How the turntables.

***

Hello from the other side, she says. Laughs. It tastes sour. She bites down on that flavor and soaks it up, because she deserves this. It's her turn.

After what she put the others through . . . it's really only fair. She just didn't quite know it was this . . . this bad.

***


I've got this whole new level of empathy for my exes? Because I'm sitting on the other side of the table at the moment.

Back then, I was never in it seriously. I was having some fun, that's all. I felt bad that they were so much more invested than I was, but what was I supposed to do about it? I kept it as light as I could. For the most part.

And now . . . well. He's having fun. He likes where it's at right now, which is precisely nowhere. He wanted to try out the experience, I think. And that's fine. Very understandable, given where he is and what he is doing with his life right now. He's keeping it as light as he can.

I'm playing along pretty well, or at least I believe I am. I've always been good at keeping hidden what I actually want to hide. (I muddy what I want to make clear, but that's a different problem.) So I'm fairly sure he doesn't know how deep I got before I figured all this out. That's the hope, at least, because to acknowledge anything else would be deeply embarrassing.

But playing along is what I'm doing, and I need to reshuffle. Again. I need to make it true so that when this ends, as it always does with this kind of emotional disparity . . . I can shake it off like he will. Like I did before.

Maybe fatalism creates fate. But I don't want to feel the kind of hurt I know I caused, so.

(Too late.)