Nourish me with the knowledge that yes, there is a word for this. Someone else has felt this before.*
I suppose this story, like so many of mine, begins before I learned civility -- though some could argue I'm still not there yet; when the F-Word was still taboo; when we had giant email chains instead of group chats and unironically believed in inspirational quotes. I found six friends the way eleven year olds tend to: stumbling, flailing, tripping, trying to make it look like effortless dancing. We met in our sixth grade gym class, and within three weeks we had, like seven siblings, spent so much time together that we had seen the best and worst of one another and were unimpressed by either.
Perhaps my glasses are foggy from the nostalgia (it wouldn't be the first time), but if I had to write a memoir tomorrow, these would be my glory days. Something about grade school and narrow hallways, easy classes and fond teachers made us feel like Kings: we were regularly too loud, usually quite pretentious, and so entirely convinced this high could last forever. I had nothing of my own [then], not even secrets. Like Ayn Rand in Anthem, I thought exclusively in first person plural. One member of our little seven-large sisterhood once mentioned that we probably wouldn't be friends as adults and I...
Well, I hadn't thought of that. I suppose I was too busy quoting Shakespeare without having read a single one of his plays, then defensively citing Edmund from Mansfield Park ("Shakespeare one gets acquainted with without knowing how") whenever interrogated. Though I never told her, her admission hurt. Quite possibly, more than it would've from anyone else, because it was betrayal. What is more important, that Caesar is assissanted or that he is assassinated by his intimate friends?
In nine months, college. Big fish, bigger pond, or so the saying goes. Our darling circle, bound together by twine and secrets, split across the country like shards of a stained glass mural. It's not quite as dramatic as murder, but the resolution of this narrative is the same: blame it on fate. One can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.
Because, you see, we predicted this four years ago, sitting at a lunch table we thought we had outgrown, fingers stained with the ink from the stamps in the library. We were seven bright young things with wide precious futures ahead of us, and even if we refused to see it then, the invisible timer is taunting us now, daring us to grow old and not up.
The fact of the matter is, I was raised by women -- specifically, these ones. And most people on Goodreads reviewing If We Were Villians didn't have the pleasure of understanding deeply and immediately why Oliver's future shattered the way it did; mine would, too, for these six, strange, ephemeral friendships. Thankfully, if all goes according to plan, my dark academia dreams will never fully be realized in such a...grim way, but just in case:
Per aspera ad astra; through the thorns, to the stars. May the future bring you all every form of peace.
I suppose this story, like so many of mine, begins before I learned civility -- though some could argue I'm still not there yet; when the F-Word was still taboo; when we had giant email chains instead of group chats and unironically believed in inspirational quotes. I found six friends the way eleven year olds tend to: stumbling, flailing, tripping, trying to make it look like effortless dancing. We met in our sixth grade gym class, and within three weeks we had, like seven siblings, spent so much time together that we had seen the best and worst of one another and were unimpressed by either.
Perhaps my glasses are foggy from the nostalgia (it wouldn't be the first time), but if I had to write a memoir tomorrow, these would be my glory days. Something about grade school and narrow hallways, easy classes and fond teachers made us feel like Kings: we were regularly too loud, usually quite pretentious, and so entirely convinced this high could last forever. I had nothing of my own [then], not even secrets. Like Ayn Rand in Anthem, I thought exclusively in first person plural. One member of our little seven-large sisterhood once mentioned that we probably wouldn't be friends as adults and I...
Well, I hadn't thought of that. I suppose I was too busy quoting Shakespeare without having read a single one of his plays, then defensively citing Edmund from Mansfield Park ("Shakespeare one gets acquainted with without knowing how") whenever interrogated. Though I never told her, her admission hurt. Quite possibly, more than it would've from anyone else, because it was betrayal. What is more important, that Caesar is assissanted or that he is assassinated by his intimate friends?
In nine months, college. Big fish, bigger pond, or so the saying goes. Our darling circle, bound together by twine and secrets, split across the country like shards of a stained glass mural. It's not quite as dramatic as murder, but the resolution of this narrative is the same: blame it on fate. One can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.
Because, you see, we predicted this four years ago, sitting at a lunch table we thought we had outgrown, fingers stained with the ink from the stamps in the library. We were seven bright young things with wide precious futures ahead of us, and even if we refused to see it then, the invisible timer is taunting us now, daring us to grow old and not up.
The fact of the matter is, I was raised by women -- specifically, these ones. And most people on Goodreads reviewing If We Were Villians didn't have the pleasure of understanding deeply and immediately why Oliver's future shattered the way it did; mine would, too, for these six, strange, ephemeral friendships. Thankfully, if all goes according to plan, my dark academia dreams will never fully be realized in such a...grim way, but just in case:
Per aspera ad astra; through the thorns, to the stars. May the future bring you all every form of peace.
*All italicized lines are quotes from If We Were Villians by M.L. Rio.
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