Eventown

by Corey Ann Haydu

Still, it’s hard to be from Before when you are in Now.

I am angry at all of them with their tiny, almost-invisible dismissals and the not-so-tiny ways they tell us that they want everything to go back to the way it was before, not because they want us to be less sad, but because they want their own lives to be easier.

Sometimes I think feelings are bigger than people. More powerful. They make people do things that can’t be undone. I used to think feelings were part of a person, but lately I’ve been thinking they are separate beings, that they come like aliens and invade people’s bodies and cause destruction.

It’s uncomfortable, like the whole world tilted just the tiniest bit to the right and gravity and all the other laws of the universe aren’t working quite right anymore. The world did tilt, I guess. We almost fell off the edge, I think.

“Being weird is the same as being brave,” I’d been told.

“It’ll be okay, girls,” Dad says. That’s what he says all the time now, about things that are most definitely not okay. Dad seems to think that if he says things will be okay, we’ll suddenly feel better. We try to make that be true, but it really, really isn’t.

She sounds the tiniest bit annoyed to be explaining something to me, and I wonder why I can’t seem to stop myself from asking questions. It seems like everyone would be happier with me if I stopped.

It’s hard, though, to be exactly what everyone else wants me to be.

And the people here—they’re not like people anywhere else, either. They smile more and they have this ease—like they know how life’s supposed to go, like they know how to be. I never feel quite like I know how to be.

I want to be what Mom wants me to be, so I try to nod and smile, too, but it hurts a little. It feels a little like pretending.

I want to fit in with them and feel all the same things in all the same moments. It would be less lonely to feel the same way as the people I love most.

She wants there to be a solution to the way we hurt.

But the stories aren’t there. All that’s left is the empty feeling of missing something I once knew. All that’s left is the way my heart beats in anger at the not-knowing, at the missing.

The town is an explosion of color and growth and normal things made strange and pretty things made wild and perfect things made unpredictable. It’s sort of a wonderland.

There’s an ache in all of us, I think, where we wish we’d talked more about how hard it all was. And the ache will make us talk more now about the things that hurt or confuse or twist us up inside. But an ache isn’t the same thing as guilt. An ache doesn’t mean we were bad sisters or parents or people. An ache is just an ache: something that settles into your heart and reminds you that love is there even if the person you love isn’t.

Feelings cross all over each other. There can’t just be one gold button for joy and one for grief and one for fear. Sometimes you’re all of those things at once. Sometimes you’re scared of being sad, or sad about feeling happy. Sometimes you’re nervous about something you love or embarrassed by everything stirring around inside you. Sometimes you love the way a place has rosebushes and perfect sunsets but are scared of the way those things make you feel. Sometimes you wish you could forget, but you’re actually happier when you remember. Sometimes you are angry with your parents but hopeful that it won’t last forever.

But memory is like that, I guess. Not quite the same as it was when it was alive and happening. Delicate. Something you have to care for, tend to, love gently, and hang on to as hard as you can.

And when the cake’s out of the oven, it’s golden brown and smells a little like a garden. I have to wait, again, before putting the frosting on. The waiting is hard. I want everything to be delicious all at once. I want to skip over the hard parts, the boring parts, the lonely and sad and angry parts. But if I do that, the cake won’t be good. It won’t be right. So I wait. Even though it’s uncomfortable and too hot in the kitchen. Even though I don’t feel like waiting for the good part.