Escape

I made my way through the crowded hallway to the back of the restaurant. The kitchen sat open and the cooks and wait staff eyed my briefly as I put my head in my hands and took a deep breath, oblivious that I was standing in their path to the dining room. After a moment of complete self absorption, I wedged myself into a corner to make way.

She was here, some woman I'd forgotten I'd met, months ago. She sat with Tonya, Sam, Dave and I. She and her lover had walked in, saw Sam, an old friend and sat down with us. She ordered a vodka tonic and her lover and mine spoke across the table of insignificant where's and whats. She and I sat, remote, wary, looking at each other.

Tonya and I had moved in together a month earlier. Our connection was easy and pleasant, I thought why not? She was practically living with me anyway. And as these decisions are like dominos I also started to consider going back to the ad agency for something stable to tide me over till I got back to writing and finishing my novel, which would probably result in another slew of bad reviews, barely making enough to live. And why not get that closet in the hallway cleaned out so when Tonya's family came for Christmas we could open it without being frightened books, umbrellas and games would fall onto our guest's heads.

Yes, this was the sound of my mind settling and I didn't notice since this action only creates a very subtle hum, like the machines my grandfather was attached to just before he died.

I stood wedged into the corner near the kitchen in the panic one feels knowing one has committed a grave, unconscious error. This isn't a revelation that this forgotten woman who sat across from me, trying to remember where we met, is the newly realized love of my life. What she was was the reminder of a freedom I almost gave up for a subtle feeling of a dim happiness.

A light turned on, illuminating my sleep walking of the last six months, and with this comes the waking. I know now, when I walk back into the dining room I will see Tonya and our friends, I will remember our hall closet, I will think of my old boss at the ad agency and I will never again see any of them as I saw them a half an hour before. And this was the beginning of my plan to escape.