You Were My Person

I’m in a cab and it’s 3 A.M. and I’m looking out of the window. My friends are dancing in their seats, but I’ve never been much of a dancer. Usually, I’d try to bop along, but tonight, I can’t even muster up the energy to fake it. Do they know that I only really dance when I’m drunk? Does anyone know that about me? And I don’t know the words to the song. I never know the words. I can’t sing along to Disney tunes or the top 40. The words never seem to stick in my head. And I wonder if they think I’m boring or assume I’m just tired. God, they must think I’m such a deadbeat. No, that’s not the right word. A loser. A Debbie-downer.

I am thinking about the people in the club and in the streets, and I wonder what everyone is looking for. “Everybody’s looking for love. Ain’t that the reason they’re at this club?” Isn’t that how the song goes? What the hell are these people looking for? A good time? Happiness? I’m drawn to the people standing nervously in the crowds. There’s an attractive guy standing in a dimly lit corner, drink in one hand, just watching everyone dance. We move on to the next place, and there’s another good-looking guy, leaning against the wall, waiting in line for the bathroom, except he doesn’t go in. I want to say, what’s your story? What’re you doing here? But I don’t. I don’t have any liquid confidence in me.

Everyone’s living their lives, and we’re all so self-centered. Self-centered, not necessarily selfish, and that’s okay because we have our own bodies and our own brains, and it’s normal to live for oneself. We are so self-centered, and it’s only when we allow other people to enter our lives that we begin to change and care for someone whose thoughts are not ours, someone who we cannot control, someone who has his own concerns and pains and joys and smiles and tears and ideas. And I’m trying so hard not to be sad and depressing because I don’t want to be that girl. I don’t want to be like that anymore.

So I am breathing deeply and trying to feel and live in the moment, but all I can think about is how this life feels so unreal and inconsequential. And I am wondering if I made a mistake letting him go and kicking myself for hurting him and regretting every little thing in my life. And it’s hard when you have to be the one to make the decision that will force the two of you to shape up and grow up when all you can think about is how no one looks like him and everyone looks wrong and that we live in a world where we make people our persons, and you are my person, except now you’re not anymore.