I drove eight hours to Ohio and got pulled over while listening to “Call Me Maybe.” When I got to her apartment, around 2 a.m., she acted coolly towards me, like I was an ex who had swung by to pick up the last of my things. She handed me a beer then made me come in no more than thirty seconds. I said, I really like you, and she adjusted her pillow then pulled the covers up to her chin. The rest of the weekend she behaved as if I were her distant cousin, not yet removed. One with stale body odor.

When I left, I didn’t go home. I drove two states away to another woman’s house, convinced that the only way to combat my emptiness was to fill myself up with people.

I refused to let myself think for too long. Instead, I touched myself as cars sped by, the darkness calm and heavy. I felt endless in the most limiting way possible. What I was was afraid. Like most everyone, I saw a lonely person when I looked in the mirror. So what I did was paint my mirrors blue. Blue is calming, I’d been told. Blue will make everything better.

The second girl rode my face until she squirted. I acted coolly towards her afterward. The layers of me that mattered most had been sloughed off and swept into the trash. If I appeared at all lucid, it was due to the combination of Zoloft and beer.

Later I would move in with my parents, learn to make a good ribeye, and begin dating a man who was safe, who trusted me without any reason to. The first time we fucked, I was so drunk I hallucinated a woman’s face on his face. My hand grabbed his hair and pulled hard. I must have put on a convincing show.

In the morning, I made him an omelet and felt okay for a while. A week later we became exclusive and I made a lesbian dating profile, talked to women states away so that I could ensure I was always hurting somewhere. I bought a huge map of the United States and hung it on my bedroom wall, put thumbtacks where the pain stung the worst. One of those thumbtacks called me in the middle of the night, drunk and breathless, and asked if I could come visit her. I went out into the kitchen, poured a wine, and talked to her until she forgot why she’d called. There was no understanding myself.

This was my life and it was masquerading around in a ridiculous mascot head. Not once did I stop to ask, Why and For whom? I had the vague sense that I was hurtling towards some peculiar birth, one in which I would burst through the ceiling of my shell and say, Here I am, covered in flesh, once again needing you.

This piece previously appeared in Open: Journal of Arts & Letters but was withdrawn and removed from the site for ethical reasons.

Marisa Crane is a creative writer and web content editor. Her work has appeared in Pigeon Pages, Apeiron Review, Dissonance Magazine, among others. She currently lives in San Diego with her fiancé. You can read more of her work at http://www.marisacrane.org/.