To: SMK Legacy. I loved your review. And your line in 'Tropical Scents' about Josh and Donna. And VeraLynn... whose Catharsis review left me all a-tingle.
Oh, and what's with everyone wanting to tattoo my name on their ass?
Everyone read Laura Katherine's 'The Great Escape.' It's utterly fantastic, I just can't seem to get enough. For real.
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It was time to be humble, to succumb to the complete misery of hitting rock bottom, both in body, and in spirit. Alas, she had become accustomed to the feeling long ago, but it always took a few abject moments to rearrange herself, dust things off and get settled in.
This particular time, she found things dustier than usual, but still in perfect condition. Like a well-kept bomb shelter, there was enough food and water down there to last her months. For that, she... well she wasn't sure if she was grateful.
And yes, yes it was true, she did harp on the topic, all the time in fact. So much so that it had become a character trait. Sad, but true. It was such a trait that it had become tiresome, not only to her, but to her coworkers, though they would voice no verbal complaint. That would be akin to acknowledging the large tutu-wearing elephant in the corner.
No, that corner. Right there, I'm pointing right to it. Yes, that one. That elephant, large as it was, represented the fraction of hope that was left, an itsy ember struggling to once again create a fire inside of her. It didn't seem like such a big deal, wanting someone but it was, it was if you were her and he was... him.
Nurturing this ghost of a chance is a tad hard here, so give her some credit. At least coherent thought had yet to elude her.
'The night is long.' She mused with herself. 'Still have a long way to go.'
She needed to get up off the couch, leave her apartment. But first, first, she had to prepare. Check herself. Emotional baggage? Check. Self-loathing? Both pairs? Check! Blinding love/hate for a one Gil Grissom? That's a huge red check.
Suddenly, the urge to up and leave left her and she settled down, putty under the weight of her emotional baggage. It was recently become impossible to carry. The luggage ripping open and spilling ancient emotions all over her shoes. And that upset her, because the shoes were new.
Maybe it was time to go away? A good time to leave? The thing that he never understood with her was that she had reasons, real reasons that he didn't. He wouldn't see them, couldn't see them, unless she grabbed up her coat and left. Maybe then he'd realize the grandeur of this "crush" she had.
After all, who the hell crushes on a fifty year old man? Certainly not her. If this was a crush, Sara Sidle was damn sure she couldn't handle the real thing. She'd more than likely explode, leaving only a pile of Sara-goo... Sara-goo that still longed for him in ways that no one could understand.
When she finally morphed back into her normal self, it would always take her a few minutes to retrace her steps and pick up all the pieces she'd left behind. Not bothering to fit them back into the complex Grissom-puzzle, she simply throws them into her soul's satchel and move on with the self-destruction. It took too much time, gathering up the fragments, trying to get them back into place just as more fell down to her.
Life was passing her by, but it wasn't her fault. It really wasn't. Okay, it was. Completely.
If she were a Cosmo quiz, she'd be 'Are You In Love?... or Treading Down a Hopeless Path Chasing a Man Who Loves You Back and Is Too Chicken To Admit It."
Oh, she wanted to do the 'Time Warp', see if it worked. Then again, she realized that if it had been featured in Rocky Horror Picture Show it wasn't too credible. But really, if she went back a few years, knowing what she knew now, then, would she make the same choices? Would she honestly up and move to Vegas?
Please. Of course she would, love was blind, even with twenty-twenty hindsight.
Truth be told, the shiny little glimmer of hope that resided inside of her was beginning to tarnish. Sara wasn't sure she had the energy anymore to care for and nurture it. Head lolled on the back of the couch, she felt far too much like watered down Campbell's soup; familiar, but no longer filling, no longer having any taste. She, she felt bland.
In fact, if she were an expression of taste, she'd surely be 'blah'. Some sad, drawn out piano piece that's been played so many times that it's no longer music, it's custom.
She wanted to be full of luster again, to have him take a cloth, a bit of cleaning solution and wipe off the proverbial dirt that he had caused to settle all over her.
And yet, after all of the self-loathing, the questioning, the many failed attempts at attempting a relationship, she was still as deep in as she had been from the beginning. Deeper even. And when he'd rejected her dinner offer, instead of becoming angered, she just picked up her well-worn shovel and dug deeper.
For such a glaringly intelligent woman, she felt so completely feeble-minded. And if it had been anyone else but him, she would have done away with the notion a long time ago.
But as simple as love was, it was intricately complex. Layers and layers of meaning and circumstance and intent to sift through. Sara was glad indeed that she had a handy shovel to sort through all of it.
She was mixing metaphors so quickly, and she hated it, but it did make her feel better. So how could that be a bad thing? Her mind spun off on a torrent of literary explanation and she smiled, nicely surprised with the interpretation she'd formulated.
Her desire for him was so obvious, it was magnesium road flare, so bright you can't look at it... and his? A spark, a glimmer... does she see it in him at all, or is it just dazzle from being too close to her own fire... But that metaphor only served to make her love seem artificial. Which it wasn't. At all.
A sudden wave of anger overtook her and she got up, grabbed a pillow and punched it into submission. Not that it had been doing anything before, it was just a nice throw pillow. Pretty. Harmless. Poor pillow. Sara began to cry, her head pulling her this way and that, every though driving her down the dead end dirt road that was Gil Grissom.
The tears spurred something to bubble up within her, mind forcing her to remember scant moments when she'd catch him staring, his forehead an intricate map of intensity. Was he trying to dissect her-what was going on in her head, perhaps? It was amusing that he could sit there and hope to extract silent secrets from her, all he really had to do was ask and she'd tell willingly.
Sighs were now her best friends. She found herself emitting them at moments when he'd give her a little morsel that would feed her ember of hope. But it wasn't the same. There used to be butterflies when he'd send an innuendo her way, now there was just a compulsion to steal it and tuck it away because she wasn't sure if they'd stop coming. And she wanted to remember everything if, for some reason, one day, the innuendos, the tiny morsels of hope... stopped coming.
And that was a distinct possibility. Her head fell onto the battered pillow and yes, she sighed. Twice. The second forced her eyes to slide shut and the images came, colorful and unwanted.
The only true conclusion that she'd draw up from all of her encounters with him in the past that did not waver was this: Men. Are. Idiots.