Amelia

Every story has a beginning, this one though starts in the middle of one. It’d be too much to go back to the beginning where I say my parents loved me and gave me everything they could, so I’ll just skip 3 years ago, which is sort off when this story unfroze after a couple of stale/boring/drama-less years and to the part where I met her again. It had been years since the last time I went back to my home town, 3 years to be exact, so not exactly a short while. I was to turning 29 years old that autumn, though I wasn’t not that excited about it. It is in no way related to me getting older, it’s more on the pressure my family, to this day, has one me to find a husband and have kids ‘before it becomes too late’  my own father’s words. I still keep in touch with my family, but like my mom always said I’m way too stubborn to let go, even for the tiniest or dumbest, if that’s even a word, of things. After I left my home town I made sure to keep myself busy with work, I found it easy to just busy myself with all sorts of projects, job related or not, so I could reject any and all invitations to go back even if it was just for the holidays. So on the 3rd year of receiving such invitations and understanding my mom’s fear of having to spend another year apart from her daughter, I ended up accepting her invitation to spend the holidays, meaning Christmas, with the entire family, meaning all my cousins, aunts and uncles to go to a cabin, by the lake my family grew up near. I knew I was being too hard headed, especially since I kept neglecting to tell my parents the reason why I was so reluctant about coming back. “If only they knew”, I thought, “or maybe not, cause even then my mom would say I was being stupid and would make me go home”. I don’t think I’ll ever open myself up to talk to my mom about it, it was mostly my pride talking me out from speaking about my broken heart and the real reasons behind me skipping town as fast as I could and without any explanation at all to the people in my life. I just up and vanished. Still, no matter what people thought I didn’t think I had failed at life. I traveled for a while working anywhere so I could afford my day to day living. It was a little while after I turned 27 that I got bored with that lifestyle and decided to finally start looking for a real n’ steady job. I looked for any sort of job related to my degree, anywhere B.U.T. my home town. I moved three times in the past 3 years looking for better opportunities, I liked moving, not precisely the packing, traveling and unpacking my belongings but the anonymity the process came with. And saying I was looking for better positions more suited to my goals in life worked as a better excuse to the employers, who gave me weird looks whenever they eyes my resume, over my actual intentions, that were related to my reluctance in making acquaintances of any kind, no mingling with the community, not going out for drinks with fellow workers, etc. To sum it all up anything that’d create a bond with another human being was completely out of the question. After everything I learned how to isolate myself from the world, aside from any and all interactions that were required of me through my job I kept to myself. I’m not complaining about it though, it’s not as bad as it sounds, I like it this way and it’s not like I don’t have any fun either, I had a flowing income, steady-ish job and I like my new apartment. Plus casual s*x was never my thing, I noticed that after 2 times and decided I was good with just playing with myself. It wasn’t until a letter came in the mail, one Tuesday afternoon, that I even considered going back home, even if it meant going back just for the night. Ophelia, my best friend back in my college days, a sweet, beautiful girl, now a grown woman, had sent me an invitation to her wedding. Off course the first time I got the invitation card in my mailbox I checked the NO box and sent it back with not a second though. The second time though, Ophelia had known exactly how to work her idea inside of her friends AKA my head, she’d added to the invitation, to her wedding with some bigshot lawyer from her city, a handwritten request for Amelia AKA me, ‘her best friend’ to come to her wedding as the, ONE and ONLY, ‘Maid of honor’. The invitation sat on my nightstand for one too many days and nights. My hand itched to check the NO box once more and add a ‘Leave me alone, though I wish you the best in your marriage’ response, but at the end of the day I still cherished my friend even though I had cut off all communication with her a long time ago. Not that I’d done it on purpose, I loved her in my own way, it’s just something that happens, friends grow apart and we move on with what’s going on in our lives. After I moved cities the first time, Ophelia would call me every week to check on how I was and at the same time she’d update me on her exciting life as a journalist. Then little by little her calls stopped coming and turned into small texts saying, “I love you” or “miss you”, but even those eventually stopped coming. I was too focused on my job that I failed to notice the breach in our relationship and how it was I that rejected all of my friend’s invitations without any reason as to why I wouldn’t come back to see them. The guilt finally made me cave in, though I must admit I wanted to see her on her big day as well, I checked the YES box and mailed the invitation back to her, this time with a bouquet of flowers. It wasn’t going to make up for all the missing time and distance I had created but I knew she’d love them and that was enough for me.