Live Metanoia

It’s a small cafe that serves brunch and coffee where they meet. Old friends catching up and reigniting their friendship.

“Are you okay?” She asks her friend, finally acknowledging how quiet her friend has been. How supportive and funny she has been as she has gushed about her life but her friend hasn’t yet returned the favor.

“No. I’m not. ” Her friend says firmly, her smile sad and her eyes shooting down to the coffee cup she rotates between her hands.

It’s empty, the coffee cup. Her friend
doesn’t drink coffee so she’s been playing with it the whole time.

Her friend’s eyes dart back up to hers and she sees it. The yawing emptiness of someone in great pain.

“I’m perpetually sad all the time.”
Her friends huffs a jilted laugh at her own statement and waves a hand as to dismiss it,

“Honestly I teeter in between pissed off and devastated at God.”

She shifts in her seats and tilts her head at her friend, “What do you mean?”

Her friend shifts as well, releasing the empty coffee cup and picking up her fork from their late breakfast. She stabs a piece of her waffle and swirls it around the left over syrup on her plate as she collects her thoughts.

“I sometimes think that I lived a better life than the one I’m currently in,” her friend starts, “That I had a great love and life in my life previously- before this one, and now what I’m currently experiencing is the other side. The lonely side. Where I don’t experience any great love or connection and I wander the earth in solitude and hurting.”

She sits back as her friend tells her this. God, the pain in her voice makes her heart drop. She goes to reach across the table as if to reach for her friends hand, however her friends eyes dart to hers in warning as she moves her hands away.

“I don’t say that for pity.” Her friend spits out sharply. “It’s just how I’ve felt, and what I have believed for awhile now.”

Her friend swallows continuing, “this leads me to be pissed off at God sometimes wandering what lesson this is supposed to teach me? And I know that some believe God doesn’t teach lessons in that way, but maybe he does?”

“If God knew me, and choose me, and knew what plans he had for me before I was even born – why in the ever loving hell am I so alone?”

Her friend’s voice cracks and she quickly takes a sip of her water,

“I get irrationally angry wondering what I have done to deserve this. To never be the first chosen in this life. To always be the girl that’s picked last or not picked at all. Then I become sad and resolute. Is this the path I am to walk this time around? Will my next life be better because I have felt so endlessly hallow in this one?”

Her friends eyes are haunted and far away as she says this. She blinks a couple times and laughs- it’s a broken sound.

“Or maybe I’m just being dramatic and silly”, her friend shakes her head as to dismiss the baring of her soul, like it never happened.

She watches her friend as she spears left over fruit in the fruit cup she ordered with her fork and pops a grape in her mouth. Her friend glances up at her and the light has returned to her eyes, but she notices her smile doesn’t reach them, and she smiles tentatively back.

She sees it though – her friend packing that sadness away, burying it deep within herself. It makes her deeply uncomfortable, this rawness her friend exposed to her. She’s not sure what to do with it.

“Maybe,” She starts, “ there’s a connection out there for you. And while you are waiting for it, while you are reaching for it, wanting it, or even needing it, it’s not yet ready for you? Maybe it has to develops some on its own first to be more prepared for what you have to offer?”

Her friend stares at her. “Well if that’s the case they need to hurry the hell up. I ain’t getting any younger.”

They both snort in agreement.

“Maybe you should just get a cat and call it a day.” she tells her, slinging back the last of her mimosa.

The champagne has settled in the bottom of the orange juice, and there’s a weird aftertaste to it. She makes a face, grimacing as it leaves a residual taste in the back of her throat.

Her friend stares at her incredulously.

She stares back and then shrugs as if to say, ‘what can you do?’

They then both burst out laughing and continue chatting about happier, mundane things. As if the slip up of vulnerability never happened.

She doesn’t ask about the sadness her friend feels.

Her friend doesn’t bring it up again.

They are just reacquainting after all, and who wants to think about heavy things so early in a re-blossoming friendship ?

-Kaycee