The One That Got Away

I made this blog to let out the thoughts and feelings that are too loud to silence. It’s an outlet for my racing mind, for when it gets to be racing, which is rare nowadays, thankfully. But, as it is now, it’s 2:47 AM as I’m writing this and, well… my thoughts are racing.

I’m getting ready to break up with my girlfriend of two months. Not a long time, but honestly it’s the longest relationship I’ve ever had and the thought of doing so is incredibly difficult. I like her. I like hanging out with her. We have a ton in common. I just don’t feel a spark where she deserves a whole-ass bonfire. I want her to be happy and fulfilled, which is why I need to let her go, so she can find somebody who loves her the way she deserves to be loved.

I think about the one that got away a lot (again, something my current girlfriend doesn’t deserve). We went on one date. He was good at holding a conversation where I was bad at it, and we had things in common but not everything, which left room for learning, which was nice. He was cordial, polite, responsible, holy shit a catch. And we just… stopped talking.

I think about what could have been with him a lot. A lot more than I probably should, more than is probably appropriate. I feel like we really could have been something if I had just been better at talking. I keep hoping and praying that he’ll text me again and want to sweep me off my feet. I wonder sometimes if I should text him first, but I’m sure he’s found somebody by now and that kind of behavior would be decidedly uncool. I don’t want to be that person.

I think I might be cursed to be single for the rest of my life.

To a Long Lost Friend

I had a dream about you last night.

We were in school again, this time in college and everything about you was different; you had dyed your waist-length hair blue and had taken on a careless persona, said you were an Instagram influencer now.

But I saw through everything and persevered — we became friends again. We became inseparable again.

It just reminded me how much I miss you.

I know it’s weird that I do. We were friends for one year in high school before going our separate ways because I was dead-set on Running Start and you… weren’t, I guess. You probably stayed in school, did well on your assignments, graduated, and went to college like your parents expected you to.

That’s the thing, though. Did your parents expect anything from you? I always assumed they did from the way you talked about them which was little to not at all. I assumed a lot of things about you from the way you talked about yourself, which was little to not at all. I assumed you were hurt somewhere underneath the jokes and the K-pop and I wanted to help you.

I never got the chance.

It turns out Running Start isn’t all that great. At least not when you don’t put your heart and soul into it. I didn’t. I failed. I got my G.E.D. I often wonder if I had stayed in high school whether or not I would have graduated. But mostly whether or not I would have been better friends with you, and thus more motivated to stay in school rather than sit in the library and draw Pokémon all day, like I did in college.

I’ve had other friend-flings in the past that lasted a year or two and then fizzled out, but the difference is we’re still connected one way or another, and the problem I keep coming back to with you in particular is that I don’t even know if you’re even alive anymore. You could have died and I would have no idea. Nobody would have known to tell me, I wouldn’t have known to attend your funeral, and so now I’m stuck in this limbo of half-grief, of possible grief, where I’m grieving the person I could have known better and didn’t.

I thought I knew you, but I probably really didn’t.

If you’re out there, I do really want to be friends with you again. I have the heart of an elephant that never forgets.

I miss you.

So I'm unemployed again.

I left my old job for a new job that was supposed to be more fulfilling and interesting but it turned out to be very physical and hell on my chronically-ill body so I had to quit.

I could say I wish I hadn't accepted the job when it was offered to me on the spot, I wish I had been more picky, I wish I had done a million and one things differently. But the thing is... I don't.

Lots of things in my life haven't exactly gone the best possible way, and after many things that were entirely my fault and could have been easily avoided that still haunt me to this day, it's easy for my anxiety and my post-traumatic response to wish I could go back in time and change it. Not do the thing. Not say the thing. But they all end in a simple three-word phrase: "Now I know." Now I know not to lie about stupid shit. Now I know to ask for help when I need it. Now I know that I can't work on my feet anymore.

The problem, though, is that I actually hate being unemployed.

When I have nothing to do, nothing to get out of bed for, I usually just... don't. And it makes every day the same. Everything blurs together, and I can only learn so many hobbies to the point of difficulty where I give up before I have nothing left and I'm standing in the middle of this endless plateau with no end in sight.

I keep feeling like I'm on the verge of creating something. Something good. Something big. But my muses are nowhere to be found when I need them the most.

One Big Metaphor

Boots have always tasted weird to me.

Not like some of the people who absolutely love to lick them of their own accord. I've had to, in the past, and it left a sour taste in my mouth.

The Boot in question has kicked my assailant to the curb more than once. It's let me go with a warning before. This is undoubtedly because I am a white woman, which is by far the Boot's most favored on the list of whom it has sworn to protect and serve. It sees me as a small creature, abused and weak, that constantly is in need of help and makes mistakes because it doesn't know better.

The truth is, though, I was going 72 in a 60 because I was late to work and I know that on holidays, the Boot Patrol is much fewer and farther between. I cried on purpose and lied that I was only following traffic because I knew it would let me off easy. And the shitty part is that I was right. I was only fined for going 5 over the speed limit rather than 12.

I am a white woman, and the Boot loves me.

Which is why it leaves such a sour taste in my mouth when it helps me, and other white women like me, and then turns around and stomps out a trans person, or a person of color, or both, just for the sole reason of existing.

And then the Boot gets let off easy, because it is the Boot. It gets off on the plea of, "I felt threatened," and, "Just doing my job, ladies and gentlemen."

Maybe the job is wrong.

Maybe the Boot should be dismantled and repurposed into other types of shoes that might be able to do the job more efficiently and less violently, like running shoes or sandals or loafers.

Black lives matter.

Queer lives matter.

This is not an opinion.

Defund the police.

Please Think. (Alternate title: I'm Too Nice)

On June 11th, 2019, my best friend (a cat) of 11 years passed away from fluid buildup in his heart and lungs. He was my son; my baby. I loved him like a human child. I still cry when I look at the memorial altar I put together for him on my windowsill for too long.

Then, around November, one of the neighbor's "barn cats" (who was really just a domestic cat that was banished to the wild outdoors) started showing up on our porch. He would crawl into my car through the window and make biscuits in my lap after I got home from work.

We had a dog at the time that he was afraid of, but on the day after Christmas, she was gone and the cat came inside.

I named him Ned P. Stark after my favorite Game of Thrones character, with the middle initial P. standing for either Pumpkin or Puddin', depending on your preferences. Later, as he stayed with us for longer and longer periods of time, I noticed different personality traits, like the fact that he didn't like Greenies very much but he would eat them anyway, and the fact that he wasn't very smart, which earned him the secondary name Winnie the Pooh, aka Pooh Bear; the tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff; the bear of very little brain.

The neighbors really only lamented over the fact that they had a rat problem again, and not at the fact that he was gone. After all, the name they had given him was simply Orangecat, and they had told us that he was probably around four years old.

We loved him the way he wanted to be loved. We kept him inside when it was cold and windy and wet out. He slept on my bed almost every night -- my navy blue comforter is still covered in his fur.

All of this to give context to how devastated I had been when, on June 13th, 2020, Ned was taken to the vet very suddenly with a severe thrombosis in his back right leg. Other cats with similar conditions had about a 5% survival rate with constant treatment and medication, and those that did survive never fully regained movement in their legs.

Ned was still an outdoor cat. We couldn't let him live with such a lowered quality of life when the outlook of plain and simple survival was so low. We have coyotes in our woods; he had to be able to run.

So we put him down. We buried him the next day.

That was two days ago.

Last night, at 3:30am, I couldn't sleep because of hallucinations. So I took my antipsychotic, and as I was waiting for it to kick in and thus for me to get sleepy again, I decided to look through the memory card on my camera to see if there was anything I missed or had forgotten about.

There were. In fact, there were quite a few pictures of Ned that I had forgotten I had taken about a month prior. So I fixed them up in Photoshop, and decided to make a return to Facebook to make a little memorial post for him.

I rarely use Facebook anymore. I am formerly an avid poster, but in recent years, I've decided it brought a lot of judgement and negativity into my life. People were pretending to be my friend because they were curious, or just wanted to be entertained by the shitshow that is and always has been my life. It took me until recently to realize that not all attention is good attention, and I would rather be lonely than looked at as a less-than-human piece of performance art.

So, when Bruno Griffiths (an alias for the sake of anonymity), a guy I went to high school with and never spoke to (keep in mind, I was only in high school for two years), sent me a friend request about a year and a half ago, it took me around a month to accept it. I saw it, I just hesitated. Part of me hoped it would go away. Because, not only did I never speak to him, but something about his presence always made me uncomfortable. It definitely was somewhere between the fact that he would cosplay anime characters at school literally every day; the fact that he was a very tall bright red ginger with shoulder-length hair and his voice was very loud, deep, and intimidating; and the fact that the abrasiveness of his personality and the pure intensity of his presence was just plain unsettling to me.

Something I remember about Bruno was that, in high school, he seemed to hover around my general vicinity a lot. It could just be me being paranoid, but I remember him scaring the shit out of me in my freshman year of high school, when I finally decided I hated the friends I was with (which I very much did) and was sitting at a lunch table alone, with no lunch. He crashed into a chair next to me, and said something I can't remember clearly because I was so off-put by this behavior that I got up and left. I think I just wandered around the school campus for a while until class started, but from then on, he seemed to always be in my periphery, and I'm truly not sure if it was intentional. In sophomore year, I had Algebra II with him, and he used to talk endlessly about the anime Death Note and Bleach. Not even necessarily to me, just to anyone. I'm sure now there was probably ADHD or autism in there. That's fine. It didn't make me any less uncomfortable, because I simply don't feel good being around that kind of bombastic and weird energy.

So then, when he sent me a friend request out of the blue a year and a half ago, and his profile picture featured him with cropped short hair and a shirt & tie, I was... weirded out. Understandably, I'm sure. He always made me uncomfortable, from day one. So why would now be any different?

The first tick in the "Too Nice" column goes here, because, after a month of deliberation, I accepted the request. I didn't look at his profile. I thought, What's the worst that could happen?

Things were pretty innocuous for a while; he reacted to some of my posts, and that was about it.

Then I made the memorial post for Ned.

The wound was still very fresh. The dirt was still loose. He left a like on the post.

What he didn't have to do afterward, was leave the "wow" reaction on a picture of my Pikachu cosplay I wore for Halloween one year, a picture in which I look hella cute if I do say so myself, and also a picture which was intended for my actual friends who like Pokemon. That picture has been in my featured photos since featured photos have been a thing on Facebook. Why he didn't notice it until now, I couldn't tell you.

And, what he especially didn't have to do immediately after that, was send me a DM saying, "Hi, what have you been up to?"

Most cis men will probably read that and shrug or scoff. "It's just a friendly message, he didn't even say anything creepy."

Folks who were raised female know it's a Trojan horse. A way to get into your mental space and destroy it by draining your energy. They usually don't do it on purpose. But the context, the behavior directly beforehand, is the sneeze from the soldier inside. These messages, if you respond, will almost always end in them asking you out, or asking to fuck, or sending an unsolicited dick pic. Or, almost even worse than all of those, they'll shower you with slimy compliments about your physical appearance and decorate them with nasty emojis.

It didn't help that I was still mourning.

It also didn't help that I was in the midst of being gnawed on by the voracious jaws of depression.

The second tick in the "Too Nice" column comes with the fact that I didn't immediately block him. Because I thought of what my dad would say. My dad, who's a cis man, and as much of an ally as he tries to be, will never truly understand. His imaginary advice of, "Give him a chance, he's only being friendly," echoed through my mind as I sat on the notification, not daring to open it and show him that I read it, thus opening the floodgates to "Hello?" and "fucking bitch" that were most likely to follow later, when he saw that I left his message unanswered.

I deliberated some more. I wrung my hands. I worried for six hours about what he would say, whether "he" took the form of my father or Bruno.

I complained to a female friend of mine, one of my best friends, over chat, but she didn't seem to be around. So I posted to my Snapchat story, knowing that six out of seven of my friends on Snapchat are women and might offer up advice. (The seventh is a man and truly does not care.)

A different one of my best friends answered the call. They gave me a few pieces of very sage advice, which, although strangely enough coming from Snapchat messages, immediately changed my way of thinking.

One of those things was, "'Mean' is part of a bullshit politeness contract we all sign in this life that we are not obligated to follow."

It's true. I'm going to use plain binary language here, but I think women especially are brought up to believe that they are automatically everyone's caretaker, and that others' feelings come before their own. They are brought up to believe that if a man's feelings get put on hold so that she can take care of herself first, it then becomes her fault if and when he does something drastic, because men of course can't control themselves or what they do in response to negative emotions. This is a damaging image for both parties; women are seen as unbreakable emotional load-bearers which is exhausting on the daily, while men are degraded as weak, simplistic animals. Plus, it's interesting to me to think about, in this light, the fact that there has been so much propaganda in relatively recent history, especially pre-1920, that women are the ones that are weak, when the unspoken expectation seems to be the other way around.

The other thing my friend said was, "Stop caring about hurting the feelings of those that didn't care about yours to begin with."

This is also true, but I think it's going to be even harder for me to unlearn this.

My dad -- and yes, it always goes back to my dad, go figure -- constantly tells me, particularly while we are amidst the throws of the Black Lives Matter movement, that he is glad that he raised me to have empathy and to care about other human beings. Yes, I agree that is a good thing... to a certain extent. I think it is possible to have too much empathy, however, and I often feel like I do, including toward people who could not give less of a shit about how I feel. Bruno could have led with expressing sympathy for my loss. But he didn't; he was too distracted by how hot I looked in plush yellow ears, red lipstick, and a tank top. He didn't care. No matter which way that conversation could have gone had I responded, whether it was friendly or not, the fact that I had so much of a feeling that it was going to end with him demanding material to jack off to was, in and of itself, a red flag.

When I was thirteen, would I have given the grown men in the giant black pickup truck with the fuck-you back-woods headlights the benefit of the doubt as they blocked traffic to crawl alongside me and yell at me to take off my panties because they wanted to see how fat my pussy was?

Probably not.

It really doesn't matter if I was just being paranoid. Sometimes, "innocent until proven guilty" will get you caught in a really bad situation with someone who's incredibly guilty. In this era, with the people I've seen and talked to and witnessed in my life, it's better to be unsparing with whom you block, for your own safety and emotional well-being.

I blocked Bruno without guilt.

When Things Change

Things have been... weird lately.

I hear it's not just me, but I can't verify how other people feel about their lives, I can only say for sure that I feel really weird.

I guess I just didn't know that growing up happened in such sudden chunks.

I've wanted to make YouTube videos since I was 11 years old, and my best friend and I would make little videos on her flip camera to post. It was fun, I loved stretching my creative muscles (even though they were incredibly tiny at the time), and I loved making my friend and myself laugh even if we didn't make anybody else laugh. It was a gratifying feeling.

I was a sensitive child, and one hate comment destroyed that channel. Which is honestly probably for the best at this point. We didn't think a lot of things through before posting them, and I'm sure one of us would have said something we regretted later on.

I tried again later. I got way into Let's Players like Markiplier and Jacksepticeye and they inspired me to try and make my own. I maintain that they were very fun to record, but the problem lied in three facts: one, that I was garbage at editing; two, that I didn't have any friends who could edit for me; and three, I was too poor to afford to pay somebody to edit for me.

Oh lord how I tried though. I put up a valiant effort for about five years, totaling 11 videos, before giving up just a few weeks ago.

Yeah, that recent.

I just had a realization though. That kind of "job" is extremely luck-based. You don't get paid for anything you do until you reach a certain threshold of views, subscribers, etc. And that only happens if you have shareable content, i.e., something that somebody will watch and then feel the need to tell their friends about.

Whether or not your content is shareable is a code and an algorithm that nobody has been able to crack. The answer lies somewhere within the mysteries of human nature, and I don't think anybody will be able to find it for that reason. Which I'm okay with really. I think knowing would take the fun out of it and then people wouldn't be making videos that they enjoy for fun anymore.

Anyway, the realization hit me, that there's such a slim chance of me being able to make YouTube into a career, that hanging my entire life on it is irresponsible. I don't want to live with my parents and work retail for my entire life. I want independence, I want autonomy, and I want to be a grown up at some point, like, relatively soon.

I want to be a teacher.

I want to be a first grade teacher; an age where the kids aren't smart enough to bully me, nor are they smart enough to know more than me about any subject I can teach. First grade kids are just old enough to be able to form coherent sentences, but inexperienced enough to not have had society tell them their amazingly creative ideas are dumb because they're impractical.

It's what I wish I could be.

My Curse

I turned 22 years old today (I'm posting this at midnight on October 1st, so technically yesterday). In my entire life, I have had 18 good birthdays. I mean, it's still roughly 82%, which is a B. Passing. Not terrible.

However, it's a significant number because I don't generally have birthday parties. Not that I remember, at least. I know I had one for my first birthday and my fifth birthday, but the rest were just family...

Aside from the bad ones.


~*~

The first one was when I was turning 11, and I wanted a pirate-themed birthday party. I had just discovered Evite (which, if you're not familiar, is a service that will send event invitations via email), and I invited all six of my friends. Pirate costume was encouraged, enthusiasm required. The day came and I was dressed all-out in my eyepatch and fake sword.

I waited for my friends to arrive.

Ten minutes passed. One friend showed up, not in costume. I don't even think she brought a present.

An hour passed. She pet my cat. Nobody else came. We played badminton in the backyard for a while, and then I watched her play Nintendogs until her parents came to pick her up.


~*~

The second was shitty due to personal reasons which I will not divulge, but the third was just last year, my 21st birthday. 21 is a milestone, big and exciting; the last of your legal freedoms are granted to you and you can practically go anywhere you want. So, my stepmother Raechelle told me it was important that we celebrated raucously.

I responded by telling her sure, but I don't want to plan it, because a) I prefer to be surprised, and b) the last time I tried to plan something for myself, it was... well. See above.

So she, the planner that she is, got fire in her eyes as she planned two different birthday parties for me.

My birthday fell on a Sunday that year. I had an office job at the time, which required me to work Monday through Friday, and I also had to get there supremely early. Therefore, I couldn't get ridiculously off-the-shits drunk on my actual birthday, which Raechelle decided was perfect, because she could have a "family-friendly" night which my grandmother could attend while my grandfather could lecture me on the importance of a good whiskey, and I could go to work in the morning. The following Saturday was when we were really going to party, and a more selective (albeit still large) group of people were invited.

I was not kept in the loop with the planning process up until the day of, and I was perfectly okay with that.

Sunday's party was okay. Quite a few people came, some brought gifts (mostly alcohol) or a card, but it was really just my parents' friends. And I realized this fully, when my father, in his big booming voice, announced that I was about to be opening gifts, and... nobody watched. Same with the cake. People stopped to sing as a courtesy, but after the song was over, they just went back to whatever they were doing.

They weren't there for me, they were there because they were invited by my parents, who are party people. Any excuse for a party at their house, right?

I ended up going home at about 9:30, getting home at 11 since I lived in a different city at the time, going to sleep, and waking up in the morning completely refreshed.

Eventually Saturday came, and I was PUMPED. I had told Raechelle that I wanted the experience of clubbing, and she said she would provide. I wanted to get drunk. But most importantly, I wanted to share the experience with my friends.

I got to my parents' house, where Raechelle and I got ready together, and I asked her where we were going, to which she answered a lounge a few cities over, which was having an 80s & 90s dance night.

Sweet, sounds good to me, but I was surprised with the decision to have it on this side of the water. I was concerned about my friends, most of which were on the other side of the water, losing their way or not being able to make it.

I dared to ask how many people were coming.

Besides us, the answer was three.

3.

Out of an invite list of 20.

I internalized the information and let it sit in an attempt to convince myself that the friends that weren't coming weren't real friends anyway. I didn't cry.

Until I was four drinks in. Especially because I was on a mood stabilizer, and those tend to exacerbate the effects of alcohol. Also because I hadn't had a whole lot to eat. Also because I was drinking very very fast.

Halfway through my fifth drink, I ended up crying on the floor of the bathroom after throwing up, both in the toilet and the sink.

The entire near-hour-long drive home, one of the friends that came was cradling my head in the backseat as I told her how much I loved her, and thanked her for coming when nobody else wanted to, and apologized for being such a handful, all while my head was inside a bag.

That time, I did not wake up in the morning feeling completely refreshed. But it didn't matter, because it was a Sunday.

~*~

This brings us to the present day. Or at least, the present day of two months ago, leading up to today. My 22nd birthday.

I wanted to have brunch for my birthday. There was a cute little tea house in the town that I lived in now that I had moved home with my parents, and I had never been there but I wanted to have Sunday brunch for the special occasion of my birthday, I just... didn't know who to invite.

I didn't have any friends.

There was one I talked to almost daily, but she lived in New Jersey. There was one I loved dearly, but they lived in Chicago. All my other friends really just... weren't friends anymore.

Within a month, I got close with a couple of my coworkers (not forcefully of course, just through the natural flow of things), so I posed the idea to one of them after having told her my history of nobody coming to my birthday parties, dipping my toes in the water after having been scalded before. She said she would absolutely love to go.

I extended the hypothetical question to another one of my coworker friends, and she also said she would love to go.

On top of that, a childhood friend of mine (coincidentally, one of the ones that didn't show up to my 11th birthday party) had been wanting to get together and see me again after not having spoken since fifth grade.

So I made reservations.

I told these three people about it (as well as Raechelle, because at this point she's the one constant that never bails on me in these situations) that I made reservations, that they were invited, and that I was excited for it.

My coworkers were enthusiastic and said they would be there. They both even requested that weekend off.

The day (yesterday) rolled around and I was so psyched. I couldn't sleep so I woke up early and got dressed and did my makeup and hair, and I looked so incredibly cute.

On the way there, I had a pang of what was almost a despondent premonition. I told Raechelle my biggest fear, which was that this was going to be another one of those situations where nobody showed up.

She told me not to worry about it.

We got there pretty early and were seated at our reserved table. I ordered coffee, she got a mimosa.

We sat, and we talked.

Fifteen minutes after, nobody was there. Raechelle asked if I wanted her to call in some of her friends to take their places. Choking back hard tears, I said I was going to give them fifteen more minutes.

Those minutes passed, I had finished my coffee, and I told Raechelle I was going to go get food from the buffet. She offered again to call in reinforcements, and I conceded, but just one in particular.

The one in particular was great, and she even threw together a last-minute gift for me. The food was delicious. Afterward, I did a little light shopping with Raechelle and we had a good time.

But the entire time, the shadow of despair hung over my head, behind my eyes, and in my throat: Nobody came to your birthday party.

Again.

We arrived home, and I cried, hard. For about an hour and a half.

Well, at least that wasn't my actual birthday. I still had the opportunity to have a good day the next day, right?

I come downstairs this morning and my dad greets me by offering to take me out to lunch.

Awesome! Sounds great! It really was, too. I love my father, it was great food, and it was a great time. We look outside and it's a beautiful day, and he mentions that with the leaves changing colors it's a great time to get some good nature shots for my photography portfolio. I agree.

I drop him off at home, grab my camera and Discovery pass which allows me access to national parks, and go. But first I have a couple of things that I want to shop for.

I go, and I do. I don't really find them, but I find some other stuff that I buy even though I don't particularly need them, but they're cheap and they're fun and retail therapy is 100% real.

I realize I've been shopping for two and a half hours, and the sun is starting to set. If I want some good sunset pictures, I need to go to the park now.

I've never been to this park, so I get kind of lost getting there, and I'm trying to scream at my phone to get it to hear me because it's connected to the Bluetooth in my car, just so that it can take me to the damn park, but I do eventually get there.

I get out, go down the trail for a few minutes, and then I see a beautiful scene, the light filtering through the trees just so, illuminating the moss with the orange glow of dusk. I take out my camera, and...

No memory card inserted.

I left my fucking CF card at home.

In the middle of a quiet, serene nature trail, I curse loudly.

I storm off back to my car, pissed off because now, no matter what I do, I'm going to be too late getting back to have any sunlight left at all, so I'm just not going to be able to take pictures today, and I hauled my big-ass camera and my bulky-ass camera bag all the way out here for no reason. Not only that, but this is absolutely not the first time this has happened, and I forget my CF card at home all the time. So, I resolve to go to Staples to get another one.

After wrestling with my phone navigation again to get out of there, I do eventually make it to Staples. I find a new notebook. I find a new computer mouse. I sit in a couple of chairs. I find the memory section, and...

All they have is micro-SD cards.

Dammit.

Okay, so I check out, and go to Walmart. I look at the Halloween stuff. I... don't really want to be in here because it smells like piss and plastic as is generally the case with Walmart, so I head to the electronics section, and after checking the price on a Nintendo Switch, I look at the memory section.

Nothing.

Camera section? ...Micro-SD cards.

Nothing.

What the shit? Why does nobody sell CF cards? I know I can buy them online but I don't want to have to.

On my way home I stop at the grocery store to get a jug of water, and as I'm checking out, I throw in a Hershey bar. Because it's my birthday, dammit.

I go home. It's 5:45 pm. I'm hungry, I want to eat dinner.

I smell tater tots in the oven. That's good at least; potatoes in any form are welcome in my book.

Chicken burgers are set up on the counter to be built however one wishes, so I go to get the lettuce out of the fridge, and...

Ew. It's all mushy and red. Gross.

So just mustard then? I try to squeeze it out onto my burger but it does that bottle-fart thing, so I know we're out.

So... just... dijon mustard then... sigh.

Then Raechelle wishes me a happy birthday (she just got home from work and therefore has not seen me all day), and then I realize something.

"There's no cake," I say quietly.

Raechelle realizes this as well as I say it. "Oh, Kayleigh, I'm so sorry," is almost out of her mouth when I grab my keys and head out again.

Because I have to do everything myself, apparently.

I get the quarter sheet chocolate fudge cake (no writing, because I want it RIGHT NOW), edible chocolate number candles (two 2s), and two entire buckets of ice cream, because fuck you, and fuck everything, and fuck this entire day, this entire birthday, just fuck it.

I ate a cold chicken burger and tater tots with nothing but dijon mustard, followed it up with cake & ice cream, and then watched baby puppies on Animal Planet before retiring to my bedroom early.

~*~

I want to make it completely clear, it was not my parents' fault that this year's birthday was the way that it was. They, as well as my online friends, are a beacon of positivity in the shallow-yet-still-incredibly-hurtful emotional hardships I've dealt with this past couple of days. I love you guys.

I also know that -- god forbid -- things could be a lot worse.

I just don't know what lesson I'm supposed to be learning. Don't have friends? Don't have birthday parties?

Really, the one that comes out of everything, and the thing that seems to relate to a lot of my life, is to rely on nobody but yourself. Because you're the only person who's always going to show up to your birthday parties.