Happy is the Only Thing by Mars Aspen

Author:Mars, Aspen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-10-19T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen – October 1 st

Without saying another word, I head into the locker room. The rest of the team is gone already and I say a silent thank you to whatever’s out there because I can’t hold back the tears. They fall, hot and slippery, down my cheeks and onto the already wet floor. Every time they splash down it’s an earthquake. I’m angry and sad and confused and everything feels too much and not enough at the same time. Trying to ignore the emotion tearing uncontrollably through my entire body, I rip my swimsuit from my body and shove it into my plastic-lined swim bag. I towel off and throw on the clothes I wore to school while trying to suppress the urge to run to the adjacent bathroom to throw up.

I text mom to come pick me up and text Luke to go home without me. I don’t want Luke to see me like this. I don’t want to talk to him about this. I don’t want to talk to anyone. I want to paint but I also want to swim. I want to choose for myself what I’m going to choose. More than anything, more than I want change and a revolution within myself and my life, I want to curl up on the couch and watch a movie and never think about any of this again. I want to go back to normal. I want so many things that contradict each other that I’m already starting to shut down from the pressure of it all squeezing inward.

When mom pulls up in front of the school I’m still crying. I feel like it should be raining but it isn’t. It’s the same half-sunned afternoon, but now the light is edging towards the willow trees. I open the front door and get in the car, which she’s obviously just had washed and waxed. The floors have been vacuumed. I hold my damp bag in my lap.

I’m having a hard time focusing on anything by the time mom takes in my expression and asks, “What’s going on?”

But I can’t answer. The tears come harder and my throat shuts completely. My body bends over itself at the waist and I wrap my arms around my knees. A lot of the times when I get upset, my brain tries to focus on everything at once. It tries to count every single speck of dirt on the floor and it tries to take in every ray of light coming through the clouds and it tries to understand the words coming through NPR on my mom’s car radio. My eyes and ears and mouth and nose take in the whole world until I’m not just feeling my emotions but I’m forced to feel the weight of it all.

I scream at myself to tell her what’s happening. I tell her that I’m tired of being talked down to and I’m tired of people taking advantage of me and I want to be able to choose everything for myself.

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