Limerel Places

Definition of the word 'Parasocial' according to dictionary dot com: 

-Of or relating to the connection or imagined connection between a regular person and a fictional character, celebrity, or other public figure. 

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You’d forgotten about your sheets until it was an hour past bedtime, so in your sleepy state, you opt for the couch. Wrangling your blankets and bedsheets is a morning activity, not a nighttime one, and your couch is comfortable enough. You’re perpetually cold, so you already have plenty of blankets there, and before long, you feel yourself getting dragged off to sleep. But something pulls you back from the edge, and it takes you a second to realize what it was, some noise that you heard in that thin place between awake and asleep. But soon your eyes settle on movement at your front door. It’s an apartment, so the distance from where you’re sleeping to the shared hallway is only a few yards, and your eyes have adjusted well to the dark. So you see the handle on your door turning in complete clarity. It turns back to resting, then once again, turns as if to open, but you’ve remembered to lock it. Then it’s still. You wait for your heart to settle down, and you go back to your bedroom, and you put those sheets back on, and eventually, you calm down enough to go to sleep. The next day, you spend the entire day cleaning. Your apartment had been a real depression hovel lately, and it’s past time to get out of that. You wash your dishes, gather your trash, and sweep for the first time in you don’t even know how long. Then that night, you settle down on your couch once again, so you can watch the door. Just past midnight, you hear someone approach, and your heart flutters. It would have been so embarrassing if they’d come in last night, with your place in the state it was. But tonight it’s perfect, it’s spotless. You see the doorknob turn, and you smile for the first time in so very long. It's been ages since you’ve had a guest, since you’ve been anything but alone. And as the door opens, you brace yourself to welcome in The Podcast Inside Your House.

I’d been five years clean when you found me again in a cheap motel room at the edge of town. 

I could have afforded a nicer place. But that wouldn't have fit what I’d come here to do. No, this place suited my needs just fine. I had to slam the door shut to get it to lock. The air conditioner struggled loudly to keep the room just a few degrees past intolerable. And the wallpaper was warped and thick, no doubt hiding more of the same underneath. I pictured layers and layers of wavy, collapsing vinyl, thicker even than the paper-thin drywall it had been glued to at the start. 

I was no stranger to travel, and I had to stop myself from falling into a routine, from trying to make my new, temporary home cozy. I took out only my sleeping clothes, leaving my suitcase unpacked on the floor, the dresser empty. I could be out of there as soon as tomorrow, so what was the sense in unpacking? I set up only my work computer, leaving my personal laptop in its bag. 

Just as I’d had to stop myself from nesting in the physical sense, I kept myself from digital nesting in as well. There would be no hotel selfies sent to the friends I usually checked in with. No calls to catch up and bitch about jet lag. I’d told no one where I was going, and God willing, it would stay that way. 

Which meant I had to find some way to occupy my time in relative isolation. And I knew just the fix. 

I pulled out my phone and started re-following the handful of accounts I’d had to unfollow over the years. I didn’t pick you right away, though I had a feeling I’d end up there. But I’d diversified my daydream portfolio plenty before I’d gone clean so many years ago. So I had to sort through all of my options. 

I got as comfortable as I could get on the lumpy bed, and slowly I scrolled on my phone. I checked in with all of my old obsessions, and it felt like checking in with old friends.

I knew there was a word for what I was doing, but I hated using it in the same way I hated using any word that felt unable to ever truly convey what it meant. Words that were censored on the internet now, kill, rape, murder, suicide. They’re just words, but we censor them as if hearing them would inflict even a fraction of the horror of what they encompass upon the listener. 

I felt the same way about the word Limerance. As if the word could ever convey even a fraction of the heart-wrenching longing that those of us afflicted with the condition feel. 

I know there’s a technical definition for the word, something along the lines of ‘a one-way infatuation with another person. One who either doesn’t reciprocate those feelings, or more likely doesn’t even know you exist.’

But I’ve always carried my own definition in my heart. I’ve always preferred to think of Limerance as the state of having too much love but nowhere to put it. A place you find yourself when you need to give that love away, but there’s no one you can give it to. So you imagine that you have someone, a place to put all of those feelings that need somewhere to go. 

I’ve been deep in the throes of it before, and I’ve gotten out. Which meant if I dug myself back in, just to get through this, I could get myself out again. 

As I clicked through selfies and reels, and Hollywood promos. As I selected my target, I felt like I was sneaking through the bushes. I felt like I was peering into people’s windows. And see, that’s how I knew I wasn’t that crazy, because I was acutely aware of how crazy I was being. 

I flipped through my greatest hits, the people who have been my objects of affection over the years. Imaginary friends when I didn’t have any real ones, imaginary relationships before I learned how to love properly. And before long, I arrived at you. 

Truth be told, you’d been on my mind the entire journey here, because I knew that we both came from this same hometown originally. I’d always felt an extra special connection to you because of that. 

And wouldn’t you know it? You were back in this town, too, at least according to your Instagram. You’d posted a picture only three days ago of a little tea shop I’d been well acquainted with in my youth. It’s a distinctive shop, even if you hadn't snapped the logo on your cup front and center. You should really be careful advertising your location like that. You’ve gotten a lot more famous since I last checked in on you. 

With the knowledge that you were somewhere in this small city with me, my mind took me head over heels back into the daydream world I’d worked so hard to escape from years ago. The little pathways were still there, carved into my head. Like creekbeds that had run dry and were desperate for the flood of dopamine that daydreaming would bring. And the second I cranked the faucet, giving that dry, deserted place the first drop of imaginary love, I couldn’t stop. I’d been dying of thirst for so long, and finally there was water; who cared if it wasn’t real? 

That night, I paced around my little motel room for hours like a trapped zoo animal. And as I walked, I imagined running into you here in this town, at that cute little tea shop. Slowly, I added more details to our meet-cute. What you’d say, what I’d say, how I’d pretend I hadn’t imagined this exact scenario a thousand times over. And once I’d perfected how that would go, how I’d charm my way past your defenses, I started imagining our first date together. 

The next morning, as I put on my slacks and my tie and drank only half a cup of coffee because I was already shaking from anxiety, I imagined you there calming me down. I skipped ahead a bit, sorry about that. I pictured us somewhere a few years down the line in our relationship. A place where we’d been dating long enough to have told each other everything. It was a time when you knew why I’d come back home, and you were so proud of me for doing what I was going to do. 

I took a cab to my dreaded destination, not trusting my distracted mind to drive. As I sat in the back and tolerated small talk with the driver, I imagined you there, squeezing my hand. Then, when we arrived, you kept a firm grip as we walked through the doors and the metal detectors of the county courthouse. You were there in the lobby with me, too, as we waited for our courtroom to empty. But when it came time to sit in the actual hearing, I lost you. 

I couldn’t picture wanting anyone else there, not even you. At least not yet. 

When I got out of court, where did I find myself but that cute little teashop you’d posted about? I needed to get a bit more caffeine in me now that the risk of the shakes was lessening and my heart was calming. And though I didn’t see you there, I felt connected to you, and that soothed me. I started pondering what our first date would be, which restaurant I’d want to take you to when we finally ran into each other, and I won you over. 

That night I picked out that new movie of yours, the award-bait one, the sad one. I’d been avoiding it because I worried it might send me into a relapse. Truth be told, I’d avoided most of your more recent projects. I’d had several targets of my Limerace over the years, but you were the one I kept coming back to the most often. You were the most dangerous.

As I watched that sad, sad movie, I imagined you and me further into our relationship, but only by a few weeks or months. I imagined you confiding in me that some of those tragic things that happened to your character in that movie had happened to you in real life. And when you confided in me those terrible things, I felt like I could tell you my own secrets then, too.

I pictured confessing everything to you in an appropriately cinematic way. Perhaps I’d share my secrets out on a street in the rain. Or late at night in a darkened hotel room. Secrets like the ones I’d been keeping from you were only meant to be told in the rain, or in the dark. They had no place out in the day, when the sun was out. 

Secrets like mine weren’t meant to be shared with friends over Discord while they were just at their houses, living their peaceful lives. It wasn’t my place to disrupt that, no matter how much it might help. 

As I lay in my sweltering hotel room that night, I felt a little bit less alone, now that I could imagine telling you about the things I’d never told anyone else but the police. And because I was only telling you in my head, you only ever had the reactions that I wanted you to have. And it was perfect every time. 

I had at minimum two weeks to kill in town after that first hearing. Though more delays wouldn't surprise me. So I spent those weeks getting lost in the fantasy of you. I shut out the outside world as much as I could.

I did my best to talk to my coworkers as little as possible during the day. Normally, when one of us was traveling, we’d give each other little tours of our hotels or Airbnbs over video calls. We’d talk about the food and the sights and what we were getting up to. But this was not a vacation for fun, so for them I made up a story about going back home to visit a sick relative. I made sure to look appropriately sad anytime they pried even a little, and it worked wonders in getting them to leave me alone. 

My friends understood long silences were an inevitable part of long distances, so they mostly didn’t worry when I didn’t respond to things. And to those who pried, I tried to lie as little as possible. But I didn’t tell any of them where I was. 

Instead, I spent all of my time with you. I checked your socials constantly and saw you were hitting up a lot of hiking trails. Some of them I recognized, some of them I didn’t. But soon I was exploring every trail in the city. I snapped my own pictures of the plants and fungi and sunset skies, and I felt close to you when I did, imagining that we were taking pictures of the same clouds, the same flowers. 

Then you started posting trail pictures from places with caves and waterfalls and cliffs, and I knew you were branching out, revisiting the parks and preserves further out, so I started to do the same. And as I saw how remote, how deserted some of these places were, I worried about you. You’d gotten properly famous the last few years, but you weren’t acting like it yet. You were still out there broadcasting your every move, announcing to the world that you were often in the woods alone, where no one could hear you scream if anything happened. 

The next court date came all too quickly, and I imagined you there with me once again. We’d have to dodge the paparazzi coming in, of course, but they’d still get a few pictures. And people would wonder what celebrity shenanigans you’d gotten into, and other people would correct them that no, she’s just going to court with her husband. And then I went and ruined my own daydream by imagining nosy reporters digging up my information, airing my dirty laundry to the world. So instead, I pictured you sending me off on my own, to keep the press out of our private lives. Then, when I got home, you were waiting for me with a warm welcome, a shoulder to cry on, a kiss, whatever I needed. That got me through the day. 

At the hearing, I was expecting the first of endless continuations, months of misery. But instead, they settled, tentatively, on the date that mattered the most. The last date I would have to be there, just a short week away. 

I spiraled then. I spent my time doomcsrolling, or hiking around and listening to every podcast interview you’d ever done, many of which I’d listened to before. We truly had so much in common. It was part of why I’d fallen so hard for you in the first place, so long ago. 

My motel room only got more and more disheveled, my suitcase perpetually exploding with either the clean or the dirty laundry pile, and I could never remember which was which. 

I was actively ignoring my friends by then. Some of them were worried, but I didn’t have the energy to lie, and I didn’t want to tell any of them why I was really here. I’d never told any of them the full extent of the things I’d left behind me in this town. 

But you though, I’d told you so many different times over the years, because I could tell you anything. Because the version of you that lived in my head wasn’t real, and it couldn’t tell anyone else. 

I requested off from work for the few days before my court date, knowing I’d be a wreck. I made myself go out, go hiking, your voice in my ear the whole time. I focused on trying to get good pictures of things, the way you did, and I imagined we were taking pictures of the same leaves, the same ferns.

And on a trail I knew you frequented, one remote enough that I was alone but not so remote that there was no cell reception, I got a push notification that you'd posted something. And there on your story, I saw that only a few short moments ago, you had taken a picture of the same tree I’d just photographed. One growing on a cliffside, ready to fall at any moment. If the post wasn’t on a lag, it was possible that you and I were on the same trail.

I jogged ahead then, not quite ready to face you if you were here. And when I saw a bench, I stopped, and I waited. I wanted to catch your attention somehow, but my mind was blank. And as the minutes ticked by, I only felt more and more and more panicked. You would be there any minute, and I didn’t know what to do. 

The birds that had been soothing just a few moments ago felt like they were shrieking. The sun was sweltering, the wind obnoxious. I felt like I was suffocating. 

But the second I saw you emerge from around the bend, my heart slowed, my breathing calmed, and I felt safe. The imaginary time we’d spent together had convinced my brain, my body, that I knew you, that you were familiar. And I pondered not for the first time just how unhealthy this all was. Our brains weren’t wired to know this much about people we don’t actually know. 

But with a heart that was now calm, I pulled out my phone and held it aloft and yelled out to you. “Excuse me, miss, have you been on this trail before? My phone's dead, and I think I’m a bit lost.” That was believable because I knew this trail well enough to know how often people got lost on it.

“Yep, I’ve gotten lost here before, too, actually. The trails are really confusing.” Your voice further soothed me. I’d been listening to it so much lately. 

And what did you do then? You came over to that bench, and you sat down next to me, closer than you actually had to. I asked you about finding a cave nearby, and I knew the trail to get there was even more confusing than the overgrown path we were on now. As you tried to make heads or tails of the park map on your phone, one I knew was well outdated, you made small talk, and you giggled at my answers. 

And because my brain thought it knew you, because I was so familiar with your face, your voice, your mannerisms, I kept my cool, and I made you laugh more. And when you thought you’d puzzled out the map and you gave me directions that actually would have gotten me completely lost had I not already known the way, you got up. 

But before you walked off, you hesitated, and in that hesitation, I went through a dozen scenarios in my head of what would happen if we talked some more. If I got to know the real you in real life. But in doing so, I’d have to keep my imaginary you a secret. 

Forever. 

And I wasn’t far gone enough to forget that you would never be her.

After a few seconds of eternally long silence, you said to me, “I know this is a little forward, but are you single?” 

And I replied back “I’m actually seeing someone at the moment.”

And you told me, “lucky girl,” and we parted ways. 

And as I walked away, I felt my grip on my imaginary version of you slipping away. Tainted by the real thing, by the reminder that none of what I’d been living the past few weeks was real. And it was soul-crushing. 

Why’d you have to show up and ruin things?

I started snapping out of my limeral state. Fast enough that it felt like I had the bends, I was dizzy and short of breath, but I was back in the real world, back in the place where tomorrow I had to take the stand and testify to a room full of strangers about the things that I’d never told anyone close to me about. 

And now I didn’t even have you in my head to get me through it. 

I slumped over on a tree, trying to ground myself by feeling the rough bark. I listened to the birds, the bugs around me, and I closed my eyes to focus on the feeling of the warm sun. I didn’t want to be in the real world just yet. I needed you to get me through tomorrow. I tried to call you back in my head, but you were slipping away; the bubble of my daydreams popped for good. 

Before long, I heard someone coming up behind me, and I swallowed my burgeoning tears. I checked to make sure it wasn’t you, and saw a middle-aged man jogging closer. I moved to the right to continue my spiral off trial, to let him pass. And he slowed on the narrow path as he got closer. I kept my hand on the tree and looked at the bark, not wanting a stranger to see me on the verge of collapse.

Then I felt something hit my back, and before I even felt the pain, I looked down and saw red blossoming on the side of my chest. 

And as the stranger pulled the knife out of my ribcage and I fell, I felt the shock of the wound start to set in. I started to feel cold then, even in the heat of the midday sun. 

The man leaned over me quickly, his breath in my face. He said simply, “She’s mine.”

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the podcast inside your house! To hear every tale of terror as they are released, subscribe to our show on your podcast app or on Youtube or follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. Until Next Time, remember that no matter how weird you might think you’re being, there’s always someone out there just waiting to show you up.