4 Minutes

I mapped it.
You were 4 minutes away.
The closest in almost a decade.

I drove blindly and sat terror stricken. Waiting and hoping for her to show up so I wouldn't be so afraid of you.
But she never came.

I was tempted to look for you. To go out publically in the place I suppose you consider home. To incite you into my path, to pull you towards a conflict I didn't want to have.

Instead, I was propelled back.
Back to the soft patch of carpet behind the davenport.
Back to the scratchy green carpet in the dining room under the table.
Back to the top of the straight set of stairs.
Back to the floor by the door of the only room I felt safe in listening and watching silently through the cold registers.

I was flung back to the smells of your hatred and the decay of the love that was dying on your breath.
I was reminded that I am simply a tool in your destruction and I was no more than the little value you ever gave me.

I tried to be strong. I tried to remember it wasn't true, that it had never been true.
I tried to remember that these lies were simply the rantings of a person so ugly and unhappy.
I tried to fight it, I tried to focus on the happy couple and I tried to remember that I wasn't going to be alone much longer.

But I was. Alone.
For hours.

Someone else came. Someone else drove farther than 7 minutes and came and sat and didn't make me talk. Someone came and distracted me and reminded me that it wasn't true. But I was already doubting. I was already crumbling. I was already shattered.

I thought it would be easy. I never expected it to affect me this way.
Now it is unleashed in me again and I have no idea how to stop it, how to stamp it down and down and down again back to the simmering ambivalence I've cultivated all these years.

Because you were only 4 minutes away.