Sometimes I lay in bed and try to think back to the days when I could just lay in bed and stare at the plain, white ceiling. They seem so far away. So out of reach. As long as I can remember this has been hanging over my head, always there. No escape. The feeling of entrapment is creeping back in. I always had big dreams of getting out of this town. Then it happened.
It came out of nowhere. Completely blindsided. How could he just leave us like that? Did we really mean nothing? Eighteen years and he finally decides to bounce? I can’t bring myself to believe that he ever truly cared. Now Ma’s hitting the bottle every single night to try to forget.
I’ll never forget that day. I had just gotten my acceptance letter to Brown. Ma and I were waiting outside of the restaurant. We waited for an hour, but he never showed. Maybe he’s just stuck in traffic, she kept saying. But I knew what was going on. They had been fighting more and more. He threatened to leave almost every day. I just never thought he actually would.
Now here I am, laying in the same bed I used to in high school. Except now I’m struggling to pay my way through community college while taking care of my alcoholic mother.
The days all start to fade together. I get up, I go to work, I eat, I sleep. Life isn’t supposed to be this way. It isn’t supposed to be this dull, hazy phase that I’ve found myself in. But she makes me want to try to be happy again. Her quirky half smiles and her big brown eyes make me feel again. She’s my last chance. I have to make things right with her. I’ve blown her off for too long and she’s fed up. I don’t blame her either. I haven’t been the best company for her. She’s the one thing that can get me out of this funk. The question now is, how do I win her back?
Today could be the day that you change someone’s life. You have to get out of bed because you might run into that friend today that needs your guidance. Sure, you don’t feel like getting up now but it’s better than wondering what if. What if your best friend had a run in with someone from their past? Someone that pushes them into a dark place and they need you to be there for them so that they can come to terms, so that they don’t let the darkness overcome them. What if today is the day that you get the reassurance you need that everything in your life is going to be ok? What if today is the first day of the rest of your life? You’ll never know unless you get up.
I bought a book of stamps back when things were good. I thought that I’d send you letters every so often like in Dear John. I see now just how stupid the idea was. Why would any guy want letters from a girl across the country? I’ve only used two of them. One was to send in my voter’s registration and the other was to send a letter to my best friend. The girl who has been there for me over and over when he broke me. So now I’m going to use those stamps to write to every single person who I’ve let down when I was in a dark place because of him. A letter to every single person that I let down by constantly being pessimistic.
This statement is really similar to something my friend, Luke, has said before. “The best revenge is to live well.” I’m tired of always sitting here bitching about how life isn’t fair and that I’m a good person but bad things keep happening to me. There’s two ways you can think about life. You can sit there and blame everyone else, guard yourself, and live without really living. Or you can let go and not hold things against yourself, take it a day at a time and just live. Not letting the past hurt you or the future scare you. I think I’m going to take road number 2 because I’ve seen someone who lives based off the first road and he only hurts the people closest to him. I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore.
There once was a girl that fell in love with a man. He was everything she had ever dreamed of and so much more, her knight in shining armor. Every time she talked about him, you could see the sparkle in her eyes. It was like a fairytale come true. She tried to give him the world, or as much as she could. Including herself. And for a while they were happy. But fairytales don’t last forever. He started drifting and not acting like the man that she had fallen for. He started saying not so nice things to her and she couldn’t understand what she was doing wrong. She kept picking herself apart trying to figure it out. She had tried to be perfect, but she just wasn’t doing anything right. Her friends started to turn their backs on her, all she ever did was nag and complain. They were sick of her talking about her once shining knight. She finally reached rock bottom, never knowing what she had done to deserve to be treated that way. All she knew was, she wasn’t herself anymore and that there are no such things as fairytales.
The end.
Sleep tight.
I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth. I knew his temper and I shouldn’t have let them slip out. I was doing so well with holding back.
This was the worst I’d ever seen him. Something else had to be going on. Surely, my words couldn’t have made him this upset. I’d never seen him act this way.
I was afraid of what he’d do to himself, to me, to the dog or anything else that got in his way.
Before I knew it, he had picked up the picture frame with a picture of us and he hauled it towards the window. Glass shattered and scattered all across the hallway.
“There,” he said. “I hope you’re happy now.”
“I’ve been alone my whole life,” he tells the group. “From the first day I set foot in my house after my parents’ accident, I’ve been alone.”
There’s a mix of emotion around the room. Furrowed brows, sympathetic eyes.
“My uncle came to live with my sister and I. But my sister was going away to college in a few weeks, which left just me and Jared. He didn’t know the first thing about raising a teenager. He was too concerned with going out every night and drinking with his friends. He thought that because I was a teenage boy that it had always been my fantasy to have someone like him as my guardian.”
He scratches an eyebrow.
“Yeah, not so much. Sure, it may seem like every boy’s fantasy to live like a slob and a pig. But honestly, I wanted someone to tell me what was right and wrong, to tell me to do my homework, to make me do chores. I know that sounds crazy, but I was pretty much living alone for my entire high school career. Jared was always working during the day and then at night he’d go out with his friends, not coming home until 2, 3 in the morning.”
There was a look of subtle shock amongst the crowd.
“I raised myself in those four years that I was in high school. Jared did nothing but work and drink. I had to feed myself, I had to learn how to do my own laundry, I had to apply for colleges on my own with no advice. I had to learn everything on my own.”
Some of the older women in the crowd shake their heads in disbelief.
“But from that I learned that it’s alright to be alone. Sure, at first it can be scary. But you get used to it. And you move on from that fear.”
Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole thing was a set up. I mean, really, you want us to believe the things you tell us without giving us hard proof? Yeah, alright. I’ll believe it when I see some proof. Who cares if it’s too graphic or disrespectful? It’s not like there isn’t worse stuff on the internet. Not to mention the story keeps changing. I’m sure that there are some 9/11 family members who don’t believe it either and want to see the pictures, so it isn’t fair to keep that from the ones who want the reassurance. My view on it is that I’m not believing anything until I can see legitimate proof.
Time. Time is very sacred.
I remember laying there with you and thinking to myself that you were leaving soon but it was alright because, for that moment, you were with me. Everything was perfect because we had time together. The thing is that time is too short when you’re trying to enjoy it. Night turns into day and then you have to go on with your lives and you might not get that time together for a while.
You never said goodbye and I think that’s what hurt the most. I couldn’t understand what had happened. I went on a chase to find out why. Sure, I got discouraged but I never gave up. Not until I got my answer. And that answer left me with no closure at all.
“I have my reasons for doing what I’m doing.”
It would have been a lot less frustrating if you would have just told me those reasons but I guess that there was a reason behind not telling me the reasons. Either way, it still hurt to lose your friendship.
I’ll never be what you want. I don’t see why I keep trying to make myself. I’ve done everything I can to make sure that I’m everything you could ever possibly want but it’s just not enough. I’m not the kind of person that anyone wants. I’ve tried to be. I’ve tried to be supportive and caring and charismatic but I guess none of those worked. I’ll never be your best friend. I’ll never be the person you call first when you get exciting news. I won’t ever be the person you want to wake up next to and fall asleep holding. That’s just how it is, I guess. I can only fool myself for so long.
We’re walking through the park together and just having a good time. We’re exploring and joking around about having our wedding here. It’s finally nice out and the last few breaths of winter are gone. I’m finally starting to feel like myself again after being inside for so long. I let the sun beat down on me and enjoy the warmth. We keep walking, letting out more jokes and teasing each other. It truly has been a memorable day. We’ve only been out of the car for a little over twenty minutes when a cool breeze comes through. I cross my fingers that it doesn’t stay. We keep walking, the breeze still blowing towards us. I guess it’s alright, technically it isn’t even spring yet. She keeps going out further and further. I can’t even see her anymore. The wind starts blowing harder and all I want to do is go back in the car. I’ll come back out when it’s warm for good.
