Let's Pretend This Will Work

by Maddie Dawson

I can’t seem to help myself. Chaos follows me around. I stammer at meetings. I laugh too loudly. When I try to make small talk, I tell jokes that no one thinks are funny. None of those qualities seem desirable in any way. But for some reason he chose me.

I don’t want to die, but I’d love to see the look on his face when it happens.

Nobody smiles at me, nobody says thank you, but they also don’t kick me out. So there’s that.

This whole thing between him and me—all these laughs and dinners and relationship-guru stuff—this is just an interlude, the stuff of a temporary friendship, the kind of happy bantering you have with coworkers. Even the gazing into each other’s eyes stuff, the private jokes. Even those moments when we accidentally brush against each other,

I know he feels the same electricity that I do, but it’s not going to turn into anything.

They’re a family. That’s what hits me. They are a complete unit, needing nothing else in the whole world. This scene could be in a sappy movie about a family that’s been struck by tragedy, and yet here they are—surviving, all four of them.

I am not loved. I am not loved. I am not even seen.

when that first love comes along, it brings with it a huge thunderclap of feeling—something so amazing that we get overwhelmed with it. And that it’s tempting to think that it’s the only love there ever could be in the world. But then it ends. Most of the time it ends. And then, a long time later, we look back and see that that whole experience of love was just a little kiddie pool we were paddling around in. And that actually a really huge ocean awaits us.”

“Oh, we’re all scared of the ocean. Every single one of us.

I realize I’ve never wanted anybody more.

“If you’re going to freak out over every little apparent setback in your life, you’re not going to enjoy life as much as you could be,” she says and actually laughs. “How about you just try to remember that it’s all going to work out, and don’t sweat the details. Just sit back and be curious, why don’t you?”

“Marcus. Go down the slide now. Don’t just stand there defying gravity. Gravity always wins, and you’re making my friend Judith nervous.”

She has the institution of family, God, the American Way, and phonics behind her.

I tell you, she’s a woman who makes me understand violence.

“If family is a bunch of people who get to control you and tell you how to make a living and how to raise your kid and when to eat and when to sleep, then I’m glad I don’t have one. I always thought family was supposed to be the people who love you and want the best for you because it’s what you want. If you ask me, by that definition, family is this daycare.”

“But that’s the way family gets made,” I say. “You mush people all together, and it turns out to be interesting and exciting . . . and sometimes real love and feeling bloom right there in front of you.”

But this is just what being in a relationship means. Everybody knows this. It takes patience and sacrifice. You feel misunderstood sometimes. You feel alone even when you’re with the person who means the most to you. You just smile, and you go on. It’s life. And life has tradeoffs.