22 Mar 2025, 05:43
What A Waste Of A Lovely Night.
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"I stay because I see you."
Oh, how painfully ominous those words alone felt. Sandy knew she was seen, dreadfully aware of how embarrassing the current scene must be - some puffy eyed freak sobbing to a stranger about stupid stuff. That did not mean whoever this was knew her though. This stranger, a beautiful knight to save the day even over just a spider, did not know that she wasn't something to be seen. This stranger did not witness the day her glasses got slapped off her face, nor did she witness her many events of sobbing over dropped toast or a squished worm on the sidewalk. Wonderful anchor, plagued with a sense of duty, forced to keep a boat in one stable place. Isn't that such a sickening role to place yourself into? Sandy can't imagine stopping every second for the nearest stranger who just happened to be upset, can't imagine stopping for anyone like her. If she were to see herself from another's perspective, she was almost certain that she'd walk away.
In the midst of such dull thoughts, her bottom lip begins to quiver, though she can't tell if it's more stable than the rest of her shaking body or not. In some form, along the way and slipped between the cracks of her own emotions, there's a numbness to most of her body. Like she's carrying a dead limb, the flesh rotted and no longer with feeling. Isn't that how it always is, though? Carrying herself despite the rotted exterior? A zombie, unfeeling corpse with no motivations other than to survive on through any means possible.
"Do you really see me? Cause-" Sandy's voice is small, occasionally cut off by her own sharp breaths, "-I sure can't. Ahah... No- no glasses."
It's a pitiful attempt at comedy, something to distract the other girl, but she can't seem to muster much else up. Every other thought, the imagination of laughter and drying her tears with her sleeve until her eyes are sore with the frantic rubbing, an ideal world of her never inconveniencing someone this sweet with her own problems, allowing her to laugh and enjoy her night rather than being a bottomless pit of issues. Sandy isn't sure she ever wants this girl to see all the way down, she isn't sure she wants her own little fairytale to realize that there isn't anything human in her. What is there all the way down if not nothing? She's flesh and bones, skin neatly wrapped around in the facade of humanity, but what is she beneath that? What is she when she's alone in her room? What is she when there's nobody around and it's just her and that one spot of paint on her bedroom wall that just doesn't quite match up?
If not a service to someone, even to herself, what's the point of being her? Sandy knows that this person, amazing and lovely in all senses, will never look at her the same. Acting was always the beginning of resentment, and if the two were to ever see eachother once more, catch themselves in a conversation; what is there to discuss than the empty void she shared? There's no space for apologies, nothing to stop this downward spiral that she can already anticipate happening.
But Sandy doesn't want it to stop. In some cruel way, selfish and so entirely unlike what her momma would love about her, Sandy wants to keep this moment to herself. She wants to lock it away, press it tight against books that she loved and will never touch again, wants to know that somewhere in the back of her mind that someone cared. She wants to remember that humanity is still around her, that love is in everything, and that strangers are the most capable of that. There's humanity in everything a new person does, before you know who they are. Humanity in stopping to help with a spider, humanity in sitting with someone you've never talked to before, everything and everywhere. Love is beautiful, and while Sandy can never truly grasp the extent of it, she can sit with it in the moment and allow herself to lean against it's touch. Just a moment, nothing longer.
A small sniffle returns her to the present. Beyond dread and disgust, that horrible repetitive pulsing in her chest and the violence of how aggressively it taps against her ribcage, Sandy is here. Sandy is here, and there's another person, and she can't block them out forever - especially not after spilling her guts to them.
With the nudge of the stranger shifting closer, Sandy slumped against the other girl. Her body still felt weak, the damning aftermath of so much distress with the mixture of crying. It was embarrassing, almost, if not for the fact that she had just been so alienated from her own being to hardly even process the fact that she as an emotional human existed. It was almost like she was actually just some little kid and not a damned spirit who should be sent to hell for simply existing. Technically she still kinda felt that way, but if she were to squint (which she did basically all the time anyways) and tilt her head like a bit to the left, it'd seem normal to her.
"You're too nice, you know? Way too nice to me..." Sandy drawls, something tired lingering in the slow-paced words, "I-I don't know you, you don't know me... Kinda funny, hahah... Eugh, that felt so awkward... I'm sorry, again, and um... I'm sorry for not even introducing myself this entire time. Was kinda too busy, uh...-" A break to sniffle, wipe her tears from her eyes, "-Being me. Yeah, yeah. Being, uh, whatever I am. I-I know what I am, I just kinda... Wish this wasn't your first impression of it. I-It's like contestants on those horrible reality shows, introduced with their worst times. Um... Sandy, I'm... Sandy. I don't think I'm on reality television, but I can't confirm that whatever this was wasn't some... Ahah, poorly made little angsty fanfic. Ain't that an embarrassing idea? Us just being fanfic characters? I-I don't know what I'm talking about. I wish I did."
And just like that, after basically being dragged by her ankles back to reality through her shitty jokes, Sandy's average awkwardness returns. She's exhausted, pitifully sniffling in the arms of someone she had never met before this, and yet she still saves room to ask useless questions and make a total fool of herself through obscure references that ninety eight percent of the school population wouldn't understand. If that was any confirmation of anything, though, it meant that she didn't entirely lose her flair. That was about the only thing that kept her interesting, made people like her. She wouldn't like herself half as much if she wasn't so stupid with her words.
"I wish a lot of things. I wish that there wasn't a spider. You saw a spider, right..? I'm sure you did..."
2:50 ─────────────────────────────────────────────●─ -2:56
INTERACTING: @Elena Clark