Being Blinded

Chapter Seven

Sometimes it's easy to forget just how close the rest of our lives are to becoming reality; it creeps along in this sweeping winter and then it's almost Easter and I keep wondering where all the time has gone.

Granted, it's still a month away, the end of March feeling like an eternity but I know I'll blink, and it'll be here and then we are all turning a year older. It makes me wonder where I'll end up, everyone has these plans about staying or going and they seem so certain, but I've never been sure.

Half of me wants to run away and the other portion is desperate to stay and keep close to everything I have known growing up, I guess I won't have my parents anymore but leaving Phoebe feels like death. Admittedly she doesn't need me as much anymore, even on her worst days she has built a group to lean on that doesn't include me.

Rationally I know that she could never replace me despite the feeling that blooms in my chest, but watching the healthy distance that has slowly begun to push through us has given me something new to think about.

That maybe I could go somewhere new, I could follow Cassie and most likely Claudia and Hugo to New York and convince Cassie to let me live with her. If anything, there would probably be more job opportunities for me as a sports nutritionist in somewhere like New York, than there ever would be in Phoenix.

It makes me wonder if that's what I like about it though, and I wouldn't be alone because I know Sam and Sophie have no plans to leave their families here. More than anyone I can see the roots that they've already planted, there's a lot of love throughout this group now.

Couples that I never expected but now feel like they had always been inevitable, Sam and Sophie were the only two that I ever felt like would come of us. Clearly, I was wrong beyond belief and gladly so, but even in those early months I think we all knew.

It feels like they are already halfway to marriage and kids, steps-leaps ahead of the rest of us and basking in the glow of the forever kind of love that I always longed for. It never mattered how much I thought that maybe Alfie liked me back for all those years, it's easy to admit now that neither of us were ready.

I was holding onto my virginity for the man, that's not normal behaviour. I wasn't waiting for marriage or for the right man to come sweeping me off my feet, I was waiting for Alfie.

In the end Carlson was the right guy, he came and swept me off my feet, made me see stars and agreed to take my virginity. It all sounded so romantic when I told the story, but he agreed to take it because I asked, not because we liked each other.

Granted, the man then ghosted me as if I was begging him for some proposal of marriage, but it somehow never tainted all of the things he taught me about myself. A lot of this feeling I have now, of feeling separated to who I was before comes from that change.

Of letting go of what I was looking for then and trying to look for something new, yes, maybe it didn't work in the way I had hoped and left me with the same feelings but a new outlook. However, I don't think I'd ever choose to go back to how I felt before and even though things aren't easier, maybe even rougher in a new way.

I know that this is for the best, that friendship with Alfie is better than the nothing I kept saying was enough.

The last year of college, of working towards a degree turns up the pressure to extreme levels. It doesn't exactly give you the freedom to still be unsure of what you want to do, not that it helps eradicate those feelings.

It's just that seeing the career's fair sprawled along the quad with more multi-coloured tents than I can count leaves a strange feeling in the centre of my chest. So much of the college experience has moulded me into who I am now- as well as parental betrayal- that seeing Freshman and Sophomore's walking around with eyes wide in curiosity, it makes me feel old.