Growing up, my mom's best friend Maggie was a big part of my life. They had met in high school when Maggie moved to Michigan from Tennessee, and had stayed close over the years.
I saw Maggie just the other day. It had been awhile since I had seen her, and it had been even longer since I really saw her; where I took the time to think about how she's really doing and how her life is really treating her. I just couldn't shake that feeling. That feeling of not-quite-pity but definitely a sadness.
When I was a kid, she was almost an icon to me. It was impossible for a nine year old girl to not look up to her.
She was tall, thin, and beautiful. She always had a tan and a big smile. She wore a pink string bikini on her back deck, and always untied the strings when she laid on her stomach so they wouldn't leave any lines. She had a doberman with a German name and a long haired Chihuahua named Meathead. She collected unicorns, always wore dangly earrings, listened to U2, and drove her burgandy Chevette way too fast, with the crystals hanging from the mirror whipping around in the breeze, swirling around the smoke from her Virginia Slim. Her southern accent came out in random spurts, and she baked the best biscuits I'd ever had.
She was married young, and divorced young, and became what I recognize now as a serial dater. She had short bursts of relationships, burning bright too quickly. They always seemed to fade away just as the next man walked through the door.
I read my first Cosmo at her house, and I'm sure I probably blushed.
In a lot of ways this woman was my hero and she treated me like her small friend instead of just a kid.
When I was 11, my mom became pregnant. It wasn't planned but my parents were happy. Four months later, Maggie was also knocked up, planning a wedding, and seemingly happy with the man that she'd been dating for 5 months who would soon be her husband. My mom and Maggie were overjoyed that they could share this experience and raise their babies together. It was, afterall, what Maggie had been looking for: the ultimate goal in life. Husband, baby, white fence, an apple tree in the yard. She was getting what she had dreamed about since she was a little girl.
Fast forward sixteen years, and I'm standing in my parents kitchen 5 days ago, making small talk with Maggie and her 16 year old daughter. I suddenly missed the old Maggie.
The happy Maggie.
I don't want to speak badly of her, but she seems so... different. So completely opposite of the woman I used to worship. I guess that's what happens. Time, age, experience. It changes us all day by day.
Her smile seemed forced, her body no longer thin. I've heard she's been wrestling with depression, and claims to have found God. She works 80 hour weeks, and I wonder if she still cries on her birthdays.
Her daughter is a friend of mine of Facebook and has written on more than one occasion how she hates her mother but loves her father.
She drives a nice care and lives in a beautiful, huge stick built log cabin in the middle of the woods. Money is not a worry. Her marriage is intact, her daughter is Miss All-American. Popular, funny, pretty.
But all I could think of was how empty her eyes were, how alone she seemed to be, standing in the kitchen that night.

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Somedays, I feel like a failure. I'm 27 years old and I'm not where I thought I'd be. If you would have asked me at 17 where I'd be ten years from now, I'm pretty sure I would have muttered something about a husband, maybe a kid, a house with a pool. I don't know if I would have said that because it was expected or because I wanted it, but I know it was what I thought back then. I've never been one for fairy tale magic or princes on white steeds, but I guess I thought I wouldn't be so... alone.
But I am. Most of the time, I'm OK with that. But then there are those instances that society's idea of normal seeps into the cracks in the wall I've built and I feel like I'm lacking something. In a small town like this, ovaries dry up by age 30 and I'm almost positive all the good men are taken.
All my friends are married, or close to it. Most have kids.
I feel pressure and I detest it. I reject it. But like I said... It seeps in. Just a drop now and then. But it poisons me a little.
My best friend's daughter is 8 now. I've known her since she was born, and I'm close to her. I wonder sometimes what she sees in me. I'm tall, thin, tan. I have 2 cats and maybe drive my little black car too fast. I buy her cool, cute jewelry and sing along to Gwen Stefani with her in the car. I date men, overlap them, fall in love with the wrong ones. I have tattoos and smoke out on the deck. I blow dry her hair, then straighten it, then put my lipstick on her, tell her she's the most beautiful sight I've ever seen.
Does she look up to me? Does she want to be like me when she grows up, or like her mom? I don't even know which one I want yet.
The grass is pretty green on this side, but looks even greener over there, when I have no one to come home to.
Maggie has taught me a lot, but the most important thing I learned from her was just 5 days ago. Just because you seek to find future happiness doesn't mean you'll find it. I think I'll stick to trying to be happy now. This minute. Maybe the next minute will be just as good.