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Her weight always fluctuated depending on the tenacity of her eating disorder, but never to this extreme.
It’s good to know someone’s stories. I’m glad to be here with them, the ones who know mine, and I’m grateful to know theirs.
I know Mae saw the room and thought, Books! and automatically associated it with me. I’m the reader of the group.
She wants to be bohemian, but at her core, she feeds on order. I love that about her.
We dance on top of these floorboards, and though sometimes they squeak, we don’t acknowledge it. We pretend we’ve forgotten about the trunk and what’s inside it, even though we all know it’s there, beating against our denial like the telltale heart.
For close friends, the closest friends any of us have, we don’t often talk about our life struggles or our emotions. We don’t share our feelings, at least not in depth. Only when we’re hammered or desperate. We’re all repressed, and that’s how we like it. That’s part of why we’re close. We have a mutual understanding.
She was drunk and got in a car with someone drunk, and they crashed into a tree. The tree, by all accounts, was sober.
I’m being insane. It’s getting to the point where I’m worrying myself, always being afraid like this. I’m going to end up one of those paranoiacs who live in booby-trapped bunkers, eating canned peaches with rusty spoons.
She would chase him until he relented. It was a pride thing.
There’s also this nagging voice telling me I should go home. Return to my own bed for some decent rest. Spare myself any potential unpleasantness. Hibernate. Become the hermit eternal I’m meant to be.
She’s easy to be around. As she would say, “positive energy.” I wish I could leach it off her, keep it for myself.
“Ooh, it’s starting!” Julie says. “Shh. Molly, shh.” “I wasn’t talking!” “It’s preemptive.” “Fuck off. I’m well behaved.”
We have our stories. Denial is fruitless. If one of our memories fails, the rest of us will pool ours together. We’re witnesses to one another’s triumphs and destruction. We’re eager to reminisce, though we each have our own version of events.
You can’t erase your past when there are pieces of it scattered inside other people.
“Like no time has gone by,” Julie says. “It has, though. I don’t know this band,” I say. “And I bet we’re too old to date any of the members. That’s old. We’re getting old.”
It’s funny, the selective memory we have when it comes to the people we love.
made some self-deprecating comment, probably about my nose, and she started telling me about her history with food, eating. She said she had it under control, for the most part, but it was something she’d carry with her always, like a bad scar.
He made me feel special. No man had ever done that before. He singled me out. Told me I was brilliant. Told me I was talented. Told me that I was funny and beautiful and that I had more power than I understood. He said he wanted me in his life in whatever form I was willing to give him. I took the form I wanted. Anything to be close to him, spend more time with him, continue to live as special.
He told me about how empty it all was, and I thought that made him perceptive, but really it was his way of telling me that he was a void, a bottomless pit, and I wasn’t enough to fill it. Nothing was or would ever be. I didn’t get that until much later.
I wondered if I would ever feel anything. I got anxious watching romantic movies or listening to ballads, thinking, Is that real? Am I capable?
In retrospect, he zeroed in on me pretty quickly. He probably sensed my discreet desperation. Feelings of inadequacy. Eagerness to please. Latent childhood trauma. All chum in the water.
It’s kind of amazing what you can choose to ignore and how successfully. Selectively lobotomize whatever doesn’t serve you.
I had nothing else there. No one else. I was isolated from my family and friends. I was lonely. I clung to him, but at the same time, I became detached. In retrospect, I fell out of love with him slowly, fragments of disappointments and harsh realities assembling over time. Promises he didn’t keep.
They weren’t the kind of people to watch the news and think, That could happen to me! They thought, How awful for them!
I cried but not because of him. I cried for what I had sacrificed and for how long and because if I had to do it over again, I would make the same choice, even though it was the wrong one. That scared me. I cried for the worry that I would never love anyone like that again or, if I did, what I would do for that love. What I would be willing to give up.
Maybe this was it, my only chance, or maybe it wasn’t, but it ruined me. Maybe I was numb.
The unpleasantnesses shrink and slip inside the folds of my brain to reemerge later when I’m mad about something else, when they decide to pile on top like tag-teaming wrestlers.
Sometimes when we’re all together, I get confused about who is who. Where one of us stops and the others start. We overlap, bleed together. I love it.
I picture their friendship, all of our friendships, as a jellyfish-like creature. Stretching and expanding, shriveling and shrinking, taking on new shapes as it travels forward. A living organism not entirely in our control.
“If men aren’t teased, their egos get too big. We did society a favor.”
“She would want you to be happy.” It was a nice sentiment, a nice thing to say, but of course it wasn’t the truth. The lie was thorny, and it hurt to speak it. It scratched the roof of my mouth. Julie wouldn’t want anyone to be happy or move on. She would expect perpetual mourning. But how could I say that to him? I thought if he didn’t already know, I shouldn’t tell him. He should get the gift of this ignorance. Some peace.
“Humans are resilient. We’re designed that way.”
“I’m good at giving other people advice. I’m terrible at taking it.”
The sound of his voice reminds me how much I loved talking to him, something I’ve been working to forget.
“It’s okay. It’s me. You can talk to me about anything. We’ve talked about pretty much everything under the sun. I still think Green Lantern is cooler than Batman.” “You’re wrong, but okay,” he says, regaining control of himself.
I’m detached from my body. I don’t feel it at all. I might not even have one.
“I think you have a repetition compulsion.” “What?” “Because of your dad. You go after unavailable men.”
“Because your thing hurts other people,” she says. “It was wrong, and what gets me, to this day, is I don’t think you know that.” Molly is a black-and-white thinker. There’s no room for nuance. I could try explaining to her the complexities of life and morality and relationships, but it’d be like shouting into a plastic bag. Or maybe she’s right, and I’m a terrible person.
In college, Molly and I went through a brief phase when we would get high and watch Court TV. “Guilty!” she would say, banging an imaginary gavel. She always made up her mind early, a few minutes in. Plaintiff. Defendant. Both, usually. “You can see it. You can hear it in their voice.” She was so sure. I would ask, “Yeah, but do they believe they’re guilty? Do they know they did something wrong?” She wouldn’t miss a beat. “Oh, they know,” she would say. “They know.” It’s not lost on me, why this memory is surfacing now. I swat it away.
“You know,” she says, still staring out the window, “I’m not afraid to date. I choose not to.” “I know. I’m sorry.” “Not everything is about my leg. Does it factor in? Yeah, in ways you and Mae and Jules will never understand, and that’s fine. But it’s not the reason,” she says. “Believe it or not, I’m good on my own.”
“If I come home to dishes in the sink, they’re my dishes. I watch TV, it’s whatever I want. I go wherever I want, do whatever I want. I’ve got a lot going on. I’m not some lonely sad sack out there. I’ve got a good life.”
I love her so much right now, lounging on my bed, helping herself to all my pillows, being serious but never too serious. That classic smirk. I want to spread this moment on a cracker and eat it.
“Don’t start being early,” Molly says. “I thought I could rely on you to always be later than me.”
don’t know. She’s never been late before. She might be dead,” Molly says. “You all thought I was dead, and here I am,” Julie says, winking.
It’s Julie. It’s my best friend. I can’t deny her. Maybe part of me wanted to so I could step out of my life and into the one she built. I’m jealous of that life. I’m jealous of her. I always have been. And I’m jealous of Mae, her passion, her career, her apartment. The cute plants she has in hanging terrariums that she can keep alive and thriving while all my plants shrivel and die within days. I’m jealous of Molly and her zero fucks given. Of her stress-free existence out in Los Angeles. Of how she knows the place, how she speaks about the streets and the neighborhoods, maps out this other
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It’s shameful to admit this jealousy. You’re not supposed to be jealous of your friends.
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “Don’t apologize for being sick.” “I’m sorry.” “One more time and I’ll drop you.” “Please don’t.” “You know I’d never.”
Mae doesn’t like people to see her sick. She likes to quarantine herself until she’s better, to give the illusion she’s immune. It’s all about appearances with that one.
But the last time I questioned whether I was in denial, I wasn’t. I was right.
“I never broke my rule.” “Rule?” “My maximum.” “Oh, right! The self-imposed two-drink maximum. Class act, you are.”
