Perhaps

I stand in front of a smudged full length mirror, silently scrutinizing every part of my body that is accentuated in the Marilyn Monroe gown that I wear.

"I really like that one. It looks so good, girl! And black…it like…it slims you down. Do you know what I mean?"

January babbles on somewhere behind me while I make a mental note to drop a few pounds before prom.

After trying on a few dresses in her bedroom, trying not to mind the zippers not closing all the way on some of them, I curl up on her cushiony bed in sweatpants, scroll through my Facebook on my iPod, and listen to her talk about her latest boyfriend. I feel comfortable. Every negative thought that had crossed my mind about her recently was temporarily forgotten.

"I feel like I'm kinda like, stringing him along, and I guess after I move, I'll just break it off with him. And he keeps asking' me, "Jan, my friend is tellin' me you been cheatin'. I want you to be honest with me, babe. If you wanna break up with me than tell me. If we're gonna break up, I want you to break up with me because I don't wanna hurt you, da-da-da-da-da.' (January's version of "blah blah blah") And I don't know why he keeps accusin' me of somethin' I didn't do."

I take a silver Nikon camera down from where it hangs on the wall, and absentmindedly play with it. A Nikon N55. A 35 mm. A nice one, too.

"If he keeps saying that, it's like he's pushing you to break up with him. And since he keeps claiming that you're 'cheating,' that probably means that he's just trying to switch the blame around because he's probably the one doing something wrong."

I let the words hang between us, half-expecting a disagreement.

"I know, right? That's what I said! But I think I'm just not gonna tell him that I don't have feelings for him until I move. Because he's already said that if I hurt him, he'll go back to his old ways. Like, the drugs and stuff."

"How do you know he ever stopped?" I meet her gaze, and her blue eyes light up at my suggestion, and I know it's never even occurred to her.

"That's so true! I never thought of that!" she raves, and I know that she knows that I'm probably right. But she won't break it off any sooner because of it.

We sit in silence for a few moments, and I listen to our moms talking out on the back porch. I sip on my cherry-pomegranate V8 juice and scratch the top of her dog's head. It feels like summer.

And summer feels like contentment.

Feeling content with January comes as a surprise, and I know it shouldn't.

After going home, I find this incredible sadness nestled inside of me that had stayed out of sight until I had had time to let my brain start going into overdrive again. Let myself wonder how it can be both so easy and so difficult to feel happy. And it's a weird sadness, this feeling of longing. But not longing for another person. Longing for myself.

I've become something hollow, a shell. Perhaps a glass. A vulnerable glass on the countertop, knowing it has no other choice but to feel the chill of other people purring themselves inside. Letting everything inside of them fill up everything inside of me, until they tilt their head back and drink it all back inside. Including pieces of me.

Or perhaps I am the liquid, taking the shape of whatever container I am put inside of. The cynic. The bitch. The good friend. The funny girl. The miserable girl. The life of the party. The wallflower. And underneath those facades that I am poured into at the hands of other people, I am as transparent and tasteless as water. But in all actuality, I haven't always been that way.

I guess some people would tell me I do it to myself. And perhaps I do. But maybe after having so many people take tiny bits of your optimism, of your sanity, of your common sense--simply because they believe that they need it more than you do--maybe that is when you become this way.

When you become empty.

Sometimes, I feel like I should have this Hollywood moment where I meet someone who makes me feel less empty. Like a friend. Or a mentor. Or a lover. Anyone who makes me feel like they and I are two different people, not one person and their involuntary yet obedient little attachment. Their shadow, a ghost of someone who may or may not have existed once, a transparent shape that they find it so easy to pour their own reflection into.

Why must they think that the meaning of a friend is to take the feet of another person and shove them into their own shoes, not even considering that they had interrupted that person's own journey in the process?

Is that what has happened to me?

It seems that the only friend I've come across who was willing to attempt understanding me and fixing up all the broken parts of my mindset is Symphony. And as much as I love her, it seems that instead of making me feel less empty, she just makes me feel like I am empty for a reason. If that makes sense.

Honestly, my friends are good people. They are lost teenagers, and when they look at me, they may not see that empty ghost. Maybe they see the wisdom stored in my brain, the secrets behind surviving adolescence that I somehow can simultaneously know and not apply to my life, and they know that I can help them. And who can blame them? If someone could help me too, I'd want the answers.

So where do I find my own answers?

Perhaps I already know them.