Carry On Tuesday – If I could have just one wish….

‘Everyone says the same thing,’ she thought as she lay in the darkness, her arms folded above her head, hiding her face. ‘There is no secret, no surprise, no one is original, I’m certainly not.” Clara didn’t care about originality, she didn’t care about anything anymore, part of why her mother and father were always in her face, worried about her, crying over her. Why didn’t they see, she just wanted them to give her space, to leave her alone.

Her boyfriend of three years had left, they had broken up over a nasty fight and she had sent him away for good. At the moment it was definitely the right thing to do and she knew that. Max had become different, unreliable at times, unpredictable. She had asked him over and over if she had done anything wrong to upset him and he always laughed her off and just said “Nah, babe, it’s just how I am” and so she accepted it for a while. Other time he was his old self, happy, engaged and loving.

Clara knew that he had a new girlfriend, some girl who rode a Harley and dressed in black leather. It had taken him all of four days to rebound and get involved with this new biker chick and now they were inseparable. It made Clara sick to even think about it much less see them but she also couldn’t avoid it. This was no “Romeo and Juliette” love story. She knew that he was drinking a lot again, and she had always hated when he did that; he called her square and said she was “no fun.” She knew she was fun, she just was strong, strong enough not to put up with all his lame bullshit.

She wasn’t sorry she had broken up with him, not like all her girlfriends who had encouraged her to go back to him, those spineless goats. No, she wasn’t sorry at all. If she had one wish, one wish at all, she would have broken up with him three and a half years ago when her gut feelings told her he was a loser and that this was a relationship that was never going to go anywhere. That, was her biggest regret.

She crawled off the couch, took a shower and got dressed. She gathered her school books together and finished writing her essay for her college Literature class. She was done moping, he had taken up her time and energy, she didn’t need him anymore to prove herself. She went down the stairs, grabbed a cup of coffee, said a cheerful “good-bye” to her parents and headed off to class.