Zero

I have this recurring nightmare that I'm living in a new apartment, sometimes the one I live in now, and I'm still with S, or back with S. We're fighting. We're screaming. And my main concern is how to get this boy out of my apartment.

He folds his arms in defiance. "I'm not leaving because I don't have enough money to move out," he pouts. "It's going to take me two or three months to save up the money." But I know it's not going to take two or three months. I know this is a permanent arrangement because why would S ever move out on his own when he can leach off of someone else?

But this is my apartment, with my name on the lease. He actually doesn't have a right to be here, but he still won't leave. It makes me think back to real life when I had that stupid fight with that stupid apartment manager who forced me to put S's name on my lease. That's where it all went wrong. Because he now had a right to be in my apartment, S lied to me and broke his lease so he could invade my space. It all just makes me so angry.

In the latest version of this dream, I catch him doing drugs in my bathroom. I call the police to come arrest him, even though the drugs are in my apartment and I could be held liable as well. The police bang on the door and I'm screaming at S. They break in my apartment as S eats the drugs. I want him gone so desperately that I climb on him and pick remnants out of his teeth to show the police the evidence.

Only the police don't know me. They don't know that I'm different from S. So when they draw their guns, they are pointing at me too. I'm crazy and I'm screaming at S and the police about the drugs. S is threatening to kill me and I know he means it now because I've gotten him in trouble.

While the guns were still aimed on me, I awake covered in cold sweat. These dreams take hours for me to overcome. It takes me several minutes to realize I'm in my own apartment and S is gone and he's not sleeping on my couch. It still ruins my whole morning while I process the feelings. It's just awful.

Maybe it was a good thing that Christopher was my first boyfriend after S. Because even though he wasn't good, he wasn't bad either. He was a zero, a scratch. And he leaves me with exactly that. Zero. Despite the dreams, I'm no longer so afraid and so damaged by S. I'm not in the negatives any longer. I'm at zero. And it's a good thing.