On Rotation

by Shirlene Obuobi

Love isn’t a test. There aren’t right answers.

You just have to jump in blind and accept the chance that you might get hurt.”

lydia’s floral arrangements urban garden, est. 2013,

Suddenly, I felt fragile, like a cheap glass teetering at the edge of a counter, only a nudge away from shattering.

It was the most at peace I had felt in months.

law of equivalent exchange,* okay? I need your tales of woe too.”

Fullmetal Alchemist reference?

“I thought we established that my talking to you is part of a great cosmic plan,”

I angst over every decision I make.

Don’t think too hard about things. Just live in the moment.

so I took PTO today as a gift to myself.”

was as though the heavens had seen me crying and dropped the perfect guy to wipe away my tears right at my feet.

our meeting was a part of a cosmic plan.

Momma hated that I called my apartment in Hyde Park my home. “This house right here is your home,” she liked to say, but I hadn’t felt like myself in Naperville in a long time.

Within its walls, I was no one’s eldest daughter and no one’s older sister and I didn’t have to prepare a tray. I could just be Angie Appiah, without edits.

“You’re like a puppy, you know that?” I said. “You always act like you’re scared I won’t come back.”

It was as though my mind had simply decided that it was tired of being sad.

I could just do me. And I was the only one, it seemed, who could do me right.

“What I’m saying is . . . I guess I decided there was no point in being miserable anymore.”

parents. I felt . . . necessary.

“You’re a strong student. You’re going to do great things.”

Nia understood, because she was just like me—unlucky in love, but somehow always falling into it.

best friend in the whole world, my soul sister, and the expression on her face

If Fate was what kept bringing us together, She and I needed to have some words.

Who didn’t want a relationship?

when Nia looked at Shae, she saw a home.

She saw a person who accepted her as she was,

girls like me . . . Well, we were exciting in theory, interesting as a concept. Bright and shiny when we were new and our outspokenness was “refreshing” and our exoticness* exhilarating.

when reality settled in and they realized that, actually, they did want the kind of woman that society told them they should—thinner

less educated and more in awe of them than I ever co...

Why take something that felt good and right in its current form and try to morph it into something that could hurt?

“Why do you feel this way about yourself?” she snapped. “Like you’re not enough, or something?”

“I don’t think I’m not enough,” I said plainly. “I think I’m too much.”

not do that thing you always do? Where you let yourself live in limbo to stop yourself from getting hurt?

enjoying each other’s company without any expectations—was more than enough.

Sometimes you have to hear things that you don’t like.

I’m not a person to you. I’m just a puppet for you to live your dreams through.”

“Every time you talk, it’s to tell me about all the ways I’m not enough!

things I care about—they’re not important enough!”

what I felt today wasn’t my typical shame. It was righteousness.

My entire life, I had been obedient.

“Why do you still talk to them?” he asked softly. “I mean, every time they call they upset you, right? Why not just . . . stop picking up?”

How do you love someone who hurts you over and over again?

This is why you have to study hard, Angela, she had said. So that you don’t have to worry like this.

“Still, in the end, we know ourselves better than anyone. Even the people who raised us.

I’m good at this. Whatever it is you want to do . . . I bet you’re good at it too. And you should go for it.

Your parents want you to do what’s safe because they’re scared, but if you can prove to them that your way works too, they’ll back off.”

You care about people, even when they’re kind of shitty to you, but you aren’t a doormat.

You don’t lose sight of who you are in the process.

You make me actually stop and think about thi...