Looking around, but not making eye contact with anyone, I sense the way crowds open to let me through as if I’m some animal carrying a contagious disease. Or maybe it’s because they just want to get a better look at my ass in my short plaid skirt. Same difference if you ask me because I don’t mind either—I enjoy both.
There are no girlfriends waiting for me by my locker with a ready smile on their faces and today’s gossip on the tips of their tongues. No best friend about to link her arm with mine as we make our way to first period English while chatting about our weekend and boys. There’s no one … at least no one that counts.
Growing up in a home with no siblings and self-absorbed parents was a lonely way to live life for a child. However, loneliness taught me to be comfortable being alone … or maybe it just hardened me?
It was the same way in school, too—it still is. I have no friends. It all goes back to the day I found out the reason no one wanted to be friends with me.
We were only nine years old.
It was lunchtime on a cool spring day. The sun was warm on my skin, but the air still sent a chill running through my body. I was making my way to an empty bench far away from the playground when I saw Paige and her posse approaching me. It was too late to avoid them. I remember lowering my eyes to the ground, pretending that I didn’t see them and hoping to get them to ignore me, but I wasn’t that lucky. As soon as I was close enough, I heard Paige, who was flawless, say to her friends, “She’s so fat. I wonder if she eats in her sleep.” There was snickering and then someone added, “Did you know that her mom left her and her dad for another man when she was like two years old but then came back? My mom told me to never be friends with her because her mom steals daddies, and her dad is always drunk.”
I felt my heart skip a beat as my chest contracted with pain and tears blurred my eyes. With each word, they killed me a little bit more. Then Paige added, “Oh yeah, I heard my mom talking to my daddy about it. She also said that her dad came to a meeting with scratches all over his neck and face and smelling like alcohol.” She paused. “Anyway, she told me to never be friends with her. I wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to worry because I would never be friends with a girl who looks like a fat duck.”
They burst out laughing, and when they saw me stop and stare at them as tears fell down my cheeks, they began to laugh louder and harder until their cruel delight was all I could hear.
I began to run away from them as fast as I could, but the ringing in my ears and the ache in my chest wouldn’t stop. Their harsh words wouldn’t let me escape my ugly reality.
It all made sense after that. Hearing them talk had brought back memories of all the crying, fighting and yelling. When she mentioned my dad’s wounds, it reminded me of that night, and the horror I’d felt seeing my parents in one of the lowest points in their marriage. I remembered the courage it took that little girl, not even eight years old, to stand between them, and beg them to stop fighting and love each other, just as she loved them both. The tears streamed down her face, and her voice shook with pain.
Suddenly, I understood why their parents wouldn’t allow them to come whenever I invited the pretty and popular girls for sleepovers. I understood why my mother, who was the prettiest amongst all the moms, had no friends. And I understood why my classmates’ fathers always seemed to stare at her like she was something shiny and beautiful to look at. I understood why my nanny, the only person who truly loved me and didn’t find me an annoyance, said that my father had been a good man, a brilliant man. A man who, when left with nothing, battled ghosts with the only weapons available to him—hatred and alcohol.
That day, with Paige’s cruel words still spinning in my head like a tornado, leaving total wreckage in their wake, I grew up and kissed my childhood good-bye.
After that day, I discovered one indelible truth. I discovered that love wasn’t everything that mattered in life. It was an emotion that not many had the luxury of feeling without any pain attached to it.
Many say that love will set you free, but I disagree … love is a cage, a very painful one; its gilded bars made with yearning, heartache, and unfulfilled dreams. And the moment I realized that love wasn’t necessary to one’s survival I became free. No one would have the power to hurt me again.
That realization set me free.
If love had been enough, the love I had given my parents would have been enough for them. Enough for them to want to love me back. Enough for them to want to give our family a chance. Just enough.
But you know what? You can wish in one hand and shit in the other.