I started writing this because I wanted to write something true, but then it turned into something too true so I stopped. It feels wrong to leave it hiding though, because there are some good thoughts here, but...I stopped editing my writing a while ago. Editing made things too untrue and I just didn't know what to do anymore. So I stopped. But then everything was too true, so I stopped writing altogether. Which is why I decided this should be here. Whether it is too true or not, it entered this world and I just can't hold on to it myself. 

Anyway. That's all. No one reads all this anyway, so it doesn't really matter.

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Growing up was supposed to be like a birthday. Or, like a birthday always feels like it should be. One day, you would wake up, and the world knew you were older. Wiser. The problem is that growing up is like a birthday. You wake up, but nothing is really different after all. Looking in the mirror, everything is exactly the same as it was the day before, except for the one thing: the expectation. Yesterday, you were 17. Today, you were not. Today, you are an “adult.” 

The problem with growing up was that the rules never stayed the same.

Maybe, there weren’t any rules at all.

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After he had said they should just be friends, she lost it. He couldn’t even tell me this in person? Emma just wanted the world to Stop. Moving. but it rolled on. Her second-best friend (His brother’s girlfriend? It was hard to tell where the “loyalties” were.) called to see how she was. Emma’s mom came down to see about dinner, but Emma had already locked herself into her cavern. No windows. No doors. No exits. These puny walls were her barricade, and for the time-being, it would hold. 

Emma’s first boyfriend hadn’t exactly been a boyfriend. There had been a time she thought that maybe...but he always denied it. Then he would hold her hand and act like he was about to kiss here before murmuring something about boxes and labels and spiders. For some reason, the spiders were always really important. Then came the “just friends” proclamation, and then nothing was really important. 

“We were never friends, J!” Emma couldn’t decide if she felt more angry or sad or used. 

“Of course we were, Emma. We’ve been friends for years.” He drawled even over the phone. He wasn’t even from the country. Why did he have a drawl?

“No. There was always, always an if, and now there is nothing.” She wasn’t crying. She had already decided she wasn’t going to cry about it when he had text messaged her the ‘just friends’ thing. If she was crying now, she wasn’t about to admit it to anyone, especially herself. 

“Don’t call me again. When I want to talk to you-if I want to talk to you-I’ll call you.”

And that was it. So passed another year. Did he really have to break up with her, Okay, maybe not so much break up as finally fulfill his destiny as the world’s largest jackass, right before her birthday? Some present. Behind the barricade, Emma collapsed onto her bed and fitfully fell asleep.

When she woke up, she was exactly the same. It was like nothing she wanted to be. Happy birthday, Emma Black, she thought. Nineteen looks just as miserable as eighteen. 

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Emma wasn’t ready to face the world just yet. She just needed one more day to hide in her basement bedroom and pretend that the rest of them didn’t exist. One more day, and then everything could go back to normal. Whatever normal was. She had given up trying to figure out what that was. Normal wasn’t anything that looked like her. Normal wasn’t anything that looked this disheveled. 

Emma’s mom had tried to talk to her and find out what happened, but she wouldn’t unlock the door. Three and a half seasons of The O.C. later, she unlocked the door, but she still wouldn’t talk.