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Deja Vu
by Krys
Deja vu-"I've been here before." People say it, but what they really mean is "Oh god, I've gone and fucked up again." I know that's what they mean because I've finally realized how life moves in patterns. Nothing ever happens just once--no one really learns from their mistakes.
This classmate of mine, for example--This girl, she wrecked her parents' car a few months ago; it was one of those cutesy new German models, you know the kind I mean.
Anyway, she falls asleep driving on the SR westbound to school one morning-rear-ends the huge SUV in front of her, scrapes off her own engine. Basically, the entire front end of her car is gone. She feels like shit about it, cries a lot. The car's totalled. So the parents, rich assholes that they are, fix it. The frame's okay, and a couple thou pays for parts and repairs.
My point is, it happened again. A few days ago I saw the tow-truck drop her off at school. The whole front end of that car was crushed. I held the door open for her while she climbed the front steps, and you know what she said to me?
"Deja vu."
I never asked her, and I never heard her tell anybody, but I bet right before she dozed off she saw that same white SUV braking in her headlights.
Nothing ever happens just once. Humanity is doomed to a circular path, repeating the same stupid mistakes until something bigger and stronger finally hunts us to extinction. Genocide, materialism, misled ambition and for how long? Forever. There's nothing we can do about it but fall in step.
You don't believe me now; now, you think I'm delirious and depressed and fucked out of my mind, and I'm not saying I'm not, but I'm telling you the truth. You don't believe me now, but later, next time you find yourself rooting through your parents' medicine chest or liquor cabinet for something, anything to numb you, your awful sense of how royally you've fucked up again-then, you'll get it.
Instead of thinking "Christ, why can't I fucking learn?" remember me and laugh, because somewhere, somebody else is thinking the exact same thing. Somewhere, somebody else is choking back bile and wondering why he can't just stop.
"This introduction is shit, Robert."
That's what my English teacher would say about what I just told you, if he were here right now, and if he didn't have an internal editor censoring curse words out of his speech. He never swears, not even when there's no one around but me. As far as my introduction goes: I know it's bad, but that's how I feel, and that's the only honest way I know how to say it.
I'm not trying to be pretty about this. I'm not trying to make it nice. I don't give a fuck if you're offended by my grammar or tone, or my syntax or diction or by the fact that I'm leaving this note instead of "getting help" or "talking to someone about my problems." I've made up my mind-delirious and depressed and fucked as I am-and this is my solution; but that's not my point. My point is--my theme--this is true. Everything I'm saying is real, it happened, I'm being honest. Believe that, whatever you think about my cowardice and disrespect and stupidity or whatever.
Deja vu, that's the point. That was the idea I was introducing in that piece-of-shit introduction. Nothing ever happens one time. "Deja vu," you'll think, next time you come across some pathetic kid with a life story to tell. "I can't believe this is happening again."
Well, it's happening now. Maybe not for the first time, but definitely not for the last time. Nothing ever happens just once. Why do you think the poets only ever wrote about love, or death, or fucking, or despair? Because that's all there is, and how much variety can one life have, revolving around those four simple themes?
I tell you what, my life could have used a hell of a lot more.
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I was drunk. I wasn't drunk the first time, but I don't want to think about the first time right now, and I was drunk a lot of the times after. Anyway, the bathroom smelled like shit and those pink urinal pucks and hand soap and cologne and booze and cigarettes (maybe the last three were just us), and the tile or linoleum or concrete floor was cold and kind of damp beneath my knees. Or was I kneeling, actually? Maybe I wasn't kneeling. Maybe I was perched on the edge of some disgusting public toilet seat, or maybe I was standing, my back pressed against metal or brick or the trunk of a tree.
I guess I'm getting mixed up, but that's okay. Everything blends together over time, and that's fine, since the details never matter much anyway. Ether way, it was always pretty much the same. The times I was kneeling or sitting I was trying not to choke, suppressing my gag reflex over that bitter, salty-sweet taste--you know. And the soundtrack. "Oh yeah, baby. Shit--yeah, fuck, fuck--" or some variation on that theme.
The times I was sitting or standing I was trying not to choke on the taste of bile in the back of my throat, the sense of guilt and wrong that comes on so overwhelmingly sometimes. You can't cover that taste up with whiskey or cigarettes or come. I'd just lean back and try my hardest to not think about anything.
It never worked. No matter how wasted or stoned I got, there was always that feeling. Like "I'm here, I've been here before, why do I keep coming back?" Deja vu, like this was all there is. Like I was still back there with him.
I'm trying to smile right now, thinking of how shocked he will be when he reads this, if you let him read this; but it's getting really hard to laugh now that I can see the punchline.
The joke was, he thinks this was about him, that he was the only one-but he wasn't, and everything wasn't about him after all. But now I'm thinking maybe it was, and maybe those times in the park or in the alley it wasn't some other guy, it was him. It was him the whole time.
That's not funny at all.
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Legal Disclaimer: The authors published here make no claims on the ownership of Dr. Gregory House and the other fictional residents of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Like the television show House (and quite possibly Dr. Wilson's pocket protector), they are the property of NBC/Universal, David Shore and undoubtedly other individuals of whom I am only peripherally aware. The fan fiction authors published here receive no monetary benefit from their work and intend no copyright infringement nor slight to the actual owners. We love the characters and we love the show, otherwise we wouldn't be here.
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