I didn’t get a good look at her face, but I saw enough to be pretty sure it was Elizabeth. She was sitting alone in a black Lexus in the parking lot of the fast food restaurant where I had just eaten. I hadn’t seen her for a couple of months, so I walked toward her car and called her name as I approached the partially open window.
As soon as she turned her face toward me, I regretted approaching her. She looked as though she had been crying. Her makeup was a mess. She looked lost and very alone.
“Are you OK?” I asked. I couldn’t think of something more appropriate, so I asked the obvious.
She looked away and I was afraid she just didn’t want to talk. We don’t know each other that well, after all. I had never seen her in a moment of vulnerability of this sort. I had only known her as a charming, intelligent young woman who always had herself perfectly together.
After a long moment, she turned back to look at me. Her face was almost emotionally blank.
“No, I’m not OK,” she finally said. “Everything’s wrong.”
We’re neither friends nor enemies, just strangers who share the past
‘This path leads to somewhere I think I can finally say, I’m home’
When love finally dies, it’s like a fever breaks and the pain is gone
Society needs storytellers to help make sense of a changing world
What if other people see you or hear you differently than you do?
It’s great to visit Memory Lane, but it’s fatal to try to live there
My bad teen poetry suggests I’ve always hungered for missing love