For the Hope of It All (Merrymount #1)

by Ila Sikorski

There has to be a reason I haven’t had a real relationship since my one boyfriend in my senior year of high school (if you could even call it that). There’s a reason my mom is my best friend and the only person I can list as an emergency contact. It has to be me.

spending my weekends escaping reality with spicy romance books so I don’t have to be alone with my thoughts and scattered take out containers.

Now that I’m an adult, I see the sacrifices she made. She gave up everything to give me this life, and we didn’t need him. Or anyone else, for that matter.

We don’t even share a last name because Mom made sure I took hers when filling out the birth certificate.

Refusing to fuel the girl with daddy issues cliché, I prefer to pretend I don’t care that one of the two people biologically programmed to love me and be there for me decided not to, but it still hurts.

I just think I’ve mastered my role as a sitcom side character in everyone’s life. At some point, being alone just made more sense.

I felt hollow, I felt numb, but I didn’t feel sad. Honestly, I wish I felt sad because it would have been better than emptiness.

I need to unpack. I need to grocery shop. I need a fucking job. But first, I need coffee.

and as sad as it is to admit, I haven’t felt excited about my day-to-day life for… I don’t even know how long.

Some would argue the little moments don’t deserve to be captured in photos for the rest of forever because they’re not as important. But to them, I proudly say, “You’re wrong!” People deserve to see and remember what they looked like and how they felt during the quiet happy just as much as the big happy.

I’m a forgettable person, something I’ve been told and reminded of multiple times.

No one, aside from my mom, has taken the time to get to know me well enough to give me a nickname.

As fun as this night is, as fun as more could be, he’d get bored, he’d forget, he’d get busy, and he would move on. It’s just… how it is.

“Don’t do that with me, Margot.” He’s called me some variation of pixie all night, so the sudden serious change in tone and use of my actual name catches me off guard. “Do what?” I ask. “Make yourself small like that.” “I’m not-” “You are. And what I hate is that I think it’s second nature for you now because those around you have benefited from it for far too long.”

She's loud, but not in an obnoxious way. She loves to plan things, take control, and talk a lot, not because she’s full of herself but because of how much she cares. With caring so much, comes big emotions.

But I’m happy to see Red has a friend who’ll drop anything to be there for her. She’s that person to everyone else. She needs it.”

But what was it like? To be surrounded by so much love and family? To feel so sure there was always a place for you?”

I pretty much threw myself into a downward spiral, something I’m very familiar with.

I feel a small pang in my chest, the one that only makes itself known when I’m caught off guard by a father and daughter together. But, just like every time, it’s quickly replaced with a warming sensation, knowing there’s a little girl out there whose dad loves her very much. I’ll always want that for everyone.

I’ve never been a hugger. I think it comes with the territory of being relatively alone for most of my life

I have a friendship I’ll be able to carry with me wherever I end up. It’s a quiet happy I never allowed myself to long for because it hurt to think something was so fundamentally wrong with me that I couldn’t make the connections with other girls or women that I read about in books or saw in movies.

there. But what now? What happens when you get bored? I’m… I… I don’t know where to go from here.”

But how much else of myself have I thrown into a box and forgotten about? And for what?

It’ll pass. It’ll pass. It’ll pass.

“You see people, Margot. I think you’ve been on the outside looking in for so long that you don’t even realize what you have to offer.

I have waited my whole life to feel like there was someplace or someone out there that felt like home.