'strange' is wunnathose words

Walking out of a long, high-tension movie (Atonement) with my friend, she stood waiting for me to put myself together. As I put on a sweater and a coat and a scarf, something strange happened.

I feel that this thing was so private and harsh to my friend that I can’t tell you about it, yet I need to write something because my head is spinning. And so, in a sort of prophylactic attempt to save her story I’ll tell one of mine.

It was a hard Thursday last year when I hadn’t managed to get out of the apartment for a week or so. I’d missed therapy and was about to miss group therapy. I found myself spending hours playing checkers online with strangers, who are much easier to talk to than the people who care about you when you’re in a mind to hate yourself. I’d decided to meet some guy I’d met through Match or checkers or something else. I’d decided to put on make-up and go out for a flirty, meaningless coffee because I couldn’t stand to take myself to group therapy. Mostly, I couldn’t stand to deal with my own shit that day.

And of course, while I was walking with this person, having just met in Coolidge Corner, a man from my therapy group was getting into a cab on his way to the hospital. He spotted me and yelled out a Hulloo.

“Oh, hi,” I said, careful not to use his name, because it’s strange territory among… groupees, “How are you?”

“Well, I’m headed over there right now. I’m going to be a little late but I really need to go. It’s good for me to go even when I don’t want to go…” etc. etc.

At some point it dawned on him that I wasn’t going and that I had company.

Now it was equally impossible to introduce this person I’d just met. I felt it wasn’t my right to give his name or to exchange it for the groupee’s name. All I could do was stand there and look stunned.

“I left a message with the secretary,” was all I said.

“Okay, well, hope to see you next week,” said Groupee.

Even though no one had been hurt, and only I had suffered some embarrassment, I still remember that cold, tight feeling in my abdomen of every single thing having gone wrong somehow, of all my deep and terrible secrets being bared, and worst of all, of those secrets becoming so instantaneously stupid and tiny.

Rationally, I knew that, in fact, nothing had happened, yet my mind twirled in inflated confusion for days afterward. I know my friend is feeling some of that now. I could see it on her face. Just as no one could soothe that feeling out of me, I knew that anything I said would only make her embarrassment more acute.

How do any of us sleep while so many people are hurting?

As we left each other tonight I apologized for my long silence over the past months. I said, "I'll try not to be such a stranger."

She said something like, "Oh, don't worry, you're not a stranger, you're just strange."

"Strange" is one of those words that if you say it over and over and over it loses meaning and sounds foreign. In fact, it makes everything more strange. strange. strange. strange. strange. strange. strange.