Sorry I Missed You

by Suzy Krause

But you don’t get to choose your feelings, just like you don’t get to choose your family.

I really appreciated what was being said here and the rawness of it.

Someone placed a box of Cheerios on the conveyor belt at his elbow, and he turned. A woman stood there, carefully moving groceries from the basket slung over her arm onto the counter like she was putting a puzzle together. She had small, close-set brown eyes and frizzy chin-length hair, dyed bright blue—the color of five-cent candy whales. Her face was decorated all over with tiny silver hoops and studs, and she was wearing army boots. She was perfect. She looked up and caught his eye. “Sounds like you come here often,” she said, then smiled at Ang. Larry knew he had no business looking at beautiful people because he wasn’t one of them. He was a thin man—fast-food, fast-metabolism thin, not gym-and-protein-shakes thin. He had acne scars all over his face and a goatee on his chin and an instantly discernible penchant for ’80s- and ’90s-era punk rock. He still wore a wallet chain. He was forty-three.

I loved this so much, this painted the picture of how I think of myself.

Sunna didn’t know what to say. She wanted to throw a fit like Maude, but she wanted to be sweet and angelic like Mackenzie. She wanted to be nineteen again and make different choices so she would end up anywhere but a coffee shop in a town-city with these strange women. She wanted to know what she wanted. She wanted to unzip her skin and evaporate from inside, separated into particles of steam and air. That was when it hit her, really hit her: she wasn’t just unhappy or discontent; she was downright depressed.