Mayra

by Nicky Gonzalez

On days that will be documented, no one feels adequate in their own skin. Whoever we are, wherever we’re going, we figure our opposites would be better suited.

Even then, I understood that our friendship was a delicate animal. Someone finally thought I was cool, and the things that faith requires—earnestness, obedience—would have shattered the image I’d accidentally cultivated.

If you were to ask my mother, it was entirely Mayra’s fault that I’d grown up at all.

As usual, I was getting worked up over nothing. I kicked myself for having a comfort zone the size of a closet.

I often wonder what’s wrong with me.

Same!!!

“But sometimes it’s hard to realize you’re having a hard time. In the moment you convince yourself you’re fine, and then you look back and realize you were barely staying afloat.”

If I stayed here long enough and did this frequently enough, I might become more like the unbothered, fearless person I wanted to be.

but I remember thinking anyone can be a good actor when they’re playing themselves.

Talking to myself functioned for me the way writing does for some people, as a kind of release. I’m sure my mother never overheard me because, if she had, she’d have called an exorcist.

“This is vacation, Ingrid. You follow your bliss.”

In the tasteful, cozy clutter of that dining room, he belonged so completely, he could have been one of the barrel-backed chairs at the dinner table, one of the floral watercolors on the wall.

Languages are good. The more words you have for something, the closer you can get to the heart of it.”

I froze with anger each time I remembered the conversation. Anger at Mayra, but also at myself. How many times had I said the wrong thing? And what was the one thing that had finally driven her away?

Since adolescence, my mind had been a blender filled with gripes and grudges and insecurities and fears.

Also same!!!

“It’s funny,” Mayra said, “to see a friend for the first time in so long and see exactly how they’ve changed. And exactly how they haven’t.”

“A little mimicry is necessary sometimes. For survival,”

What a stupid way to die: sick full of yogurt, wearing knockoff Keds.

People only get less strange as they grow up and life comes down like a hammer to bend them into shape.

I wondered what it did to a person, not being allowed a secret.

You didn’t have to see something with your own eyes to know it existed. You weren’t a better person just because you left a life behind.

Was I happy? Sometimes. I understood, at least, that my malaise would never be cured by a change of setting.

My problem is that if I can’t be perfect, I hardly think I should exist at all.

“Earlier, at dinner,” I said, “I was so defensive. You know who you are. Who am I to tell you?” “I don’t know. Maybe I need to be told,” she said.

Note to self: Be bold. Don’t live like you lived today because that’s not living. Don’t let every moment be in hesitation. Don’t let life become one long bated breath or you’ll regret it.

Funny how quickly the body forgets pain, though when you’re in its grip, nothing exists but the present.

If we loved something, we engulfed it.

It was easier to speak a simple truth in the dark.

They all look the same, I want to ask them: Haven’t you ever wanted to transcend your flimsy body? Haven’t you wished to crack open beside someone and leak into the same pool?

Time was a membrane that dissolved long ago, leaving everything it contained to roil and tumble together.