Riley

 

Adults have always seemed so sad to me. I’ve never been able to understand why, once we hit biological and emotional maturity, we seem to resign ourselves to a perpetual sorrow. Why are they so sad anyways? I didn’t want to become an adult, but all the same I seemed to lose the carefree happiness that once came so easily to me with each passing day. As though something were gnawing away at me from the inside, leaving emptiness. So I set out and reclaim my lost happiness, to look for something that made me happy.

It was a cool morning, somewhere in that place between the heat of summer and the cool wind of fall. I dragged my feet over the concrete steps over to a nearby diner. Everyone’s happy at diners, right? Besides, I could eat…

I stepped up to the hostess, a 20-something woman with a tightly wound bun in her hair and a look of pure apathy on her face.

“A table for one please?”

She gives me little more than a nod befitting a nihilistic teenager, but I follow her all the same. She doesn’t remark on my height, or youth, or lack of any visible guardians. I guess I’m an adult all the same to her, old enough to take responsibility for my own life. That makes one of us.

I slide into the cold leather booth seats and puzzle over today’s specials. Food usually makes me happy, it’s one of those biological mechanisms that’s supposed to make us feel good, like flipping a switch. If I just kept eating food would I feel happy all the time? My mind drifts to some loose concept of material dependency, before I decide to order a smoothie. Food always makes me feel better.

As I contemplate the necessity of ordering an extra side dish with my breakfast, Jasper slides into the seat across from me.

“I’m not talking to you.” I say. Whoops.

“So this is where you are? All alone by yourself, instead of coming to my funeral?”

“I don’t do well at funerals, it’s just a bunch of people crying and feeling sad. I can’t really handle that well.”

“Some friend you are.”

He vanishes as soon as the waitress arrives, a pink frothy drink in hand. Relieved, I take the straw in my mouth and begin to drink. It’s too sweet.

Don’t get me wrong, I like sweet drinks. I like milkshakes. But I ordered a smoothie. I was expecting a full explosion of fruity goodness and instead I was greeted with fat milky goodness. When you’re expecting a smoothie and you get a milkshake, well you don’t feel right. You didn’t get what you were expecting. And then you just feel bad because you tried to be healthy and instead you’re just shoveling a fattening dessert into your stomach. But you can’t ask for a refund because you’ve already started drinking it, and you’re really hungry so you end up downing half of it before you realize that you could’ve asked for it to be sent back to the kitchens. And you feel…bad…Maybe the secret to happiness is just to not expect anything. Then there’s no way life can disappoint you.

I’m interrupted from my deep reflection on milkshakes by Jasper again.

“You gonna share that?”

“The dead don’t drink” I say. The dead have no need to feel happy. They don’t do anything.

That’s it isn’t it, everything you do, you do either to keep yourself alive or to make yourself happy. It seems like such a simple instruction, so why do so many people have a hard time being happy. Why do I have such a hard time being happy?

I try to distract myself by looking around the diner, I see flickering neon lights that read “24/7: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Late Nite.” Diner speak, they’re to cool to spell night with a “gh.” The milkshake isn’t doing anything for me. I briefly consider asking for a beer alongside it, but I think that would just validate my unhappiness.

It never seems like anyone’s going through the same thing. Or maybe they are, and are just really good at hiding it. I don’t know which prospect is more depressing, the idea that I’m the only one who feels this bad, or the idea that everyone feels this bad and just has to hide it all the time. My gut tells me it’s the latter.

The milkshake fills me with a sickeningly sweet feeling in the pit of my stomach. The type of regret that comes from cheating on a diet or betraying a friend. I’m not hungry, and not happy.

I don’t think it’s sadness that’s consuming all of us. It’s the absence of contentment. A strange sort of ennui that dulls the senses and slows the heart. I never feel like myself when I’m like this, which I guess means I almost never feel like myself.

I left the diner feeling sick. Diners are overrated anyways, who ever got anything good out of a diner? Hemmingway? Song lyricists? The Greensboro sit-ins? Exactly, no one important.

 

Reviews

[Rei Cn]

Enjoyable read. This sound pretty interesting, and I like how I can relate to the feeling of the main character. You know, that inexplicable emptiness. I especially love this part, "Maybe the secret to happiness is just to not expect anything." I always hear that in various wordings, but it never gets old for me.

Anyway, nice work. Keep writing.

[Janelle]

Thank you so much, I did my best to explain the character's feelings as personally as possible so I'm glad it was able to resonate with you!

[D-Wizzel]

Is this a smaller part of a larger work? Because I really enjoyed reading this and would love to see more. I like how you turn a milkshake into a deep philosophical introspection, and the overall tone of the whole piece. Keep it up!

[Janelle]

You're very kind, thank you! This is actually the beginning of a piece that I was contemplating on fleshing out into a book. At this point I'm not sure if I'll churn out an entire novel based on the idea, but I definitely see myself building on the concepts. As for the milkshake, I'm glad you liked it, I was actually a little afraid it had gotten a little too rambly and incohesive, so I'm glad it made sense to someone, haha.

[D-Wizzel]

Most of my writing is very free flow, where I allow tangents to take me where they want. So the milkshake seemed like exactly that, and I've always felt like there's a charm to just flow of thought writing, especially when having to work around a theme. And you really should do something with this idea. I'd love to see more like it.

[Janelle]

Thank you, I'll be sure to look into it!