Reflections 3

"A dream of togetherness, turned into a brighter mess."
- Au Revoir Simone, The Lucky One

Calling Sin an ex-boyfriend is like saying a substitute teacher is someone who once taught you. It is true, in a literal way, but the statement is something of an exaggeration. Yes, we went on a date or two. We may have even held hands. And one day, while lying together on his bed, I balled up all of my courage in one hand hand and asked him, "Sin? Are we... dating?" And he said yes. So that made him my boyfriend, right? I don't really know for sure. It doesn't hurt to think about how we ended. I am entirely indifferent to our relationship these days. Sometimes I even forget it happened. Does that make it less real? And then sometimes I forget how long it's been. I get on a city bus and sort of expect to see him there, looking at me through our reflections in the dark windows like we did on the night we met. I see his sister, and she's pushing her baby in a stroller, and I can't believe that she has it already, because when I met her she sat across from me in a slightly smoky, very masculine room, and she wasn't even showing yet - she may not even have known, at the time, that she was going to be a mother in less than a year, the poor fifteen-year old girl.

Yeah. I met his sister when she was fifteen, and pregnant. Sin told me she had been raped at a party, and that he blamed himself. Despite the way he didn't dump me, I am inclined to believe everything he ever told me. I remember the look on his face when he said it. He told me she had been staying with him, and that she had gone to the party without him knowing. I asked, "would you have let her go, if she had asked?" And he said that no, he would have told her to stay. I asked if she would have stayed home then, if he had told her to, and he said she wouldn't have listened to him. "So then it isn't your fault. She would have gone even if you did try to stop her. There was nothing you could do to protect her from this." I remember the look on his face then, too. He looked like a great weight had been lifted off him, because somehow I had stumbled upon just the right thing to say to convince him that he wasn't the worst older brother she could have. Certainly he was an awful influence. But this one thing, this wasn't his fault.

When I met Sin's sister, all I could think about was how I hoped I could be a good influence on her. I was the sober one in a room full of stoners. I was going to university. I didn't even have an eating disorder that month - and phrasing it that way, of course one can argue that I did, that I always did, that it wasn't about remission and relapse the way I try to think it is. But that's not important. I wanted to be a good influence for that girl, the way one of her friends said that I might be a good influence for Sin. But then one day I accepted a joint, and the image of me as his good girlfriend, and our relationship, imploded.

I also met his grandfather a few times. He was a professor of kinesiology, if I remember correctly, and I admired him a great deal based on the few occasions I saw him. Sin was spending all of his money on drugs - even growing some in an upstairs closet - and this upright man, instead of lecturing him endlessly on how he was ruining his life (because I was very high and mighty back then, and felt that everyone should see how Sin was on the wrong path and that somebody other than me should be pointing it out to him), he would drive to Sin's apartment and give him a lunch to bring to work, or take him out to coffee to talk about everything and nothing. I joined them on one of those coffee dates, once. The only thing I remember about that day is the fight that I had about it with Acadia. But I know I respected Sin's grandfather quite a bit.

Here is the important part though: I didn't know that man at all. I decided to respect him only because of his job title and the fact that he didn't disown his drug-addled grandson. But he could have been anyone, really. Maybe he failed students if he didn't like the look of them. Maybe he was an alcoholic wife-beater. Maybe he was a white supremacist or homophobic or a bank robber. And liking him before I took the time to know him is the same mistake I made with Sin. I wasn't positive he didn't still do cocaine. I didn't know if he would be faithful to me, to whatever we were. I didn't even know if he was clean. But I threw myself into that relationship more fully than I ever should have done, in the same way that I felt an almost familial attraction to his grandfather, a complete stranger with a nice smile.