I Can Be a Better You

by Tarryn Fisher

Leaders get burned for having strong opinions.

Life is a great big thing and you can’t let people ruin it for you.”

A woman’s heart was an awful curse. She’d take him back, but probably remind him of his failure for the rest of his life. That was the nature of forgiveness. It came with a price.

Sleep was always an issue for me. I had so many things to digest, contemplate about my day. Sometimes I replayed something that happened over and over until I thought I’d go mad. My mind never shut off, and I woke up early each morning with new worries.

What was more anyway? A relationship? A child? Nights at home watching our favorite shows on television? I had more. I wanted the extra.

What is love anyway? Most of us had no fucking clue because our parents gave us shit examples of it: prude, nonverbal, stiff; or on the opposite end of the spectrum: chaotic, uncommitted, inconsistent. Or maybe just divorced. So, we flounced around in adulthood, taking notes from romantic comedies … or porn.

Love was whatever you decided it was, and if you’d had a narrow window to peek through, you were really fucked.

Women told a story with their eyes. And if you watched closely enough you could translate: the shimmer, or the blank deadness, the slow blinks, and the fast ones. A story … a screen of emotion. A person’s eyes rubbed you the right way, or the wrong way.

When I inquired as to the purpose of suffering, they’d say the same thing: because people are flawed and nothing is fair.