Hi! It’s me! Lily!
Beth seemed to be doing a little better today, but she still seemed really off. I drove her to her classes today, so I had a captive audience, and asked her why she seemed so down yesterday and today.
She was really quiet for a while, and when she turned to look at me her eyes were wet.
“My birthday was so good!”, she said. “It was everything I ever dreamed and it was absolutely perfect and I got absolutely everything I’d ever have wanted. It was a perfect day.” She sniffled. “And the next day I woke up, and I looked around, and everything was exactly the same. I got everything I wanted and everything was exactly the same. Is that.. is that how it’s going to be whenever I get something I want? I’ll spend so much time looking forward to it, and then I’ll get it, and I’ll wake up the next morning and… and…” she sniffled. “it doesn’t really change anything, does it?”
“What did you want it to change?”, I asked. Beth was really confusing me.
She shrugged. I was turning off onto the 290 exit and had to merge onto the frontage road, so it was quiet for a bit.
“I don’t know,” she said, quietly. And she didn’t say anything more.
I don’t understand Beth. I really don’t. She gets so jealous, she wants to be included, she hates it when people have or do things she doesn’t, but… but then she gets what she wants and she spends the next two days moping around. Maybe she’s moody?
We pulled into the parking garage.
“Do you remember that movie we watched a long time ago?” I asked. “Contact, I think it was?”
She nodded.
“You’re an interesting species. An interesting mix.” I recited. “You’re capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you’re not. See, in all our searching the only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”, she asked.
I sighed. “You got something valuable on your birthday, and it wasn’t an award, it wasn’t the car, it wasn’t the food or the dancing or even the date. Maybe you got everything you wanted, but the thing that you really needed, the thing you really should value, is the thing you’re not.” I turned towards her. “You got more than fifty people there who were there to celebrate you, Beth. You. No one else. That’s the valuable thing you got, Beth, and you can’t crash it or scratch it or throw it away, and no one can take it from you.”
She was quiet for a moment. Then she wiped her eyes. “Let’s go to class,” she said.
And, well, we did.
I don’t know if it helped. But I tried. I don’t really understand, but I tried. Why can’t she see that we love her?
But when we got home, she gave me a hug before she went up to her room, so I guess there’s that.
Oh well. Marie needs a walk.