The Way I Loved You

3. Mirrorball

On ‘mirroball’ the sixth track off of Taylor Swift’s surprise eighth studio album, folklore, she compares herself to a reflective disco ball; she sees herself as reflecting all the personalities around her, she entertains others, and she shatters like glass when her heart is broken. [Source: Genius Lyrics]

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(Not so) FFAEK: Emily once cried listening to this song at a dark night staring at her ceiling. Then she felt stupid about it.

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Chapter Three: Mirrorball

Leanna Miller dropped me off at the intersection. From there, she drove left, and I had to walk right to go home. I should have gotten a driver's license last summer, but I was too lazy. It was my fault that I waited for mom to have time for me, when she went off to teach summer classes.

I would learn driving this summer from Leanna's dad since I was done waiting for my mom. My other parent, who should be my dad, was missing in action for seventeen years of my life (that was my whole life if you were wondering), and the only proof of his existence was biology. I was definitely born because of the union of a sperm and an egg. That sperm had to come from some dude. The other proof was a yellowed out Polaroid I found in our storage accidentally when I was looking for an old scarf that mom had thrown out.

He looked handsome enough in it; square jawed, big eyes, with dark hair and a smile that looked heartbreakingly devious. He had his arms wrapped around my mother, who was staring up at him adoringly. The detail was that both of them were touching her ballooned stomach, which I was inhabiting during that time, I guessed.

We never talked about him. We never brought up the fact that he existed. All I knew was that I grew up in the same house we were living in now. My mom always had the same job. We were a pair, the two of us, living by ourselves, only relying on ourselves. My grandmother died when I was fifteen. That was the only time I got to know my mother actually had a mother. We drove to Wisconsin to see her off towards her journey to nirvana, and we didn't talk about it either.

I looked at the pavement as I walked. Our neighborhood was small, a few rows of houses side by side, small but picturesque and organized.

I loved this little walk. I would never tell this to anyone. I liked me-time, alone-time more than I cared to admit. Anyone would think I ought to get lonely, being the only child living with a job-holder mother who had irregular hours. But that wasn't the case with me.

I thrived when I was alone. I loved the exact moment I got to get out of Leanna's car and say goodbye to human interaction for the day. It took so much energy to make conversation, to make eye contact, to keep it going once I made it.

Being alone meant I could read as many books as I wanted, watch the same movies, listen to the same songs again and again while daydreaming about the distant future. In it, I was a happy girl living the happily ever after that I knew was sure to come.

Despite being introverted and less interesting than all my classmates, I had a group of friends. In middle school, my best friend was TJ, who moved out of the state right when high school started.

My other friend Leanna and I had bonded over Six of Crows, the book series, randomly one day in sophomore year. At the start, we were always two peas in a pod, agreeing with whatever the other said. Even though she was the prettiest and somewhat the coolest girl of the school, she didn't have any close friends. I filled up that role pretty nicely.

Then somehow I ended up being friends with random girls in random classes. A conversation about a book, or a song, or how boring the teacher was, or how the homeworks was the bane of our existence—conversations like this brought me closer to people who seemed to enjoy my company. Or rather people who didn't hate it— Erika, Uyen, Malti, Azra, and of course Leanna. I sometimes observed all of us when they were busy laughing over each other's jokes and having fun and wondered to myself how I had made friends at all.