Big Summer

by Jennifer Weiner

I saw a woman with shiny hair and bright red lips; a woman who’d dive into the deep end and smile for the camera and live her life out in the open, as if she had just as much right to the world as anyone else.

I closed my eyes. I thought about walking home, how the cool night air would feel on my hot face. I’d leave the lights off, go right to the kitchen, and pull a pint of ice cream out of the freezer and a bag of pretzels out of the breadbox, and I’d sit in the dark, eating. I’d let the creamy sweetness and crunchy saltiness fill me, pushing down the pain and shame, stuffing me so full that there wouldn’t be room for anything else; not anger, not embarrassment, not anything. Ben and Jerry, the two men who have never let me down, I thought.

I turned toward our reflection in the stainless-steel refrigerator, Drue all confidence and couture, me all anxiety and Ross Dress for Less.

Interesting metaphor with a household appliance

In space, nobody could hear you scream; on the Internet, nobody could tell if you were lying.

I went to my bedroom to work on the watercolor I’d been painting for my mother’s birthday and to think about my friend and how there were things you could be hungry for besides food.

Hungry for power and acknowledgment

Delightful, I’d thought, picturing my parents, the way my mother would pull a cold beer out of the refrigerator when she heard the elevator doors slide open, so that she could hand it to my father the instant he walked through the door; and the way my dad would settle my mom’s feet in his lap when they watched the British police procedurals they both liked. I pictured them dancing together in the kitchen, swaying to old R&B, my father’s arms around my mom’s waist, her cheek resting on his shoulder.

That’s love

I wondered if this was what being an adult was: endless denial, requiring limitless willpower.

Is it?

“sitting by a lamp more often brings / Not peace, but other things. / Beyond the light stand failure and remorse / Whispering Dear Warlock-Williams: Why, of course—”

The silhouette was simple: a sweetheart neckline; wide shoulder straps that would leave my arms and the top of my chest bare and keep my bra covered; a boned bodice that would hug my torso from breasts to hips, where the skirt flared out full. Somehow, Leela had managed to fold the shimmery gold fabric into dozens of tiny pleats that gave the fabric the illusion of motion, so that even when I was standing still the dress looked like a pond ruffled by a breeze.

Had I really spent so many years feeling miserable because I was bigger than other girls, when there were people who’d grown up without their parents? Had I pitied myself because I’d failed at Weight Watchers, and because my high school BFF and I had fallen out, when there were people who’d found their own mother’s dead body on the floor? Had I fretted because I’d never been in love, and that I’d wasted two years on Wan Ron, when I had a mother and a father who loved me, who would have given me whatever help they could, who wanted nothing but my happiness?

First world problems. Gratitude