Past me takes a deep breath, her eyes storming. She wants to scream at me, I know, but I've never been very good at screaming.
"So, what, you just got older. Got married, had kids, bought a house, and are on the conveyor belt to boredom?" Her teeth are grinding together as she speaks, "I thought we weren't going to be like that. I thought we were going to travel. What happened to seeing the world?"
"You always wanted to get married," I point out. "All that crap about not needing a boy was garbage. You are lonely. You want to date and have someone find you desirable. The least you can do is be honest."
"I didn't say I didn't want to get married! But I thought we were going to be different. We were going to serve a year in the peace corps, what happened to that? We wanted to travel the world. Study abroad. We were going to get published and write stories and work. I never wanted to be a stay-at-home mom!"
"We always said that until they went to school. . ."
"Not when you're 24! You weren't supposed to give up your life! We were supposed to be a mom AND Victoria, not just one or the other! We were supposed to have dreams! Now you're just sitting around doing housework!"
"Oh shut up," I snap and stand up, my heart slamming against my chest. "Do you really want to lecture me? Really? You're just a little girl who can't deal with what's actually happened. You don't want to think about Heather dying, you don't want to feel guilty that it wasn't the brass teacher who died, you don't want to think about how you're the reason your closest friends weren't on the bus that night and they feel horrible about it, you don't want to deal with real life so you've stuffed your head so far into fiction that you have no idea what's real and what isn't!"
I watch as her eyes start to shine and her chin juts out stubbornly. Her lips are clamped shut and I know she's admonishing herself not to cry, trying to force herself to keep a strong face. I sigh and rub my face with my hands.
"This isn't how this was supposed to go," I mumble.
"I'm trying," her voice is thick and she's staring at the ceiling.
I sigh, "I know you are, kid." I smile a little. "You know, what you're going through right now? It really made me into a better person. I know you think that you're just depressed because of the boy, but you're not. It's so much more than that. You're going to figure it all out and get your head screwed back on straight and then you're going to meet someone who's probably the best person on this planet. He's my best friend and he knows you better than you know yourself. He'll help you figure out the last few bits but I promise that most of it you figure out yourself. My senior year of high school sucked balls, but it made me a lot stronger."
"This isn't how this was supposed to go..."
22 PEONY MAGAZINE