Curses & Cures

She’s mad, but she’s magic. There’s no lie in her fire.

― Charles Bukowski

After I got home from our breakup, to my bed, which would never again be our bed, I remembered how to sleep alone. And with sleep came dreams. At first, the dreams themselves were sweet. It was waking up that hurt.

Ojalá que he always has a hangnail that snags briefly, but painfully, on things.

Those first few weeks, I would dream that the Work Bestie and I were still together. We would go on adventures, or do amazingly ordinary things together, solving problems or laughing or just being. I would wake up happy, like before. I’d reach for my phone, hoping maybe there was a message from him. Before my hand even made contact, I would remember. I would break my heart all over again like a bone that refused to set right. It’s over. 

Ojalá que he never notices the little something spilled on his shirt, or stuck in his teeth, until after being seen by people he wants to impress.

There’s this idea that I should just get over it, without acknowledging that it has to stop happening first. Our breakup wasn’t one conversation that switched our relationship from on to off. It was two weeks trapped in limbo and professionalism, while he gave me a slow reveal. It was having his side chick insinuate herself into my workspace, both real and virtual. It was the countless ways he showed me that I no longer mattered to him at all. It was her ongoing harassment of me, notifications with her profile pictures showing the man that I’d loved so deeply and the woman he cheated on me with, smiling together. It was a wound ripped open again and again and again.

Ojalá que every traffic light turns red for him when he’s already running late.

After that man took his side chick to our campus, she took over my nightmares. The one I remember most vividly began at my funeral. My friends and family, the people closest to me, were gathered and somber. Nobody interacted with me, but I was there, too. So was That Man. Being in the same room together, I couldn’t hold back my anger. Finally, I confronted him.

Ojalá que his belt loop snags on open drawers and door handles at every possible opportunity

“Why did you kill me?” I asked him repeatedly, accusingly, imploringly. I had tried so hard to be good to him, to be good for him. Why did he kill me? He wouldn’t answer. He stared right through me, expressionless, unblinking. Like I wasn’t even there. Where his eyes were supposed to be, there were only twin black voids. Then I realized, he wasn’t there. Not really. This wasn’t my funeral. It was his. 

Ojalá que his left sock get pulled deeper into his shoe with every step, no matter what shoe/sock combo he wears. 

I went over to his family and first gave my condolences to his sister. Then she introduced me to this girl, to the other woman. His side chick was dressed in widow’s black. With all of her selfishness and drama, she had managed to be the actual death of him. That evil cunt had ruined everything and yet dared to show up at his funeral expecting sympathy. Was she incapable of shame? I slapped this girl he cheated on me with so hard I could feel the shock of it all the way up to my shoulder. I’d like to be a pacifist, but that violent moment felt delicious. 

Then the next thing I knew, people were grabbing me. They were trying to take me out of the funeral, and I was screaming about how she’s the one who needs to go. She’s the outsider here, the interloper, the one who doesn’t belong, but people were circling around Side Chick trying to comfort her, and even my own family was looking at me, so disappointed, like I was the villain in this story. I woke up wrestling with nothing, my arms flailing from trying to break free, to drag her out from where she didn’t belong. 

Ojalá que the more urgently he needs to find the thing, the more blind he becomes to it, even when it’s right in front of his face. 

I’ve had lots of dreams like that. Dreams where it’s Easter, and she’s invited my whole family, aunts and uncles, and cousins, and their kids to join her with That Man at her parents’ place, and they’re all going. Everyone’s acting like I’m ruining Easter because I don’t want to go, as if I’m the one who’s out of line when she has no right. 

Ojalá que his pillows have no cool side on hot nights.

The dreams are always about Side Chick taking everything that matters from me, and me being the bad guy for not being cool with it. There is always this feeling that things are happening too fast, that things are being taken from me without my consent, and that I’m being betrayed by the people I trusted to have my back. Worse, they’re all mad at me for not being cheerful about it. Everything feels so up close and personal and completely out of my control. Then I wake up, and life’s not that dramatic, but the feeling remains the same. 

Ojalá que mosquitoes bite him in unscratchable places.

At first, I didn’t really have anything against this girl. She didn’t steal anything that he didn’t give to her of his own free will. There was no gun to his head when he cheated on me. He gave her his heart, our campus. He brought her around my friend’s son, around my own daughter. He gave to her all that is most precious to me without a second thought. He should have known that those things would hurt me, but in the beginning she couldn’t have. It feels good in dreams to have something to fight against, some hope of winning, even if they all end badly.

Ojalá que his straws bend and crack when he tries to push them through the lid.

In my waking hours, I just don’t want to put any more hurt into the world. Even as angry as I am, I won’t pray for a world with more suffering in it. So, let her take every mirror I ever accidentally broke, every ladder I ever carelessly walked under, every curse I ever unintentionally tracked into my life like gum on the bottom of my shoe. Every bad thing, big or small, that just randomly goes wrong, let her have my share from now on.

Ojalá que there is a slight, but awful, odor that he can’t find the source of, that clings to him wherever he goes.

Since she cannot keep her hands off my stuff, she can have the rest of my portion of adversity, in addition to her own. All those times I’ve seen someone I care about suffer and wished that I could carry their burdens for them, now I have someone to give all my unearned troubles to. This is the only part of my life I get to consent to her taking. She can add my allotment of misfortune to her own. 

Ojalá que she gets ALL of my bad luck. 

Women are all witches when the circumstances call for it. We kiss the pain from our children’s booboos. We heal with our touch. Love really is the secret ingredient in the kitchen. We pull strength from nowhere when our loved ones need it. And some of us, when scorned, mutter curses. In my darkest moments, spinning and sputtering, loving and hating, I have cursed him and prayed for him in the same breath. In calmer spite, I speak curses of inconvenience.

Ojalá que he confidently calls people by the wrong names.

I am angry at them both, because pain is like that, but mostly at him. It doesn’t always seem like it because that anger is tempered by my love and concern for him. He has been my closest friend and confidant for so long. Old habits die hard. I find myself taking back the “I hope he’s okay,” declarations, even more often than the curses that go too far. I’m just over here hitting undo all over the place.

Ojalá que his scam emails are just convincing enough to panic him, but he still figures it out just before he gives away any important information.

For her, though, this trifling girl who so often had me crying in the middle of the night, I wish her no real ill. I’m sure she didn’t see the asterisk when he told her he was single. I was a crazier version of myself when I was with him, too. I think he has that effect on his partners. 

Ojalá que autocorrect goes rogue and makes all of his professional correspondence embarrassing.

I can hate their being in my life, their being in each other’s lives, without really hating them individually. God was surely sleeping on the day those two met. This unholy alliance between a cheater and a bully has brought me so much pain. Being with each other might be worse than any revenge I could dream up, though. I don’t really want revenge. I just want mercy. Like an angry ghost, I believe my spirit may finally know rest once this is over. Until their affair is over, though, I curse everything they touch.

Ojalá que their every endeavor, whether joint or separate, shall end miserably until they part ways.

I will always curse the relationship that she actively weaponized against me. His infidelity is a rot festering in the roots of their foul union. I have only known her to be a horrible person, maybe they just brought out the worst in each other, though. His mistake shouldn’t be what defines any of us. May all of these curses lift when they part ways. I am looking forward to the day when they have nothing to do with each other, and we all live our lives blissfully unaware of one another  

Ojalá que the three of us become increasingly unknown to each other and live better lives for it. 

So I’ll begin not to love you
Turn around, see me runnin’
I’ll say I loved you years ago
Tell myself you never loved me, no

Don’t say that she’s pretty
And did you say that she loves you?
Baby, I don’t wanna know
Oh, can you tell me was it worth it?
Baby, I don’t wanna know

– Fleetwood Mac
Silver Springs