Sometimes when I am asleep, and the wind is coming in through the window of my childhood bedroom, I can almost feel you here. For a sleepover, the way we used to do all the time. It was just our clothes then, I didn’t know what was mine or yours. It was our day then, we never left each other’s sides. It was our life then, a pact that if we made it to 40 and were still single, we’d run away together and live on the beach in Mexico. I always wake up in a sweat from those dreams now. Now I live in your phone as an unknown cell number, I live in your photos as a girl you used to know. I live in that stain I left on the carpet of your truck when my bubblegum ice cream melted. Now I’m the most hated girl. For twenty-five years in a row. If you’ve never been the last choice friend, undiagnosed depression at a very young age, artsy but filled with melancholy girl, then you’ve never been the most hated girl. But I’ve worn her skin all my life. At first it was the separate group chat with 9 memb...
I have spent almost all my life trying to be cool. At first, it was my big sister who was the coolest. She got braces first, which I desperately wanted, and she had all the knee high boots and hair straighteners and bling-y things way before I did. When she walked out of her room in the morning I stared at her over my bowl of lucky charms like she was THE celebrity icon. There might as well have been a spotlight on her. The leader of the social ladder. Friends on friends on friends. She got to have Facebook, which of course made me jealous, but when I got a feature in the profile picture, I practically jumped out of my pants. She was cool, cool. As I got older, she got cooler. She had GUY friends. She went to university. She drank BEER. She was funny, brave, athletic, tall & skinny. Dream girl. And that wasn’t even the coolest thing about her. What made my sister rank #1 for twenty two years in a row and counting was who she was right down at the core. She never, ...