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With any luck, she’ll get my laptop when they divvy up my meager belongings.
Not to say there’s anything…bad on there. Just… Just a lot of love stories at various stages of completion, at various levels of grammatical correctness, and with various amounts of trauma dumping.
Alana will see the story where the main character’s sister abandons her to go off into the world and live her life as Wow, Brittny loved me. My parents will see the story where the main character struggles with how her parents have made her feel suffocated and unworthy as disrespect—a final insult, proof I really was a horrible and ungrateful daughter. After all, wouldn’t I be alive right now if only I’d listened to them? If only they were a little more suffocating? If only they made it impossible for me to leave?
Blinking back tears, I rediscover the woods, the quiet, the scent of spring bursting to life. Sun scatters across the brush, brightening the green hues of new life and rebirth.
I slip my headphones down around my neck, remember I am still alive right now, and let wraith-like calm seep into my bones.
Pro: I love Mountain Vale. Having the sprawling forest that surrounds the town accessible from my backyard brings so much more peace than I know how to describe. It’s private. Safe. Even if my brain runs away with gruesome tales of woodland demise, I prefer the natural selection of a bear attack to the if you don’t get in and out of this store in two minutes, you will be kidnapped and sold. The bleak stories that invaded my head in the city centered around evil people making evil choices to hurt others.
The concrete jungle with its high-rise buildings, congested streets, and stacks of apartments crowded with strangers didn’t suit me at all.
Pro: I am a homeowner. Sure, I’m still making payments, but I was at least smart enough to house-hunt under an assumption of this is where I will raise a little family with the person I love. It’s my dream home. In my dream quiet town. All I need now is some dream guy to appear and sweep me off my feet like all the guys in my cheesy stories.
Con: my job is very demanding of my mental, emotional, and physical energy… The past three months have made it clear that being an assistant is hard.
Pro! I have a job. I can make my house payments. Buy food. Get a hummingbird feeder.
Actually, I should do that right now. By the time hummingbirds start showing up, I’ll be over Noah. I’ll be a new woman. They’ll peer in the windows at me and say wow, look at that, that right there is a well-adjusted human. And I will be a well-adjusted, mature, stable adult human. I will not be crying into a carton of ice cream and watching whatever heart-wrenching anime movie Alana has sent to help provide me a little perspective.
Honestly, what is up with my sister? In what universe does my being sad warrant her inflicting further emotional damage?
You’re right, A. At least I’ve not been trying to date a weird forest spirit thing who dies if touched by another living being. How silly of me to think my problems could ever compare?
Note to self: if the music video makes you cry, don’t watch the movie.
Also, never trust your sister. She is one of those people who say this destroyed me, enjoy. And I know this. I really do. We shared a room up until the moment she forged her own path as a house-hopping pet sitter. But I keep forgetting.
I miss her.
I wish I could drop everything and stay with her until I feel better. It could take weeks. Or months. Possibly years.
If only she had a house, she’d put a sign on her basement door that says Brittny’s Room, please knock, and I’d live there with her forever, watching anime, hugging borderline-inappropriate body pillows, and crying because real men aren’t half as decent as even the most toxic male leads.
Con: even if it were possible, living with my sister is a bad idea. In Alana’s opinion, getting over one mistake means making a bigger one.
As long as her schemes don’t involve arson, isn’t that lovely?
I envy how well she’s conditioned our parents’ opinions of her. She saw our mother’s stifling expectations and shunned the very concept of perfection. For Alana, passing with C’s was amazing. For Alana, every day she’s not in prison is a grand win.
For Brittny, honor roll wasn’t enough so long as there was a high honor roll to achieve. For Brittny, perfect is never perfect enough.
Alana just has to avoid arson.
But the one time Brittny tries to do something on her own, something she thought would make her feel whole and loved and right for the first time in her life, it is arson.
It’s prison.
It’s drugs and alcohol and living in a cardboard box on main street.
The tears I’ve been holding back trace down my cheeks as the sheer weight of this mistake settles on my shoulders.
I am alone in a different state, hours away from anyone who can give me a hug. Overworked. Underpaid. Pretending I grew up in an environment that let me have responsibility instead of making me feel like I couldn’t do even the simplest things correctly on my own.
This is a disaster.
And I’m going to fix it with thirteen hummingbird feeders.
