my famous blue raincoat

I am standing in a CVS in Boston with my brother buying junk food and pre-natal vitamins when a magazine cover catches my eye. It is a photo of the young actress Scarlett Johansen, who I like because she chooses good roles and plays them with depth. The headline says that Cameron Diaz’s boyfriend has left her and he has hooked up with Johansen instead. It describes Johansen as Diaz’s enemy, which certainly juices up the story. Since I do not follow Hollywood gossip, I have no idea if this is remotely true or has even been long-rumored. What catches me off guard is the idea of Johansen, whose character I imagine to be sweet and down to earth, with an enemy. It occurs to me that part of the reason I like Johansen is that I feel a kinship with her; I picture her as a beautiful, actress version of myself: smart, funny, buxom, unafraid to embrace her inner dork. This impression is based on flimsy information gathered mostly from the characters she’s played in movies, and yet it moves me to think: Scarlett Johansen has an enemy and I do, too.
This is the first time in my life I have had an enemy and I find it hard to get used to the idea. This is also the first time in my life I have ever disliked a person so much. I will not say I hate her, because hate is a word filled with a high level of anger I do not posses. Stunned would much better describe how I feel. I am both stunned by my feelings of dislike and by my own actions. The actions that lead this person to become my enemy were predicated not on my dislike, but almost wholly on my fear and a sense of survivalism. As in, if I didn’t act, I feared this person would hurt me far worse than I was hurting her. In the end, I may have been wrong about that, because we both ended up getting burned, but I do feel sure I was right to fear her, that she is a bad person, that she wanted my destruction far more than I wanted hers, that she would have stopped at nothing to get it, and that she had better means to do so than did I. All of these things are what make me dislike her so much. It is a ridiculous revelation for me each time I realize how much she must hate me back.
In my dream last night, my enemy tried to trick me, but I didn’t see the ruse until I woke up in the morning. Our devolution from friends to enemies was always predicated on her trying to help me. I am not a cynical person, and I always believe people are who they say they are, offer what they mean to offer, are as honest as me. It never occurs to me that people I trust - and I trust almost everyone - are out to hurt me, have ulterior motives, or mean anything other than the good they profess. My grandfather always says not to trust anyone an inch, but since he also focuses on bitter family feuds that took place more than half a century ago, I have always laughed at him. Now I wish I had listened.
Before I tell the dream, here is a case in point, a very small point, which, by its very smallness shows how endemic is this enemy’s insidiousness. Before I told this person I was pregnant, she was constantly showing me photos of her cousin, who was about to give birth. She asked me how big pregnant women were supposed to grow, since her cousin had gone from skinny to huge, and a number of other pregnancy-related questions, none of which I knew the answers to, because I was so newly pregnant myself. I was always afraid of answering her questions because I was afraid she would find out I was pregnant before I wanted to tell her, which could have had very bad consequences for me, but it never occurred to me that she actually suspected I was pregnant and was trying nearly every day to get me to admit it so that she could use that information against me. After the incidents that made me her enemy occurred, a friend pointed out that that had been exactly her intent all along. I felt so stupid for not having noticed or even suspected. I thought this person would be able to see beyond politics and be at least a little happy for me and the new family I was starting. I was so naïve.
In my dream, I was naïve again, and it felt like relief. My enemy was suddenly in the picture and was talking to me normally. She was going about work in her usual way, giving me too much information and extolling her accomplishments. She told me she had a job working for the business desk of the Philadelphia Inquirer and she’d brought a number of people from our old situation with her, mostly students and cloying underlings. She says she knows we’ve had our differences, but says I should talk to her new boss, explain that I’m with her, and he will give me writing assignments. I am glad for the openness, but not sure I want the assignments. In addition, her boyfriend is there and he is following me suspiciously. He is a nice guy and I hope that in real life he won’t be hurt by her. In the dream, my enemy is telling me how our new life together will go, the only detail of which I remember is that I am supposed to move in with her. I do not want to do that because her place is a mess, full of shoes and clothes, and because I do not like the way she is laying out the future. She is not order me around outright, but assumes I will do what she says. I begin to have the vague notion that if I do what she wants now, I will be doing what she wants forever. Then there is the impression of someone else, and I remember that I am married. Larry certainly can’t move here with me. I tell her quietly thanks but no thanks, that I have another writing assignment from another desk at the paper -- which is true in real life -- and that it was nice of her to think of me. Then I walk out of the room and out of the dream calmly, as she stares resentfully after me. I wake up feeling even more relieved.
If this situation doesn’t represent plotwise what happened between us in real life, it certainly represents it symbolically. I trusted her instead of myself and when I finally realized how dangerous she is, I was honest to a fault and left. In life, the situation was much more dramatic and full of gray areas, but it felt the same. I beat myself up daily for the real life situation, like a soldier who survived war but had to kill men. In both the dream and real life, ridding my enemy from my life is still the source of my greatest relief. I am so thankful, even as I sort through the emotional, financial, and bureaucratic debris of the fallout, that I do not have to deliver my baby with the black cloud of my enemy in my life. The fact that the pale memory of her will always be with me is like a battle wound. Luckily, having wounds means you’ve survived the battle.