Vachon Imagined

She told herself: never again.

She swore off men.

“Picking up God,” she said.

Closer to God, she became. But her body still ached for the pressing warmth of him.

Any him.

Any fleeting moment, even knowing its temporary nature, just to make her feel alive again.

A flirtatious smile.

A lingering comment.

Ah, how easily she could float on it, even as she knew it would later turn around and mock her.

How stupid could you be to fall for this again?

And fall she did.

Ah, but he was clever.

He whispered genuine support while keeping a part of himself held aside, hidden from her, a part that would eventually be exposed by the sheer force of her obsession.

Once, she had been tidy. Put together.

All the girls adored her.

The men did too.

She kept it together.

But with every rose delivered to her office, every secret handshake of affection, every small gesture that said I see you, something in her softened.

She let him in.

And slowly, she lost her God.

She lost her meaning.

She lost the very foundation that had once held her.

Because the relationship she had known with God was openness.

It was conflict.

Every time she felt that conflict, she ran toward Him.

Conflict.

Desperation.

Peace.

Peace.

He became the fire to her flame, and she knew it.

He brought her all the way to the edge.

For years, he pushed her there.

Love me, he whispered.

And so she did.

She trusted him.

She wanted him more and more.

And as she began moving toward him, he began moving away.

It was subtle at first.

When she brought it to his attention, he would call her crazy.

“You’re crazy,” he would say.

But she knew.

It was a simple fact buried beneath layers of reason:

He was no longer calling.

The flowers were left outside, never delivered.

Perhaps they were never even ordered.

He had gotten her there.

And when she leaned in, he leaned away.

And those around him supported him.

She’s crazy.

She’s obsessed.

Never stopping to wonder whether perhaps he had brought her there.

He had opened the door.

He had invited her inside.

And then, when she arrived, he called her crazy for being there.

Until one day, God was no longer even in the picture.

She sank to the bottom of the ocean.

And there, at the bottom, she stopped trusting him.

Then she stopped trusting anyone.

But the ocean taught her something.

She had mistaken him for God.

She had mistaken her own emotion for God.

She had mistaken the intensity of her longing for something outside herself.

But down there, where there was no one left to perform for, the ocean taught her that obsession was not a sin against her existence.

Lingering was okay.

Wanting was okay.

Ache was okay.

It was part of her nature.

And her nature, messy, desperate, excessive, alive, was not something she had to destroy simply because someone else had abandoned her.

It was the very thing that brought her alive.

The very thing that remained with her

when he had left her for dead.