The Future Perfect 2011-12-07
In the bright lights of the stage she feels alright. Like nothing can break her, not when these people are around her. Invincible.
The lights turn off.
They're so beautiful and perfect when they are all together as a group, the past forgotten even though it isn't. When they're together, they not only sing, dance, and smile together, they think together, breathe together, feel together.
Then they fall apart.
It's inevitable, she thinks, that they return to the same old tracks of history; grudges, regrets, resentments.
She's always been one to reach and long for the future perfect. Perfect life, perfect happiness, perfect love. It's what makes her strong and it's what makes her weak. Strong for her ambition to go higher, further, better.
Weak for her inability to live in the now.
There are moments when she forgets to long for something else, and in those moments, her smile could light up the whole town, her love could cure a heartless soul and she feels happy; not fine, not alright, not satisfied, not great, happy.
Then she remembers and the anxiety and restlessness saturate her.
When they're not on the stage breathing as one being, they're a very bitter and broken bunch of people. She can't understand how they're still all together after all the outbursts and conflicts that the bitterness under the surface has caused, because surely they're not all that forgiving? Ignorance really is bliss and time heals anything, apparently.
Maybe that's a family: love and hate are just flipsides of the same coin.
Her and Rachel being friends would have seemed insane a year ago. For a long time, she was jealous of everything Rachel had: a family, Finn, talent, passion, an ambitious plan for the future. But now, when Rachel pays the price of doing anything for the future perfect, and she sees herself in the reflection of Rachel's eyes - they're not that different.
They say it's lonely on the top, well, it's lonely getting there too.
She's never had a best friend. Lucy didn't have friends, but in hindsight, neither did the girl Lucy turned into. The secrets whispered to Santana and Brittany during sleepovers weren't any secrets: she didn't open up and sure as hell didn't let anything slip. And Santana and Brittany, there was always something there, something she couldn't see and didn't understand yet. When she was a younger Quinn, she wondered why she never found a best friend, because that was the only thing missing from her perfection of straight A:s, head cheerleader, quarterback boyfriend and daddy's girl. Rachel says her mysterious history was the daunting charm that kept people admiring, fearing and respecting her.
It's relief she feels when they realize they're best friends. Content. Happy.