Just spitballing while I'm stuck on Obvious

ser-en-dip-i-ty

the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.

This is a story about being better.

I don't think it ends happily. I don't think I know how it ends at all.

My therapist told me that maybe, I can help myself figure it out if I tell someone. It's hard to do. It's hard because there's so much to tell, that I never know where or how to begin to tell it. People don't really understand. Not that I blame them, I really don't, because I don't understand either.

But I'm going to try to tell it how it is. How I know it. The version where I'm sure I'll paint you as the bad guy. Maybe it's you, or maybe it's me, but I'm more certain that it's the both of us together. I'll let someone else decide.

I'll start with the basics.

We met before kindergarten. By some chance when our subdivision was evacuated during the flood, the year we were four years old. When staying at the hotel, our families met in the elevator, and later my mom will tell me that she was so unbelievably grateful that there was another child my age that she could send me off to play with. One of my sister's, or Chloe's grandmother would watch us in the pool or out on the playground for the four days we spent in that downtown hotel.

And then Chloe was gone and forgotten as summer resumed.

At the time, I had no idea, never would have even had the ability to comprehend the impact that the redhaired little girl a few blocks away would have on me in the future.

Eventually, autumn came kindergarten year, I was enrolled and distantly, I recognized the redhaired girl I spent time with previously. That made us friends by default. However, in an environment that provided more children, it became increasingly evident that we didn't have a lot in common, but it was too early on for things like that to be of any concern. Chloe liked dress-up, and coloring. I liked to play with the hand puppets, especially the dinosaurs, and I liked to play in the sandbox.

The sandbox was somewhere Chloe liked as well. She became a different kind of happy in the sandbox; even if someone asked her what her favorite activity was in kindergarten; she'd say dress-up, but her eyes told a different story. Chloe liked to build. And then, when she was done, she liked to let me knock down her castle, and then she could start something new.

If anyone asked me, that was Chloe's favorite spot.

But we were different. She was soft-spoken, the picture-perfect example of the little girl some mother's- like my own- would dream about. Big blue eyes and wild red hair, dresses and a contagious laugh. I was tomboyish; too small for my age, and uncomfortable in the clothes my mother would pick out for me. Loud, and too keen, yet shy. Opposites.

Our friendship remained intact, but there were other children that eventually I gravitated towards.

Chloe was always in my background, though. With the occasional playdate, and an invite to every birthday party.

As time went on, our differences became more drastic. The first, and most prominent being our social standing. Chloe became well-liked, and it was known that she was popular, even as a young child. Pretty and charismatic, that's the perfect recipe. I laid low. I had music and books.

Once, in fifth grade, I heard a crying in the bathroom. It was at the end of lunch hour, and I had rushed to try to get in before the bell rang. But with one hand pressed into the green door, opening just a crack; I stalled when I heard the sniffling. I'd never been one to handle emotions well, not even my own- for whatever reason, my capabilities for that part of interaction were botched somewhere along the way. I won't get into that part right now.

I'm not sure how I knew, but it sounded like Chloe. Despite the fact that there was no sound, other than the nonstop sniffling. And that was enough to make me push through my own personal sense of awkwardness, so I went forwards anyway, with caution. And my instinct was right. Chloe Beale, alone in the washroom across from Mrs. Fraser's classroom, leaning into the door of the far stall with her little arms crossed over her chest. Blue eyes dart up to meet mine as I enter, and I'm distinctly surprised by the way she doesn't try to hide- not in any way- when I see her. Unashamed of her show of emotion, she simply sniffs sharply once again as she takes in my presence.

"What's wrong?" I ask her, after a moments reluctance. Another reason why we're opposites. I would have swiped away my tears and told the person intruding on me to go away.

Chloe wipes the tear running down her cheek haughtily with the back of her hand. And then she huffs, dropping her hands away from the emblazoned picture of Justin Timberlake on her shirt and clenches her jaw. "CJ likes Trista." It's muttered. "Not me."

And I'm thrown.

I remember thinking that I knew I was easily offended, and often irritable, and occasionally I would get upset about irrational things. But one thing I didn't understand was crying about a boy.

Especially one as ugly as CJ.

Our friendship drifted apart after that. Distant, barely present, but nothing ever happened to make it break apart. I wasn't particularly bothered by it. I had other friends; Fat Amy, Jessica, Cynthia Rose. These were the friends I blossomed into middle school with. There was more history that happened in those years before, but right now, I won't worry about all of that. Little would I know that Chloe would fall towards our group, and so much like that first time we met- all those years ago- I had no idea just how much it would affect me.

It only gets more complicated from here.