Only Mostly Devastated

by Sophie Gonzales

“Sometimes we only get to be friends for a little while. That’s why you’ve always gotta make it count, right?”

Just because it’s finally occurred to him that you’ve been existing in his vicinity for the past couple weeks does not erase his doucheyness. And it is most certainly not a marriage proposal.

It’s funny how you can spend weeks, or months, or sometimes even years preparing yourself for a nightmare that’s more “when” than “if.” Then just when you’re fooling yourself that you’ve accepted the world’s end, and you’ll roll with the impact when it hits … suddenly, it might be hitting, and you’re not rolling. You’re collapsing, sitting where you stood, totally overwhelmed by a loss you were never really ready for.

“Nope. Apathy is incompatible with hate. Love works okay.”

But they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t have done any of that, because in stories guys fight. They fight for the person they care about, and they don’t give up, ever. In real life, though, sometimes you beg for them to care, and they just don’t. And then they go quiet. And they let you walk away without much of a fight at all.

And life was too short to play chicken with something as important as the person you loved.

Maybe our Happily Ever After hadn’t worked on the first shot. And maybe Happily Ever Afters weren’t a singular event. Maybe they were something you had to work at, and build, and never give up on, as long as they were something you still wanted.

But screw tomorrow.

as someone in high school i never really stopped thinking about the future. everyone always asks what u want to study or where u want to go in college. but what about today? high school experiences can be missed if all you keep thinking about is the next step.