Bench at Night

Dear Levi,

12.29.13

There is a bench. It overlooks a hill. That leads to a building, where I have never been. Where I cannot go. A hill, where my feet have never touched. A hill, forbidden to me for my gender. A hill that formed the barrier between Levi and myself last year. A hill that he ran up and disappeared on and I never saw him come back down ever again. A hill that forms the divide between past and present. Between who we were... and who we became. A hill I hate.
During the last semester at Heartland, I would go to that bench and sit at night on Sundays. Sit, and look at the slope under the snow, and pray. I would revisit the place of my failure. And I would grieve. And prayer. And vow to change. I watched the snow fade to dead grass, the dead grass fade to baby sproutlings, the baby grass turn to full summer lawn, and the semester ended.
During the summer, I went back a few times. But it didn't feel right in the full green warmth. It wasn't the same hill. So I waited.
In autumn, it wasn't right, either. And I was scared of going onto campus onto the territory of Levi and Anna and Tim and their club. So many, against just one.
But now, this night, I felt myself shatter again. Like the night I drove to Walmart. Unable to stop the tears, the grief, the need for something. On that night, it was to see Levi one more time in the face and see him reject me. This night, it was to feel the cold and desolation and abandonment of that hill and know it is my future.
My window wouldn't roll down after church. I drove through the frigid wind blowing in my face to campus, and I parked in the girls lot. I got out, in my thin clothes, and wrapped my gold-threaded scarf around my dark navy peacoat and walked silently through the darkness to the bench.
On the way, I passed Tim. It made me shutter, my stomach revolted.
He didn't stop, didn't say a word, didn't' look at me. He disappeared into his warm, bright dorm. The one he was complaining about just a few weeks before.
And I walked to the bench, frozen and blistered in the artic wind, and sat under the arch of dead, shuddering branches. It was so cold, my body literally shook with the shivers from head to toe. My cheeks burned, my fingers burned, my legs shook. Like that night when I was sixteen. And attacked. When my life changed from normal to.... horrific. It never changed back. Each time (Andrea, Levi...) were just illusions.
And I sat there. For over an hour. And I let the bitter, blistering tears scrape from my eyes and peel down my cheeks and drip onto my scarf. Drip, drip. Tears burning on my exposed skin. Knees shaking in the moonlight. Wind howling, moon shining, silent laughing at me.
There was nothing.
No one to come share the silence.
Bring warmth to the bittern cold.
Break the desolation.
Share the exile.
I could dream of something, vague and warm and bright in my dull imagination, an angel appearing to shine a little on the darkness. But that was also an illusion. There was nothing there. Just my sick mind. Just me. Little Noelle.
Across the hill, the dorm shone. Laughter and life was just beyond the windows. Too far away for me to ever grasp. Not that night, if I wanted to stay on campus as a student. Not now, if I wanted to be able to return. I kept my distance on the bench and turned my blurred gaze towards the silent, dead hill. It felt more real.
It felt just like it did that night.
Cold.
Frigid.
Bitter.
Dead.
Hopeless.
I stayed until I began coughing and my ears were aching with the wind so badly I couldn't' feel the shakes anymore. I knew I was being dangerous now, like the night I threw myself off the bridge into the excruciating, iced black lake in Chicago. Tired, sick, hopeless. I had come full circle.
Levi told me to be the girl I was before he came along.
That was her back then.
And this is her now.
Just a little more disillusioned, even. Knowing to jump wouldn't even work. To lie down in the cold and long for death wouldn't bring it. God was crueler than that. So were his men.
I didn't have a warm car to return to. More darkness, more cold, more wind.
And no home to go to. Just an empty dark apartment with no life, no future, no point.
It was a miracle I did what I did. Reread the passage from Isaiah, and crawled into a dozen layers of clothes, and pulled the blanket over my eyes. There was no escape. So I just succumbed to the nothingness and fell asleep.
Horrific sleep, with nightmares of death. Of Levi and Anna, happy and warm. Of Tim, walking by me in the darkness. Of the bridge, of the blood, of the future.... stretching out into nothing.

Your star,
Rigel