It's four years ago and I'm sitting in my room trying to keep myself calm. I'm telling myself that I'm just being insecure, that my my two prior relationships with women I couldn't trust even before I got into relationships with them set me up for this kind of insecurity, that I'm doing this to myself because I can't trust myself because in this situation I'm the one who cheated on her the first time around, so of course I assume she's evil because everyone says she's so much like me, and why would she be hanging out with some guy from the internet if it wasn't to try to find someone better than me? And what if he is better than me? What will stop her from fucking him right then and there without giving me any notice? Of course he's better than me, who isn't better than me, and if I were her, I'd do it, I'd fuck him if he was even only a little better than me because after eight months of this even a little better is better enough. I'm driving myself crazy. It's four years ago and I'm text messaging to see if they're on their way to the movie they're supposed to go see.

They're not, she says, since her mother and grandmother aren't home they've decided to just stay alone in her house and watch a movie and I said, hey, I'm not really OK with that, and she says she doesn't care if I am not OK with that and that I should relax and be cool because I already said I was cool with it, but when I said that I was lying because I wanted so desperately to be cool with it, not so that she would feel good or think I am cool but because I just wished I was cool with it because it's not fun for me to be panicking that my girlfriend is going to fuck some other guy from the internet and perhaps if I lie to her I'll believe the lie myself and just enjoy a night by myself and besides these days I mostly kind of hate her but without her I'll just be alone and it's four years ago and I don't yet have the confidence necessary to realize that finding another woman isn't hard at all. It's four years ago and temporarily all my hatred for her drains away into an explicable need and even though I calm down for the couple of seconds it takes me say whatever do what you want I'm cool as soon as I hang up I am heading outside and getting into my car and driving over to house and for what purpose I don't know but maybe it'll show her that I love her so much she doesn't need to hang out with some other guy and she'll kick him out and instead we'll sit on her couch and watch a movie and be a happy couple again. It's four years ago and I'm still lying to myself not even in an attempt to make myself look better in her eyes and it still isn't working.

I see his car outside her house and I briefly contemplate keying it or maybe taking a shit on it or something else that doesn't really make sense and I later learn the guy was smart and that wasn't his car at all and his actual car was parked several houses down the street but I do nothing anyway because that is what I do. It's four years ago and this guy is younger than I am now and the perspective I have now makes me not feel like blaming him necessarily because tail is tail and he didn't really know what he was doing and even if he did I can't blame him because I probably would do the same thing now if I had never changed from being the asshole I was four years ago, the asshole he is now four years ago sitting inside my girlfriend's house on the couch watching television and I can see him through the blinds and they're sitting on opposite sides of the couch and I feel relieved but I walk back to my car and I call her anyway. She calls me crazy and I say that it's not crazy to be upset when your girlfriend is locked in her house alone with some guy and won't come outside to talk to her upset boyfriend who she is supposed to love. She says she wont come outside and that I need to go away and what do I hope to accomplish and I say I just want to know that she loves me and it's obvious she doesn't but she tells me she does, she tells me she loves me and she won't do anything to hurt me and she's just going to watch a movie and leave and she hangs up.

It's four years ago and this still isn't enough for me so I drive down the street a bit and park where I can still see her house and I wait and talk to a girl living in Tennessee through my phone and she tells me over and over again that if she were me she'd just walk away and not even bother, that it's obvious what is happening and I say I don't want to believe it, that I want to be wrong, that I want to be crazy and paranoid and I want to see him leave, but two hours later when the movie is surely over and my phone is dead and I am simply feeling like a creepy guy sitting on a street late at night he still hasn't left and at this point I've already pissed into a plastic water bottle and now I'm starting to feel like I am going to shit myself so my head clears for a moment and I think: I'm being silly. I'll just walk up to the house and knock on the door and say, I'm sorry for being silly, but can I use the bathroom and then I'll go home, oh and by the way why hasn't he left yet, what is going on in there?

It's four years ago and when I get to the door before I knock I think I better look in through the blinds again and I see that the living room is completely empty and my heart drops into my stomach and my body starts to shake so I walk around behind the house and the dog that always barks at me and everyone else doesn't bark but sniffs me in an unusually friendly way as I open the gate and walk around the back of the house, over to the side yard, and up to her bedroom window. It's four years ago and when I peer through her blinds I see her lying in bed with him.

It's four years ago and he's shirtless and she's not wearing any pants or underwear and he's kissing my girlfriend and he's got his hand buried between her legs and it's four years ago and I knock on the window and it's four years ago and I'm completely alone in this and it's four years ago and sometimes when a sad song comes on I relive all these feelings all at once and it's four years from now and I still won't forget what it feels like to be so betrayed but it's right now and I don't blame anyone or dwell on it because in the end everyone gets what they deserve even if there isn't any God or Karma to make sure it happens, it just happens, because bad people invite bad things into their lives and what is what it really is so if you're tired of bad things happening to you the only solution is to stop doing bad things to other people and if you're too stupid to figure this out then you're only getting what you've been asking for all along. It's right now and bad things do not happen to me anymore.