The way we live now.

A short piece I wrote for my English literature class about heartache and new beginnings, I hope you like it. :)

Everyone always loves to tell you when it’s time. When it’s time to quit your job or end your relationship. When it’s time to move on or clean your apartment, maybe buy a new dress or go on that date or even kiss that guy. Reasons for this consist of many things, but mainly because they’re too comfortable with putting an expiration date on your emotions. And maybe you let them, maybe you let the light shimmer through the cracks and glow, because that’s easier than taking the time to let them go. Although, the damage stays under the surface, and anyone you know would rather tell you “It’s going to get better” than to give you the tools to actually get there.

I remember my experience all too well. It was the start of my first semester, and only being eighteen I thrived on the fact that my parents would be unable to hold me hostile in the prison I called home. The walk around campus was windy and hot, something I didn’t quite like about my hometown this time of year, but then again there were a lot of thing I didn’t like. Tequila after 11pm, mom jeans, Stephen king novels – all cases of my non ending list of bits and pieces that never should have existed. I remember the days quite well, having just been broken up with, my heart and my head were all over the place – torn apart, so I drowned my sorrows in vodka on the rocks at a crappy bar near my neighborhood, surrounded by crappy people I decided to call friends. They all had their own definition of the term “messy”, but when you’re so broken on the inside it’s comforting to be encircled by people that are just as shattered as you are. One girl in particular grabbed my attention. A single conversation with her and I could already tell you exactly which illness she was suffering from. Betrayal. Prognosis: she was simply in love with the wrong guy. Treatment: There was none. Back then I loved psychoanalyzing people, but it never occurred to me that I was just too scared to face my own sick and twisted world.

I don’t quite recall when the feeling started to fade, when I realized I should have made some better friends, and started hanging out at better bars, with much more fascinating people. When I stopped going on meaningless dates with all sorts of toxic men, who never appreciated me much anyway, yet the attention, dare I say, was thrilling. I guess you could say that my mind started to wander elsewhere after my nineteenth birthday. Be it the numerous vodka and cranberry drinks I slurped down, or my own insecurities, but I decided to call a number I have been dreading to delete for a long time. He picked up on the first ring and I only asked him “Why?” Why did he decide to end such a beautiful chapter? We were almost at the two year mark, and I had fooled myself into believing that this was the guy I was going to marry. And as I was talking, or more like babbling, it hit me. Something I was too blind to see, that the prognosis of my illness was as clear as day: I simply had stopped being loved. And at that point, I didn’t love him anymore, either. So it was the best birthday present I could have asked for, finally being told the truth.

It was only then when I really started to see the cracks I’ve been hiding for years. It could be seen from a mile off. Especially back when I was still in high school. I was at some charity event my boyfriend back then was hosting. It was all black tie and no drinks for my seventeen year old self. I felt so out of place, only in the presence of older post graduate students. I remember sitting outside, not bothered to mingle. His friends already didn’t like me. Apparently I was too young, uncultured, not woke enough. Some would even say “stupid.” So they smiled to my face but talked behind my back. Of course I knew this, but rather than confronting them, I tried even harder to get them to like me. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. So I was on the icy steps leading up to the party, teary eyed, in the cold air – alone. The applause from inside was ringing in my ears, and that’s when we had our first fight.

The thing about people is, you outgrow them. This was the case for my previous boyfriend, and afterwards the case of my university friends. Taking shots after shots with people who didn’t really care about me, started to feel less and less invigorating. It could have been the sleeping on the floor or waking up with hangovers and having to go to class, but mostly I felt unwanted. So one day I left. I packed all my belongings in a box, sublet my apartment that I never really slept in, and moved back home, thirty minutes from campus. My parents were happy to have me, and I was still attending classes. After that I started losing myself in literature, wandering through the pages of my favorite books. Until one day, someone reminded me that life is better worth living. And so, I did.

Some days it’ll be better. Some days you’ll sing in the car and laugh on the sidewalk even when it’s storming. You’ll see the glow on the pavement, in a stranger’s smile as they pass by, you’ll feel it. Some days you won’t. And when those days shorten into moments, when the trip becomes too long, and the road seems so endless, all you’ll have left is the reminder of how wonderful it was.

That’s probably the cruelty of it all.