Insight into life over the years: the good, the bad, the ugly, and the hilarious. Not in chronological order. Not in any particular order at all. Just randomly chosen moments to share. The first in a series: 18: She walked into the place, immediately seeing two things that made her wish she had never agree to come. The first was the vacant smiles firmly planted on everyone’s faces, screaming “the only part of me that is smiling is my mouth…and even IT is not very happy about it!!!” Then she noticed their eyes, constantly scanning each other up and down, assessing everything, forgiving nothing. Despite the frozen smiles and roaming eyes, these people all seemed so sure of themselves, so self-possessed, so solid. She felt in equal parts, with every cell of her being, that she was none of these things. Even more than that, she did not want to be found out. What if there was some sort of fraud detector? A siren may go off and a spotlight would land on her and the loudspeaker would scream out the worst word ever, “INSECURE! INSECURE! INSECURE!” Over and over and over again. She pulled at her ill-fitting dress, regretting yesterday’s French fries, as if they alone were the cause of her discomfort. Two hours ago, the thought of spending yet another night on her couch watching movies in her jammies made her sad enough to agree to this bad idea. Now, the thought of it invoked Nirvana: safe, happy, cozy, warm. Blessed with a fake ID and thinking it would help, she ordered a drink, quickly making it a double. But it only intensified the sick, making her stomach turn and her hands sweat. Glancing at her watch, she eyed the distance between her and the door and silently tried to calculate how many people in the room would notice how few minutes she had been there in the few steps in would take her to escape. Sadly, she always sucked at math word problems, and the confusion of this one just added to her distress. Suddenly, a hand was on her elbow, a life raft in this sea of plastic people. It belonged to a friend, a friend who said warmly, “ Hey, we’re all over here”. And now, just as surely as she was lost, she was found. There, in the corner, all huddled together in the candlelight, were her friends, her people. She entered the circle and for the first time since she got there, she could finally breathe. She lost herself in the laughter and the comfort and kinship of this motley crue. It was almost an hour before she realized that she no longer had a desire to be on her couch, snuggled up in her jammies, because when she was with her friends, no matter where she was, she was already home.
Posted on: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 08:35:33 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015