The Cycle

I watch as life passes me by. I see the people in the mall living their lives while mine is stuck. Suspended in time.

A mother holds one child’s hand, while holding another against her hip. A group of teenage girls strut around in perfect formation. A couple (that’s probably in their twenties) hold hands while they share a quick kiss.

These people are all out with their family or friends. They’re all here for a reason. This mall and their moments here are just one little glimpse of their lives. The mother buying clothes for her kids. The teenage girls cementing their top tier status. The couple looking at wedding rings.

But I am here. All the time. Alone.

I don’t want to be alone. That’s why I’m here. When I’m here I’m surrounded by people. So really, I’m not technically alone. That’s something, at least. I’m just … lonely. But I can pretend here.

I come to the mall and sit on this bench most days and I watch everyone. Especially the groups of friends. I study them.

I’ve never been good at making friends. And when I have been able to make friends, it is so much harder to keep them. I’m not sure what it is that I do to push them away. Maybe we were never really friends to begin with. They were just people I walked around with and sometimes talked to.

So I come here to study how they interact with each other. Everything they say and their body language. I want to be able to emulate it and finally be able to have good friends of my own.

Maybe someday when I have those friends, we’ll come here and I’ll tell them the stories. I’ll say it was so crazy for me to come and study people together. And then we’ll all laugh.

I’ll tell them stories of the people I’ve seen here. The guy that dropped his milkshake and how it splattered everywhere. And then when he went to pick it up, how he slipped and fell.

Or the lady running through the mall with no pants on and security chasing after her. No idea what happened there.

We’ll laugh about how desperate I was and then that time of my life will be completely forgotten. Because I’ll have friends and I won’t be lonely anymore.

When I was younger, I had what I called friends. We sat together during lunch at school, and I would listen to them talk. Every so often I would say something. I felt so proud of myself for contributing. I was always so scared to say the wrong thing and that they’d decide they didn’t want to be around me anymore. I felt so relieved every time something I said went over well.

They talked a lot about what they did together the week before outside of school. I was never invited to those outings. And then they’d make plans to meet up next weekend. They never looked at me. I was never invited to those, either. I never knew what to say during those conversations, so I just stayed quiet.

Our school didn’t just eat lunch in the cafeteria. The whole school went to lunch at the same time so pretty much the whole building was fair game. They shared the same class before lunch. I was in a different class. So, every day, I texted them to see where they would eat at. Eventually, they stopped replying. I’d see them later and they would say they didn’t see it. But I had been texting them every day. They knew it was coming. So eventually, I stopped texting.

Three girls sat on a bench on the other side. All three of their faces looked engaged in the conversation. They each took turns talking and laughing. To my right, I noticed two girls jumping up and down and squealing. They hugged. They seemed really happy to see each other.

“Hey.” I whipped my head to the left. A stranger. A girl. Weird. “What’s up?” she asked. She had a girl-next-door kind of casual, easy, prettiness to her. Her blonde hair was piled up in a bun on top of her head. She was dressed in an oversized gray t shirt and black leggings. Comfortably cute.

I looked at her for a moment, puzzled. Another reason I wasn’t good at making friends. At this point, I didn’t expect people to talk to me. So, when they did, I was honestly confused and surprised.

Why is she here? Why is she talking to me?

Normally, by this point, I’ve been questioning it for so long that they think I’m ignoring them and walk away.

But she’s still here. I still have a chance to salvage this interaction.

“Hi,” I say. That’s a win.

“What are you doing?” She asks. “You’ve been sitting here a while.”

“Watching.”

The girl looks around, left to right.

“I don’t see anything interesting.”

I shrug and close my eyes as I say “watching how people interact.”

“But people lie. Their smiles. Their actions. Their words. All lies. That girl over there,” she points to a girl in the group of teenagers. “She has to be in the middle all the time because she feels like if she isn’t then she’ll be forgotten.”

I looked back over at them. The two girls at the ends were chatting back and forth. The girl in the middle held her head high, smiled, and looked as confident as she could. But she sat there, silent, nodding her head at what the other girls said. That could just be a coincidence, though.

“And see that guy?” She points to the couple. You can tell from the girl’s face and her expressions that guy is saying all these sweet things. But he keeps looking over hungrily at the girl at the other end. I turn my head to see where she’s pointing.

She’s right. He does keep looking at her. Maybe this weird, mysterious girl has a point.

She might be right, but even so, what does that matter? There would just be more of us sad, lonely people in the world.

She’s watching me expectantly. Waiting for me to respond. I just don’t know what to say.

“I understand if you’re still unsure,” she says. “Everyone wants to fit in and feel understood. But life is hard and people are unpredictable. Just keep being you and you’ll find your people.”

This is everything I’ve wanted. Someone to talk to. Someone who understands. But deep down, I don’t know if I can believe that she really gets it.

I stay quiet because I’m scared of more rejection. The girl gets up and walks away.