I am on the train with my crush, a waitress I met at my favourite café. She agreed to have a chat with me, but she leaves early, telling me she has something on. She doesn’t seem to be all that interested in spending time with me.
My life rewinds fifteen years to when I was in high school and my only group of friends has broken up. I speak with Jess, who had been distancing herself from our group for a while before things blew up between me and Grace and Fran, no longer hanging out with us.
“What are you doing at recess and lunch time these days?” I ask her.
She tells me she’s started hanging out with another group of girls. While Grace had always been considered her best friend, she actually felt closer to these girls. Unlike Grace, these girls wanted to see her “shine”. She was tired of Fran and Grace’s immaturity.
I run into Fran, who was my best friend before she hated me for quitting our debating team due to my social anxiety. I didn’t have her wit nor her confidence. For once, we have a civil conversation. We are on a platform at some kind of party, with music going.
I then see Grace sitting alone on a bench. We had started speaking again. I sit down next to her. She tells me I seem different.
“Maybe it’s the music,” I say. “Or maybe it’s because I’ve just spoken with Fran again.”
Grace was an instigator. Instead of trying to mend things between Fran and me, it was like she enjoyed watching us fight. But I still loved her. I reach out my hand and she takes it. We then have a race to the other end of the platform. I wake up.
Trauma can emotionally freeze us at the age it occurred. A part of me never left school. I still long for my old friends, even though they have all, probably, moved on with their lives now. I still wish we could have made things right. I left this school in Year Nine. Amongst all the people who hated me I couldn’t see the people who loved me.
hsphaven 