June 15, 2024 - “In the way that I am here”

I don’t mean to make you feel isolated, her fiancé says to me, and I am taken aback by his sweetness. I say, oh no, I don’t feel that way at all, when really, I have been sitting here feeling that way very much, and they are all married, or close to it, and I watch their pregnant friend stroke her stomach and swallow something that could be envy, though not in a I need this right now sort of way, but — I want to be on my way towards it.

A waitress leans over me, refills my water and says, I love your tattoos, by the way, and I have already put on my old denim jacket, so she must have noticed and then remembered, and that makes me want to hug her and say something like thank you for seeing me in a moment where I felt very far from being anything at all, and it is so clear that I don’t belong here, I think even when I do, I still won’t, and they are doing everything right and I have to convince myself that wrong is okay, if wrong is just different, than it’s okay, and sometimes it hurts to be here, in the way that I am here, and I want to go home but there is none of that now, and there won’t be for a little while longer.