The Art of Loving and Losing

Birthday

To my friends who helped me believe in myself again when I felt unloved and lonely.

~*~

It was the Saturday after Joana had turned 16 when she found herself crossed leg on the floor of her bedroom not knowing why. The tiles were cool under her bare thighs and feet, and the ceiling fan circled like clockwork to offer some reprieve from the heat outside. She sat against the dresser listening to Demi's self-titled album while she battled little animal-like figures on her handheld videogame device. The music and mindless playing a salve for the anxieties she still wasn't consciously aware of. Never one to lock herself within the four walls of her sky-blue room, that day it felt right. And she was left to be because it served her parent's ploy to surprise her with a birthday party. They needed no distractions as they decorated the outside terrace and hid the guests. Joana was lost in her own world.

Around 8pm there was a soft knock on Joana's door and her mom poked her head in. She told Joana to get dressed to go to the movies. So Joana did as she was told, not even asking what movie they were going to watch. She dressed in a simple t-shirt and washed-out jeans without thinking too much of her appearance. It didn't matter in dark spaces. Her brother and father were already in the car and her mom wanted Joana to check the door to the terrace before leaving. Again she did as she was told but as Joana was locking it, her mom asked her to open the door. Open the door? Why does she want her to open it if she asked to lock it? But Joana, not being one to quibble, followed instructions like a marionet biding her mother's will no matter how odd the request. She opened it with a dubious feeling, and the lights outside instantly flicked on along to the shouts of "Surprise!"

Under the orange lights stood her homeroom peers, all clustered onto the modest terrace. Joana was shocked and as tears started welling up in her eyes, she began hugging the people she had known since first grade. They didn't know what the moment meant to her, but the wild smile on her face said it all. The last time her parents had thrown a party and invited her friends, no one had come. Her 10th birthday had been held at the park with the big lake about 20 minutes from her school. Her parents had rented a small cement cabana with a barbecue and some tables and invited friends and family. Joana had more family than she could accurately count given all her aunts and uncles and all of their children. The party was far from empty. She climbed large white boulders, ran around the grass while being chased, and kayaked on the lake with her cousins. But still the lack of friends left a bitter taste in Joana's mouth and the heaviness of a bowling ball inside her stomach. For the first time among the people who loved her and understood her, she felt out-of-place and lonesome. She felt like the ugly duckling on that lake. Ever since then, Joana didn't care for birthday parties. She preferred them plain and simple: dinner with her nuclear family, getting ice cream at Cold Stone, going to the movies... Joana certainly didn't believe in "sweet 16's" either, but perhaps the universe had decided she needed something sweet for her 16th birthday.

Seeing her friends there that night gave her hope that things could be different. Joana received the unfulfilled wish she had been craving but still hadn't learned to voice out: to matter. Everyone was there, even the illustrious and cryptic captain of the soccer team who never showed up to anything other than soccer tournaments. Over six feet tall, Markus towered over everyone and his presence didn't slip Joana's notice when the lights had turned on. The image of him, with his olive skin and charming hazel eyes, shouting along with the others would remain imprinted in her mind. As if she had a camera in her head that involuntarily snapped a shot of that moment and saved it in her hippocampus and amygdala, storing the scene and all of the emotions with it. It would drive her insane the attempt to decipher that moment, but on the day of her birthday she gave it no second thought. Joana's elation was like that of transcending into heaven, her peers resurrecting her from the unknown funk she had been in that day. Her mind had unconsciously made the calculations: the likelihood of her friends showing up improbable; the likelihood of Markus showing up impossible. A miracle had happened that night. That's all she cared about at that moment.