Marie Lives in the Friend Zone

Journal Entry 2 - Outer Space Bar

If there's one thing I dread the most, it's the question, "What can you tell us about yourself?" your teacher asks you to answer in front of the class. In all my 16 years, I've never known what to say about myself to make me sound like an interesting character. Because I'm not.

I find great joy in insignificant things. Like using a new sponge to wash the dishes, walking through aisles of notebooks I can't afford, or looking at my cats. Marie's bound to end up as a cat lady someday, I think. Let me update this in 40 years if I become one, if I still remember my password.

So far, my greatest effort in this quarantine is writing a Tom Holland fanfic.

See You in the Cosmos by Jack Cheng was what inspired me, in a way, to make in this book. Highly recommend to read it! Sure, the story wasn't about someone getting rejected by their crushes, but it was about a kid trying to record stuff on his Golden Ipod to have it on his rocket, and send it to space for other lifeforms to discover more about humans. At least his life was so much more interesting, where are we losers gonna be placed?

Which is why I made this, to record all my thoughts and stories of the past year, gathered together through an online journal.

Maybe aliens have never heard of being friend zoned before. Maybe by chance, they'll find this when they come to invade Earth and realize, "These humans are so petty and sad. They'll die when they don't get another human's affection. Maybe we shouldn't invade them."

Another scenario is an alien sharing this with their space friends on an outer space bar. "Hey, check this out, this Human from Earth is always in this thing they call a 'friend zone'." This one from Andromeda would ask, "What is a 'friend zone'? Is it food?" He'd be like, "No, it's when you love someone but they don't feel the same!" They'd all gasp in horror. A cyborg from Alpha Centauri would burst into mechanical tears, "I'm sorry. Sad stuff always gets me." He'd cry some more.

Staying at home, and making excuses for staying at home rather than going out with friends was my greatest feat, but now I'm missing it; even when my friends bring their partners along and I feel like making gag faces whenever they show too much public display of affection in front of me. In reality, my dating game hasn't even scored half.

#Bitter

Really, I don't look too bad. People constantly compliment me on my nose, and my chocolate brown eyes specially when it's angled right to reflect the golden hour sunshine. My straight black hair with split ends fell by my waistline before I chopped it off, like everyone else did in quarantine, looking for more ways to damage their hair.

Last week, I browsed through all the cringe, sometimes witty, text messages from important people and it took all my efforts not to morph into the floor and hide myself forever from embarrassment.

But the best way to deal with fear is to face it. So here I am compiling the messages, jokes, and adventures I had in high school. Not the best analogy, but this one's for nostalgia, I convinced myself. And besides, they weren't all that bad.

Some parts were redacted to make my sad existence anonymous; names, places or other references that are a dead giveaway to everything.

My friend Kira would've given me pointers and more advice on writing, it's never too bad to learn more and improve, but even though she's the only one I trust to read a sentence I write, I can't let her find this. It's too personal and she doesn't know about all these hidden feelings - these are buried tombs of Pharaohs. To a great extent did I pray to God these people will never find this because I'll never be able to face them again, even on Messenger.