Fangirl

Chapter 1- eye wish/sharp edges

Prologue- Eye Wish

“Limerence!” The professor belted out to the sea of students. This noise was followed by the click-clack of her heels on the linoleum lecture hall floor. The sylvite, brunette yanked down a digital board and clicked her pointer to start a slideshow.
“Over eighty percent of the population admits to experiencing limerence.” The woman paused, “For those of you who read the chapter would you please raise your hand if you’ve felt it.”
Paisley had read the chapter but she remained still. Not many hands went up. The professor rolled her eyes,
“Many people who look at the data believe the twenty percent of the population who say they have never experienced limerence are lying.”
A couple hands shot up.

Another click caused the slide to change again. Paisley’s eyes worked through the information. It was a story about a woman who compulsively fantasized about her son’s math tutor. She claimed she couldn’t get through a ten minute stretch without thinking about him. Paisley finished scanning the slide.

The professor cleared her throat, “Why do you think she fixated on the tutor?”

Paisley’s hand shot up, and the woman motioned to her. “ In the text it talked about her husband’s lack of interest in the son. The tutor appeared to care about the son. The mom sees the son as a continuation of herself. She was chasing the psychological need for a partner who nurtured her and her son.” Paisley continued, “As a relationship counselor you should advise the husband, if he wants to reconcile the relationship, to spend more time with the son. To take an interest in his future, and to help him study. To demonstrate sincere nurturing to his family. Not just when he’s begged, but periodically without prompting. Limerence will fade quickly if the partner can pinpoint what their partner is seeking in someone else.”

A smile crept across the lecture’s face, “That’s correct.”

The click of the remote echoed again. The slide listed off techniques relationship counselors should use for addressing limerence. Paisley’s eyes skipped over the facts she was already aware of. She subconsciously admitted to herself that she skipped some not so pleasant facts too. She didn’t want them rattling around in her brain. The clicker made another noise and Paisley began jotting down notes

- Limerence can be heightened in a situation where two individuals can not feasibly be together.
- The push and pull of real or perceived mixed signals is like a drug for the one experiencing the limerence.
Paisley scrawled the words, “It’s like being an addict, if drugs could dump you.” However, that sentiment did not appear anywhere in the text. Feeling embarrassed she quickly erased the words away.

“How do you cure limerence?”
Paisley’s heart thudded in her chest so loudly she couldn’t hear. She knew the long answer and the short one. The next slide flashed in front of her eyes.
1.) Rejection
2.) Relationship
3.) Complete Avoidance.

Under her breath she whispered “if you reject them you must completely avoid them, if possible.”

The teacher clamored on about how relationship therapists have to identify when relationship problems are stemming from one partner being limerent for someone outside of the relationship. She hit on all the advice Paiseley had heard before. Paisley was beginning to feel like a walking dictionary. She could repeat back the talking points like she was reading from a script.

She felt a nagging voice in her head. Desperate whispers taking control of her focus. The lecture faded away.

Just give it one more try. You just need one more chance. Maybe this time you’ll get it right. You know you still want them. Just try talking to them one more time, prove to yourself it is wasn’t just limerence.

The thoughts pounded in her head over and over again like a chant. Paisley had to keep from burying her face in her hands. To her limerence had a face that pulsed in her mind along with a name. All of her energy was exhausted into staying visibly emotionless the rest of the lecture.

She was already an expert on limerence. Why didn’t she just skip class? Finally lecture ended. As students streamed away Paisley could hide her face. She played it off as rubbing her eyes, just the touch to her face gave her a temporary escape. The rubbing caused an eyelash to fall into her hand. She held it on the tip of her finger. She remembered as a child her mother blowing away eyelashes with a little puff of breath.
“Make a wish! Eyelashes are good luck,” the words stuck in her head.

“I wish someone would be limerent for me, for a change,” the words were silent. She puffed out a breath vanishing the eyelash.

The room emptied by the time her mind cleared. She shuffled quickly down the stadium seating of the lecture hall.

As she passed, the professor cleared her throat, “Careful what you wish for.” Paisley froze uncomfortably, she hadn’t wished out loud. The professor smiled at her in an unsettling way and Paisley found herself scurrying out the door, as quickly as she could.

Chapter 1- Sharp Edges

Paisley was slumped into the middle of the couch, “What have I done?” Her stomach groaned and gurgled as she looked over at an empty pizza box and the remainder of a second. Each slice of pizza was supposed to dull the pain and anxiety away. She watched a stream of notifications light up her phone. She flickered to incoming messages. At least twenty new ones surfaced to the top. That always happened when she posted stuffing content. However, her eyes were focused on the one chat that sat unanswered.
She sighed, “Why is it always the only person I care about that leaves me on read?”
She tossed her phone across the L shaped leather couch and watched it bounce from the backboard to the bottom cushioning. She was too full to go after it.

Mistake, after mistake, she just kept them coming. She was on a roll. She rubbed her belly thinking about rolls. Attention, and food were supposed to make her feel better. There was little that could be done to mask the anxiety of having her private fetish account outed at her job. She replayed some of the humiliating things her coworkers had said.

“Look at me, I’m a catfish with a secret online persona.”

Images of a coworker lifting up their shirt in front of her cubicle and recreating her content flashed in her mind.

She tried to focus on the movie playing in the dark cozy room. She grabbed a throw pillow and hugged it tightly to her chest.

“People who expose content creators should be tracked down and banned from pornhub and all content venues,” she whispered into the pillow and a chubby tear streamed down her cheek.

The nagging voice in her head told her she was just as bad and conniving as the person who exposed her.
“I didn’t do anything to provoke it. I just go into work and mind my business”, she wrestled with the voice.

She looked at her phone sitting out of her reach. Maybe reading the flood of comments and messages would cheer her up. She was too full to move towards it.

Paisley scrunched her eyes,” Will anything in my life ever go right.”

***
Turning a dollar tree aisle the heavy girl rubbed anxiously above her left eye.
“I hope this isn’t another waste of money,” she silently thought.
She grabbed a couple porcelain plates and took them to be rung up.

Paisley drove away from the little shopping center and merged on to the highway. There was a soft glow of morning approaching. The sky faded from muted orange at the horizon line to heliotrope at the top. There was something calming about early morning highway. The calm fought back her urge to cry. The road and industrial trucks around her reflected a soft periwinkle in the growing light. The faintly blue light that bathed everything mingling with the pops of bright red headlights was nostalgic. The exit she took was mostly empty road. There was an old beaten and deserted gas station to her left. She took the route that lead her farther away from civilization. At the end of a labyrinth of thin, woodsy, roads was a parking lot gated by a rope and wooden fence. Her car rolled up close to the rope fence. Looking beyond, was the rocky face of a gorge. The silvery marbled rock reflected warm pastel tones as the sun began to rise. Spanning over and all around the gorge was the cover of thick forest. Paisley uncapped a sharpie, and went to work writing on the plates. With the car off her breath became visible in the cold air. She pulled her coat closer. She kept on until words trailed down the front and back of each plate. She wrote down insults her ex had yelled at her. She scrawled down every dashed hope, and every painful memory. She wrote names of people who’d lied to her or about her. Eventually, there was not a blank spec left to write on.

Paisley found her chubby feet bordering the edge of the gorge. She took one last look at the first plate, then she chucked it into the ravine. She watched as it collided with rocky edges and burst into a spray of glass pieces. It didn’t feel as rewarding as she’d hoped. She took the next plate in hand, studying it closely. There was a rustling in the brush behind her. Paisley flinched at the noise. Her startled hands let the delicate China slip through their grasp. The loud sound of shattering caused her to lean forward. She was desperately close to meeting the same fate as her plate. Luckily, she wobbled backwards onto the ground behind her. Unfortunately, her hand landed straight into the glass shards of the plate she’d just been reading.

Paisley inspected the bloody hand. Her eyes began to well with tears. Another attempt to remedy her issues in a healthy way ended in pain. She covered her tear streamed face with her hands smearing it with blood.

“You look like you could use a bandage.”