Silver Springs

“I am an empty kind of person,” I spoke aloud at the dinner table. Mom and her husband looked up at me with tired looks on their faces.

“Didn’t we spend lots of money on a man with a diploma to listen to this all throughout high school? Why are we still talking like we’re a prepubescent teenager?” Stepdad said to me. He liked to refer to me as ‘we.’ It made his insults less salty in his eyes.

My mother scowled at him. “Honey, did something happen? What’s wrong?”

“Do you think I’m shallow?” I asked.

She was stunned into silence.

“Do you think I’m poison?” I continued.

“Who is telling you these things? What are you talking about?” Mom said.

“Nobody,” I responded.

Mom nodded her head slowly and her husband made an annoyed sound under his breath. “I’m moving out,” I said after a moment.

Then I got up and left the table. I spent the entire night putting my things in the boxes I had stored in the garage. I cried the entire time and I realized I was a complete mess because no one was there to watch me cry, no one was there to help me. I had gotten used to people answering my cries.

And then I realized that I was the problem in my life.

The next day, I went looking for an apartment. I was so desperate that I took the fourth one I had seen. It was a tiny thing three blocks away from my job. It had emerald green carpet and sterile white walls. It looked like the hospital where my grandpa lived.

Mamie, answer your fucking phone. Where are you?
Mary Lou, call me. I need to know you’re okay.
Mamie. Call. Me.

Gunnar called, but I spent the next couple of days calling in sick to work and decorating the apartment. I got some rugs to hide the hideous floor. I asked the landlord if I could paint and I did. I sat in my newly made bed and stared at the television for twelve hours straight. I was alone and that was okay.