I walked in preparing myself to ignore her, anticipating her ignoring me.  My neck felt so heavy.  I walked past her and into my room from the gym, closed the door and took a shower.  When I came back out they had left.  She hadn't looked when I passed and at night's end I felt disappointed.

Everyone was good-looking and American in her group.  I didn't want to take my shirt off in the pool because I was hairy and no one had hair yet.  I smoke like my dad next to them at the beach; I felt old school.  They say they're this or that, third generation, but they're American.  I was judgmental and off-putting.  I was the only cool blank the kids said they knew.  I grabbed the dog's leash from his hands and hoped she noticed.  I walked her out of their circle.

My head wasn't in the right space.  I stared straight ahead until I became conscious of my foot running and it became heavy and an exercise.  Then I'd have to fidget, shuffle my body until before I knew it I could happily be running again.  One was crossed over the other.  That was today's position.  I stared straight at the facilitator, beyond her into the board, then into the white around my vision, burning inside, not sure what I was trying to prove.  They were sitting next to each other—and only when I consider how am I to capture, not jealousy but frustration at my peripheral sensitivity, do I understand the language of poker tells.  It's like a bag of tricks gathering on the side screen of my mind.  I hoped I was called on so he could interrupt and try to give me advice and I could punch him in the face.  Or I could say No when he asks if he could give me advice in front of her and say I stay away from self-help gurus in my recovery.  It wasn't me anymore, or it was, stripped.  

Anything I said I would be directing at her, against her, projecting, I guess, in group—nurturing in my hands, a baby snide remark to break open the morning after she speaks her truth.   Were that giddy little voice often circulating these premises try to pop up, the voice I hear but never on my voicemail,  in the hostility separating the two states, we would be like foreigners, like my dad reading my blog while I'm high.  The more languages you know, the more men you can fuck.  Kinda like that.  I was ashamed to be the face behind the goofy voice, what a fraud.  My ex was of my culture, but told me she only agreed to date me because I was an English major.  She had hoped I was a liberal.  Now I look back on that cynically, and didn't look up in group when she spoke of her past but fumed, when I realized, I had early on been spotted by an ex of mine.

In group we discussed building healthy relationships.  I snickered what the fuck is that.  She was seated next to me.   If our problems lie rooted in his own shit, she asserted, then she wanted to hear no more of it.  She didn't have to call it shit, I muttered, she could be a little nicer.  In my peripheral, I know she moved her chair away from me.

• like victim, then utter reactionary impulse