I sat outside Kayla’s dormitory with my arm around her. I was trying my best to comfort her, but she just kept crying and crying. I didn’t know what to do. She just wouldn’t stop.
She didn’t even seem to be listening to me.
But it’s not like I was saying much. I couldn’t think of anything to say. Nothing I could think of would have made her feel any better. So I just kept holding her. I squeezed her as tight as I could and just kept whispering to her, “It’s okay, Kayla. It’s okay.”
It was only about halfway through my first semester at college. I was still getting used to the enormity of the whole thing, living on my own, being an adult, and I hadn’t made very many friends yet. So there I was. I had only known Kayla for about three
weeks at that point--I’d just met her, really--and I was thrust into this situation in which I was the only ear that would listen, the only shoulder she could cry on. It was weird. I
sympathized with her plight, but there was nothing I could really do.
She continued to weep. My eyes drifted to our surroundings slowly. The steps we were sitting on were made out of stone. They were cold, hard, gray. It was nighttime, and it was very dark. The moon and the stars were hidden by a thick fold of overcast clouds that hung overhead like a rippled curtain.
A cool gust of wind hit me then. It made me shudder up and down, all throughout my skin. I was just wearing a T-shirt, and it was pretty chilly out. Kayla must have been worse off, for she was only in shorts, but she didn’t show any discomfort, from the
weather, at least. It was as if she were totally unaware of her environment, as if she had momentarily stepped outside of herself and into despair.
I looked up at Kayla’s dorm; it loomed over me. Twelve stories of that same gray stone stood above us. The building’s gargantuan size dwarfed me. I felt small and insignificant.
“I just don’t understand,” Kayla said then, through her sobs. Her voice pulled me away from my silent pondering and back to her.
“What? What don’t you understand, Kayla?” I questioned. “Just what is wrong?”
I was genuinely confused. One moment everything had been fine. She had shown up at my apartment, wanting to get a little drunk. I guess that should have been a sign to me that something was up, since it was the middle of the week, but I didn’t think about it
at the time. I just got out this bottle of whiskey I had stashed there and we did a few shots. It never occurred to me that she might have had a reason behind it, something she wanted
to forget in an alcoholic stupor.
Then, after I had had a few, and she had had quite a few, I proceeded to walk her back to her room. And that was when it happened. Right there outside her dorm, out of nowhere she just broke down. I had no idea why; I had no idea what I should do. I just sat her down and tried my best to be of some guidance to her.
“I don’t understand,” she repeated again. “How could he do something like that to me? How could she?”
“Who??”
“My boyfriend... ex-boyfriend... I don’t even know what he is, to me, anymore.” She began to sob again.
“What happened?” My eyes were now firmly fixed on her and nothing else.
“Over the summer, we were at this party, and my best friend was there. They both got drunk--we were all drunk; everybody was--and while I was on a liquor run with some friends, they, she and he...” She could no longer speak from all her wailing.
I was beginning to understand; I didn’t need to hear anymore. “It’s okay, Kayla,” I said, vainly trying to downplay the utter gravity of the situation and to alleviate her sorrow.
“No, it’s not!” she cried out. “It’s not okay; it’ll never be okay! How could she?”
She just kept repeating those words over and over again. “How could she? How could she?” Again I was at a loss for words. I just pressed her to me and didn’t let go.
“Kayla?” a voice said from behind me. We turned together to see Kayla’s roommate Jamie standing there. She had stopped as she was walking merrily out of the building. The sight of Kayla there crying had frozen Jamie in her tracks; she just stood there with a sympathetic look on her face, propping the door to the building halfway open with her hip.
“What’s the matter, Kayla honey?” she asked with concern in her voice. Then an expression of understanding crept onto her face. “You called him, didn’t you?”
Kayla nodded. Jamie knelt down there on the concrete and said “Oh, Kayla” as if she were reproaching her. Jamie held her arms open, and Kayla left my supportive embrace for a more familiar one.
“Why do you do this to yourself, honey?” Jamie said. “You know it’s going to be like this when you call him. You know you’re going to end up crying like this if you keep calling him back.” Kayla was pressed against Jamie’s chest as she wept, and Jamie just kept running her fingers through Kayla’s hair soothingly.
“It was different this time.” Kayla turned up to look at her. Her eyes were wet and pleading for pity.
“No, it’s not, Kayla.”
“Yes, it was. He wants me back.”
“And you were going to forgive him?” Jamie asked, shocked. She almost seemed to get angry at Kayla then. “What are you thinking? You know he only wants you back because you’re his security blanket.”
Kayla shook her head and said, “No, no, no. He told me he still loved me. He really wants me back. He said he can’t live without me.” She spoke with misery in her voice. The words caught in her throat.
“Then how can you explain what he did?”
“It wasn’t his fault. It was... her.” Kayla said the word as if to do so caused her physical pain. “She did it, not him.”
“You know that’s not true. I was there. He forced her to do it.”
“No, that’s not what he said. He said...”
Jamie interrupted forcefully. “He’s lying to you, Kayla. He’s telling you what you want to hear. You want to believe that it was her fault, because you still love him. You want to believe it so that you’ll be able to forgive him and take him back. And he knows that. He knows you’ll want to believe him so much, that you really will. That’s why he keeps lying to you.” Kayla kept crying but Jamie didn’t stop talking. “That’s exactly what he wants, because you’re safe. He needs you to be there for him and to take him back even when he strays. He doesn’t really love you, Kayla, or he wouldn’t treat you this badly.”
Kayla couldn’t take it anymore. She finally just broke down. She uttered in fragmented sentences, “Her fault... said he loved me... all her fault... wants me back... said he needs me... love him... love him... how could she?” Nothing could have stopped her
from crying then. I just continued to sit there, watching them both, as I had been the whole while.
As she cried, I grew to hate myself. I felt as if I were somehow part of the cause of her pain, and I just wanted to die. I couldn’t understand how anyone could do such an evil thing to another human being, when all it would bring is agony. I despised myself for being a man then, for having in some way a role in what this amoral person did. I thought that maybe if I were just to drive a knife into my heart, she would somehow be relieved of her suffering.
Jamie glanced over at me finally. Kayla lay in her lap weeping without end. She looked down at Kayla, then back at me with contempt, like she agreed with what I was feeling, and said, “Maybe you should go now.”
“You’re probably right,” I said, slowly rising. “She should be alone now, and I’m not being of much help, anyway.” I knelt in close and whispered to Kayla then, softly, tenderly, “It’ll be okay, Kayla.”
I released her into the care of her roommate totally, she still sobbing, and I just silently walked away. I felt as I left that I was abandoning her. Kayla came to me, searching for someone to help her, and I didn’t. I couldn’t. But still, I kept on walking
away.
I felt empty as I walked back home languidly. This episode with Kayla had left me feeling emotionally powerless, not only because I was completely unable to help her, but somehow her pain had also rubbed off on me. I carried it with me now like a weight
strapped to my back. It was my yoke, my cross to bear.
I opened the door to my apartment again and dropped my keys on the table in the doorway. They slipped off the edge, but I didn’t bother to pick them up. I didn’t care. I kicked my shoes off and let them go wherever they flew. Slowly I moved toward my bedroom. The whiskey still sat out on the counter, open. I wanted to lash out at the bottle, smash it into pieces on the floor as if it were somehow the reason behind all this hurting, but I just left it there and crawled into bed with my clothes still on.
I wanted so badly to hold someone, anyone, and relieve my hollowness as I lay there in my bed, in the dark. But I couldn’t; there was no one there to hold. So I just curled up into a ball and lay there, awake and alone, for hours.
