My Future Arch Enemy

Let's rewind. September 16th, 2010, my second day of work. It was the first night shift I had ever worked. My first day was an 8 am to 2 pm shift, but my second day would have me working as late as 9:30. There were many more people around my age working that shift, so I felt a little more at home. One of these coworkers was Ashlee. At the time, she wasn't my arch nemesis. Actually it was quite opposite, I actually thought she was kinda cute.

     That was extremely hard to admit, but it was true. I don't think I had ever met someone who was so opposite of me in appearance, but so similar in character. I stand at 6 feet fully erect, however, standing on her tippy toes, Ashlee is only about 5 feet. I weigh just over 200 lbs, Ashlee hasn't broken the 100 lb mark in her entire 20 years of existence. Personality wise, we are almost the same person. We are snarky, sarcastic, and overall jerk to everyone we know (and to each other.) A few people actually took to calling her Nashlee behind her back. Or maybe they were calling me that. Who knows.

     I really don't know what started our rivalry. We got along really well at first, but after a while we started a rivalry that lasted almost 4 years. Our abrasive personalities probably played a large role given that we took to mocking each other. Some examples are as follows:

One of my favorite things to mock her about was her size. Most notably her shortness, but occasionally I would mock her thinness, too. I heard her talking to Emma about how she gained 3 lbs over Thanksgiving and how she felt fat. I said, "How much can you possibly weigh?"

"I weigh 97 pounds." She said angrily.

"Wait, so you weighed 94 pounds before the Holidays?"

"Nice math skills," she said sarcastically, "maybe you should be a. . . um. . . one of those guys who do taxes."

 "An accountant? Nice language skills. Anyway that is an unhealthy weight. You are 17 years-old, have you ever even broken 100 pounds?"

"No," she said, "and that isn't an unhealthy weight."

"Are you kidding? You look like a two-by-four sawed off at the 3 foot mark."

"Are you trying to say I'm flat chested?"

"Well, I was just saying that you are really thin and short, but if I'm being honest, I can't help but notice that I'm a guy and I still have better boobs than you."

"You have better boobs than everyone."

"Thank you."

"That wasn't a compliment."

"I choose to accept it as one."

Later I took to comparing her to the devil:

One day, after parking next to her (because that bugs her), I noticed she had a Jesus fish on her bumper. I walked up to her and said, "Did you guy your car used?"

"Yeah," she said, "How'd you know?"

"I saw that your car had a Jesus fish on the bumper and that had me confused because I didn't think you could go within 15 feet of a church without catching on fire."

"Very funny."

Even though we were always at each other's throats, it always seemed more like we were having fun with it rather than actually being hostile, so I don't know why I started hating her. And I also wonder if I ever did.

I Hate Everything about You

I woke up with a start. I was relieved that what I had just witnessed was no more than a dream, though when I was dreaming, it seemed so real. Only two other dreams had been so real and vivid. The first occurred when I was only 6 years-old. I dreamed that my family and I went on vacation, but while we were away, the woods across from my house caught fire. The fire was spreading fast and wild, so logically the military was brought in (that is, logical in the mind of a 6 year-old.) To put out the fire they began shooting it with their machine guns (yeah, like I said, "logical.") And just the second before I woke up I saw a bald man's hair catch on fire. . . The second dream was just about as weird. I was 11 and I dreamed that I was attacked and eaten by a creature made completely of cottage cheese. As preposterous as that sounds, it felt real to me. I could even feel the individual curds of cheese before I woke up. As vivid as these two dreams were, they didn't hold a candle to how real my nightmare was.

     Generally I would have just brushed the whole thing off as "just a dream" and been fine with it. However, I have a rather superstitious side - well maybe not superstitious, maybe a little sticious. I had been having dreams of late that had been coming true. For instance, I dreamed one night that my church's pastor was going to leave and preach somewhere else. The next morning, he calls my dad to tell him that he is moving to Iowa to preach there. I once dreamed that my friend, Jess, began dating a guy with a stupid goatee. A year later she began dating a guy with a stupid goatee. Now, I'm not one to believe in precognition, but the fact that the other dreams came true made me feel a little uneasy. It made the possibility of my nightmare coming to life a little more realistic. That was almost scarier than the dream was.

     The next day at work, Ashlee came up to me and said, "Stop parking next to me! I know you do it just to annoy me."

     "Ashlee," I said, "I still don't know why that annoys you, but I didn't park next to you. I've been working for the past four hours and you just got here. You parked next to me."

     "Jeez, Nash, I was just messing with you. You don't need to be such a stick in the mud."

     "Whatever," I say.

     "What, no comeback?" She asks as I begin to walk out the door.

     About a half hour later, Emma says, "Ashlee says you are acting weird. I told her, 'How is that any different than usual?'"

     "That's pretty funny," I said, "no, but I had a really disturbing dream involving her the other night." A look of fear and worry came over Emma's face. "I dreamed that she and I were married." The look on her face was quickly replaced by a cheesy grin and she began to laugh with a hearty "BAHAHA!"

     "Yeah, real funny," I said, "but it scared the crap outta me."

     "I think you are secretly in love with her." She said still laughing.

     "I would rather rip my own finger nails out with pliers."

     "You like her and you know it."

     Oh, God I hope not. . .

Nightmare

I find myself sitting in a pitch black room. Whatever I'm sitting on is hard and cold like furnished wood. The air around me is warm and stuffy. I reach my arms out in front of me and touch something else cold had hard. I reach my arms out to my sides feeling some kind of fabric. "Where am I?" I think to myself. Just then I am blinded by an intense, white light.

     I throw my hands up over my eyes to shield them, but the light begins to dim. I can see now. I can see everything around me. I am in a large room. The cold hard thing I am sitting on is a church pew. There are at least twenty rows of them, from the front of the church to the back. And that is only on my side, the other side of the isle has twenty more rows of pews. The fabric I felt was the suits worn by the people sitting around me. There are dozens of people, all dressed in suits and dresses. I look up to the front of the church where the pulpit is and see several more well-dressed people. There are five men and three women. The women are all wearing matching green dresses and all stand in a row on the left side of the pulpit. On the right side of the pulpit stand four out of the five men, all wearing tuxes. The fifth man stands behind the pulpit and wears the garb of a reverend.

     I begin to recognize some of the people. In the crowd, I see both my sisters and parents. I also spot Jessica, Katie and Wyatt. Not to far from where I am sitting is their cousin Jill. I see some of my relatives like my aunts and uncles that I haven't seen in years. I look across the isle and see a mass of people I don't recognize. The only faces I can pick out over there are a few work associates and one of my bosses. Everyone else over there are people I have never seen before.

     I look up at the pulpit again and notice that I recognize many faces up there, too. The man furthest to the right is my old friend Caja. Moving further left, I see his brother Joe. One place to the left of him is Landon. I don't recognize two of the women on the left, but the third I knew as Emma - another work associate. I then look at the man standing closest to the reverend and what I see shocks me. Standing before me is none other than myself. This event is my wedding.

     Just then the doors at the back of the church swing open and the organ begins to play. A woman dressed in all black - oddly enough - makes her way down the isle. Her identity is concealed behind a dark veil. She walks up to the reverend and faces me - the fine dressed me - across the alter. Her veil is lifted and to my horror, the face belongs to Ashlee.

     I stand up quickly from my seat and shout, "No! Don't do this! You hate her! You are making a huge mistake!" But I can't hear me. No one can hear me. I just stand at the alter with a stupid grin on my face. I keep yelling, but to no avail. I see Ashlee's lips moving and then mine. I can't hear what we are saying due to my shouting at myself, but I know they are wedding vows. "Stop!" I keep yelling, "Stop! Stop! Stop! This is a huge mistake!" Still no one can hear me. I rush towards the pulpit where the groom version of me is about to kiss Ashlee. "No!" I continue to shout, but I am too late. We kiss. There is applause. The organ begins playing again. I wake up. . .

Fine Again

I'm not going to lie, just because Rashaell was gone didn't mean that all the feelings were, too. As much as I wanted to forget and move on, it was just not that easy for me to do. I began to let myself slip into a sea of sorrow that - as I knew from experience - would be nearly impossible to escape from.

     By all appearances, I was fine. Some people expected another Summer of Darkness situation to emerge, but this time I had things under control. I wasn't some kind of over emotional pre-teen anymore. I was a man, and it was time to do what men do with their emotions: never let them see the light of day.

     As much as I tried to bury it, I couldn't escape the sadness I felt at her not being here anymore. The best I could do was keep it all to myself, but even that sometimes proved to be difficult. Of course it didn't help that I had to work every day in an environment that reminded me of her. One day at work, Emma asked, "What's wrong with you? You keep spacing out."

     "Does it seem darker here to you?" I replied.

     "Not really, why?"

     "Because, everything right and good about this hell-hole is gone now."

     That night I went to bed feeling sad and alone. Regretting every decision I had ever made leading up to this point. I couldn't sleep. I was too angry with myself to allow sleep to take me. I was angry with myself for falling into the same trap that I had fallen into time and time again. Why did I have to have feelings? They just complicate things and make my life miserable. Eventually I drifted off to sleep, but when I woke up everything was different. Everything I had felt the night before and weeks before that was gone. I was fine again and not because of some epiphany or realization, but just because I decided to be. It was that easy. I chose to fine, and fine I would be. I had wasted too much time on one hopeless cause. It was time for me to get back out there, and this time not make the stupid mistakes I had before. No more pining over one unattainable girl. I was getting out there. So find a place to hide, ladies, 'cause daddy's home. (Yes I realize how creepy that sounded. It's a HIMYM reference, so get over it.)