I looked up my family tree and found I was the sap
-Rodney Dangerfield.
There is no way to fully describe the realization that you don’t fit the mold you had for yourself.
Again, the words to tell you exactly what the epiphany of losing your self-image. The image you have carved for the past ten years. The quiet kid earbuds tucked in ignoring the world. The college speakeasy goer. The modest well-mannered gentleman from across the hall that always sends Christmas cards with wine.
Soft Spoken glasses wearing, librarian summer intern sophistication that only comes from being well read. Yeah, and not so modest about the humblebrag either. This sensible stoicism. Your bread and better. Your life's work and achievement. No small feat to laugh at being the youngest
Professor on campus. Well, at least that’s what all the other TA’s said.
Picture perfect dream life of a perfect childhood prodigy. That was until she took the kids to her grandmother’s for Thanksgiving. Before, she got the fourth promotion at the accounting firm downtown at twenty-three. Before she changed careers and decided she wanted to be a painter and her writer boyfriend knocked her up. Yeah, you were hot shit once. Before, the fifth kid and C-section scars. Before, you hid your skeletons under the bed. On the off chance, a seance be needed to purge last nights one-night thing. Yeah, they always spiral into flings.
He was their beautiful little boy. Sweet and kind. Hardworking, like the ants that picked apart his rabbit that summer. Devasted little soul he was. He cried for nearly two weeks, and not that loud cry. It was that quiet cry. The one when you’re trying to hide from the world. He was their gentle boy. Till he ran off to India to find himself. Told the wrong cab driver he was American. Before he never got off that plane that was supposed to come home and you received that postcard. The one with a picture of her.
