Woman with a Cat

Woman with a Cat

The first thing that I heard about Jordan was that he was in love with me. He lived on my street, and the rumor was that he was that kid—the type that owned a gun, and did not seem scared to use it during a psychotic break from the world. His pale skin and dark eyes were enough to scare you off. He knew something you didn’t. He could see right through you. When I heard about his crush, I just brushed it off as some sort of rumor. I could live in my ignorant world and pretend as though it wasn’t real. I could find solace in that.
No, it is not only our fate but our business to lose innocence, and once we have lost that, it is futile to attempt a picnic in Eden.
-Elizabeth E. Bowen

In my mind there exists a conflict, in which the two opposing sides both fight for control. The first one is my world of innocence, that place where only polar opposites exist. Where black equals black and white equals white. No intersections. No room for grey. A child thrives in this world; they find comfort in the illusion of cops and robbers. There is no room for error in the innocent world, but pastures of
how I would like to be able to live; to know from the start what was good and what was bad would make life easier. There would be no confusion and less trauma. I could trust the world, and that is all there would be. It is expected that eventually I will leave this world, and because of experience grow to accept the second side, the acceptance of reality. With the acceptance of reality comes only grey; the cops can be the robbers, black can be a darker shade of white, and that world of extremes becomes something for the gullible and uninformed. I have reached that point in my life where these two worlds have collided, and one fights to take over the other.

Two weeks before college was the first time I bumped into Jordan. My friend was having a party, and he came as an uninvited guest. I thought nothing of it, until I began to catch his shifty eyes...

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