October Secret Subject Swap - Closure

Welcome to October's Secret Subject Swap. Again 15 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts.  
Sit back, grab a glass and check them all out:



Baking In A Tornado
The Momisodes

My subject is 
             

Is there someone from middle or high school that you need closure with?  What would you want to say to them today, x many years later?



It was submitted by The Lieber Family - thanks, Rabia!


Allright, before I even dig into this rather serious prompt, I need to get this one off my chest:



"Find a dictionary and find out what this closure is. If this is what he's gonna hit us with, then I wanna know what it is!" 

Baahahahaha!

Oh, and, hit the pillow! 

Love this movie.

So, who do I need closure with? The coworker I yelled at 18 years ago for not getting stamps after being told to a couple of times? Nah, he had it more than coming. Also the prompt asks for a school friend.

Actually I think my high school friend should get this prompt and write about me. But I'll let you guys decide:

We met in 7th grade. A group of teenage girls just had gotten together as a tight-knit group when B joined our class. 

She was different. She dressed and wore make-up in new wave style: all black and grey, with some serious hair gel going on.

Also her reputation as some kind of a slut preceded her. As a 15 yo she frequented clubs I'm sure she wasn't supposed to get into and hung out with 20-25 yo guys. Preferably guys with fancy cars.

I tried to include her in our activities and show the other girls that she deserved a chance and that deep down she was one of us.

I guess it's safe to say that she was not one of us, but we became friends anyway. I admired her for her strength and determination. Her parents were both alcoholics, and B was able to distance herself from them emotionally and spatially. 

Her parent's apartment was dark, smelled of cigarette smoke and was full of empty bottles newspapers and dirty clothes. 

B's room was always locked. It was neat and airy, she had her stereo equipment that played Depeche Mode records, her own phone line was her connection to people who could get her out of there when it all became too much, and her clothes were being laundered and put away by herself.

Fast forward 7 years. We had not only graduated from high school, but she had become a certified  pharmacist's assistant, and I had my college degree and my first job as a coffee maker with a private bank.

It was in 1991. Her mother had recently died, and B was devastated. "I can't be alone right now" she said.

It was a fall evening, we were sitting in the only pub in our small town, and she was talking a mile a minute. "I'm gonna move in with R but what am I gonna do if it doesn't work out? You know if I give up my own apartment, and a couple of months later we break up - where am I gonna go?"

R was her only steady boyfriend I ever knew of. Fun guy, pretty decent, too, only five years older than her, I had a good feeling about them. 

"I may take over your apartment" I suggested. "if you guys break up, you'll get it back!"

Win-win, right? 

I had just started working and was dying to get away from my parents, but I didn't have enough money for a deposit, insurance and furniture, however I was able to pay for the monthly rent of her existing furnished flat. 

We agreed on a six months' trial period, so to speak. Within half a year she was going to be able to get back into her own apartment at short notice.  As of July 1st she was going to transfer the lease onto my name.

In December I moved into her apartment that was now mine. Not on paper, though, but I didn't mind this technicality. I was happy to have my own place, to be able to do as I pleased. Interestingly I didn't watch TV all night long, my diet didn't only consist in potato chips and cookies, and I became pretty mindful of the water bill and cut my showers shorter than I used to. 

So far so good. Spring came and went, and everything was looking well, she started asking me if I wanted to buy the sofa from her and promised to leave me the dishware and pots and stuff. 

They seemed happy and in love, and so were Buster guy and I. Or so I thought. 

On a sunny and warm Saturday he broke up with me for what was going to be the second of three times. Don't ask. 

When I called B to whine about it, she interrupted me and said "this might be a bit of bad timing, but I need my apartment back."

I was shocked. 

What? Not you, too? Why? What happened?

They were not breaking up. R quit his expensive penthouse in the old town, and they wanted to come and live in B's bachelorette flat in order to save money so they could  renovate R's parent's house which was going to be their future home.

They had it all figured out. Must have been for a while.

"I know this wasn't the original idea. Things change. My name is on the lease, so you can't stay, I'm sorry. Can you leave by June 30?"

The good thing was that hunting for an apartment that was pretty much available on the spot (which is not a common thing in Switzerland; usually tenants need to give 3 months' notice) didn't leave much time to grieve about my being dumped.

Early July I moved into my new place, soon after that Buster guy asked me to take him back, and the next time I saw B again was two years later at a high school reunion I organized with some other friends. 

For a second I considered "forgetting" to mail her an invitation, but hey, give her the chance to not show up herself. But of course she did, and she tried to talk to me. She didn't really apologize or anything, she just said something like "looks like it worked out for all of us".

Yeah, sure. 

I found some pictures of that beach themed party. B is not in any of them, haha!




The guy on the right is M at whose house we had the Purple Rain Party!



Rabia's prompt is also about what I would say to B today.

Here goes: 

"Look, B, you may have figured this out by yourself in the meantime: to me it wasn't about contracts and apartments, it was about two friends helping each other out and supporting each other, especially during tough times. You let me down, I didn't appreciate it.

Dear friends, when you read this, I will be somewhere in Kruger N.P. South Africa, most probably without wi-fi, so I won't be able to read and comment on your posts. I hope I will get to them upon my return home the other week! Take care!

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