Happy Hour

by Marlowe Granados

Here I was doing whippets with a grown man; life really takes you anywhere.

strictly a good-time girl.”

I realize now, the older you get, the harder it is to be impressed because people make you feel ashamed of ever being impressed by anything at all. I keep many glowing remarks to myself because of this.

To be free to communicate without consequence—is that ever a possibility? I want to say, “I don’t want you to have feelings about my feelings.” I want to be heard without consequence because to be heard is such a novelty.

People think it is frivolous, but feminine things are often thought of that way; it is an important kind of knowledge that is overlooked.

When I see other people with their mothers, I get jealous. I count the years they have had them longer than I had mine. I count the age of the mothers and how much more time they’ve had than mine did. It fills me with scorn. What did they do to deserve it?

Whenever I catch people on the empathetic end of a night of drinking, they look at me and say, “I don’t know how you do it.” I am not strong! I want to tell them. I am simply enduring.

It would be nice if whenever someone said, “I love you,” it meant, “Everything will be fine.” It’s all reassurance anyway.