They're Not Strangers Anymore

Slightly smiling at either the person or item before us, we would then turn and look at each other simultaneously. It always seemed like something surreal, this act, something so coincidental that it had to be something only the best of friends could do. But we were not like that and it was occurring too often to be merely coincidental.

I actually laugh. Things are funny. Conversations, I can have them. Somehow, they're not strangers anymore. At some point, the ice shield broke. Camaraderie flowed through my veins.

I was regretting this. I gave up everything: the chance to be a be a better athlete, the chance to become acquainted with people from all over the country, the chance to spend time with my dearest friends. I could have written, read, laughed with countless people. I gave up my jobs, my time, in essence, my senior summer, my last summer, my last chance at many things.

But yet I laugh, and I feel warm inside the dark, windowless lab I am confined to. I speak to only a few people, but somehow they offer me more than what hoards of people failed to offer me before. I feel comfortable there.

I sometimes wonder about the many people I didn't meet this year, due to my failure to return to several places. I sometimes wonder about what oddity I might have seen or met on my travels. I always wonder if I would be happier being an average kid, with average brains and an average life.

But yet I laugh, and I laugh with people I would have never imagined I'd have laughed with before, and though it's not many, not many at all, it still warms my soul. I've even met an oddity as well, a very sage-like old man with a tone of benevolence and innocent wonder incredulously unbroken, whose presence I always feel graces me. Then I know that if I had been an average kid, with average brains and an average life, none of this would have ever happened.

The other day my advisor visited and snapped a picture of our little group. I was embarrassed, but I couldn't help but think later that I really wanted a copy of that photo.

"I just want to be happy," I once said to myself, and then I blew out the candles.

I gave up so much. But maybe, just maybe, this is fate.