Title: She Wasn't Like Me
Rating: K+
Author: Singing Violin
Series: Girl Meets World
Summary: In "Girl Meets 1961" there was something about the way May Clutterbucket looked at Rosie McGee. This is what it was, and an explanation of why she left.
Disclaimer: Neither girl, nor the world that girl meets, are mine.
On December 14, 1961, I fell in love. Her name was Rosie, and she had straight, dark hair and sparkling eyes that shone with innocence and wonder. She walked into my life and immediately my heart fluttered. I joked with her, called her weird. She didn't take it badly. I was hiding what I really felt. She wasn't like me. Nobody was like me. That's why I was running. Someday, I hoped, I would find someone like me. But I didn't want just someone. I wanted her, and I wanted her to be like me.
I sang for her. I sang for the whole cafe, technically, but I was only thinking of her. She responded the way I might expect: supportive of a potential friend, but nothing more. I saw her react to the song of the man who sang after me. He had a deep, dark voice and a thick accent, and I could see from the way she looked at him that she was smitten. She wasn't like me.
She showed me the journal she was writing in. Like I told the cowboy singer, she was an observer of humanity. What I wanted to say was that she was the most beautiful person—the most beautiful soul I had ever seen. But I couldn't say that. She wasn't like me. When I saw what she wrote about me—she called me the girl with the long, blonde hair—I thought for a moment that she could be like me. But with one gaze at the young man with the deep voice, she shattered my heart into a million pieces. She may have been an observer of humanity, but she hadn't seen through to my feelings yet, and the longer I stayed with her, the more likely she'd be to notice.
She wanted to be friends. I couldn't do it. I couldn't stand by this woman for the rest of my life, perhaps be her maid-of-honor while she married someone else, forever hiding my true feelings. I couldn't do it. But I was too scared even to tell her why. More terrible than never seeing her again would be to have her know what I was and hate me for it. I couldn't take that risk. So, I told her I'd be right back, and then, while she wasn't looking, I snuck out. But before I left, I gave her my guitar. I couldn't keep it; it would forever remind me of her, of the one whom I loved who could never love me back.
After that, I chased men, or rather, let them chase me. Hoping, each time, to find solace in the arms of someone I was supposed to be with, to forget the one I wanted, to forget what I couldn't have. Eventually, I got pregnant, and found myself raising the baby alone. I thought about naming a child after that weird woman I fell in love with at first sight, but I couldn't have the constant reminder of her on my lips every time I called my offspring. Not when I wasn't raising the child with her.
I wondered if she was raising her own kids. If they had a father in their lives. If, perhaps, one of them was like me. Someday, perhaps, our descendents will meet, and fall in love, and they will be the same, and it will be okay. But for now, I just try not to think about the little hole in my heart that was left because she was not like me. After all, I have a child to raise—and if I do it right, maybe the child won't be like me.