closer to me now. I check my position. I'm not moving. However, you are.

I panic with the reality of what is happening. You're getting closer. 'Wait!' I want to scream it. Instead I bawl, "Why are you crossing the boundary lines?!" You're silent. It's grim though the space around us is lite, empty, creamy, suspended. Dream-like? I'm still pulling the rope in limbo. Why? I'm not wanting this.

You pass by the red tag on the middle of the rope. You're closer. "What are you doing?!" My frustration is un-bottled, yet I'm my hands desperately betray me, pulling the rope. Are you a lifeline or something? This doesn't make sense.

There's six feet of rope left between us. I gasp, stop pulling the rope, and throw it away from me. It's heavy and my hands are not loyal. You have stopped pulling, but still hold the tough, worked fiber. You're staring at me. The excitement is gone. I see hurt fill your face. The game is over.

Though you are on my side. Though the tag is on my side. Though I brought you here. You still lost. I pulled and it brought you closer. I guess my independence provoked you to pull back with hope that I would pull you here onto my side someday. But the horror of this event overwhelms me so that I burn the rope and scuff away the marking on the ground like nothing happened. 

And when I wake starkly, coldly, I wish this only happened in dreams. But it's also a figurative reality of my conscious past. And with more years, it makes perfect sense. It wasn't a game. It was naivety at play. My naivety.

I've had wilder dreams--hunting down blueberry-esque aliens hidden under spaceship radiator covers; my cat turning into a falsified turkey, fighting a giant spider, and being inexplicitly barbequed in my parent’s neighborhood; a sinister snowman chasing me down in the snowy as I babysat a secretly horrific doll in a candy gingerbread house who insisted on cutting my hair, then my arms, then under my chin leaving me drained--but none have shaken me as much as the realization of this one.

Fantasies don't tug you the same way. They don't care about you. But your love for your own well-being? That could tug at you for a lifetime.