“Get a house in the hills they said, it’s super peaceful they said. God It’s like living in a cemetery”.
Natalie sighed as she looked out the window. The green trees were a part of a club that the brown grass was apparently excluded from, further signs that the California drought was in full swing. She turned her attention to the lone road that leads to her reclusive cul-de-sac, expecting to see something other than the same 10 cars go back and forth between their own bubbles and the rest of the world.
It was technically summer but ever since she finished grad school all the days seemed to bleed together. She had plans to go out and move to the city and start interning and some big fancy law firm, but her social anxiety put a solid road block in front that dream. She had tried it for a bit, the city that is, but the constant influx of sensory information proved too much for her.
She felt like a failure.
Bored with the window she walked over to her kitchen to make tea. Scattered on the countertop were get-well cards and heartfelt notes sent to a then recovering Natalie, curled on the floor of her apartment after being torn down by the place she tried to call home. She got some water going in her electric kettle and spent too much time getting caught up in the past. New York was never home, she tried to force herself out of her comfort zone and it blew up in her face.
In the midst of her reflection, her phone rang. It was her mom.
“Hi mom, yes I’m still alive”. Natalie answered with her signature sarcasm.
“Haha, very funny Nat. I just called to see how you are doing.” Her mom had, of course, spent years building up a resistance to her daughters attitude.
“I’m doing fine I guess. Everything here just stays the same, so at the very least there isn’t much chance for me to get worse.”
“Honey, you need to take this seriously. You got a job, you have a house, and more importantly you have your life. Have you even been going to therapy?”
Natalie’s mom always had a habit of jumping straight to the point, it was the thing that Natalie admired most about her.
“Yes mom, I go every week. I take these dumb pills and eat these damn fruits and hold hands with my neighbors to pray the darkness away.” She was being a bit harsh but this was the first interaction Natalie had had with a real person all week.
“Oh come on you know I am not trying to micro-manage your life, can you please just be honest with me?”
Natalie gave her what she asked for.
“I feel like I failed mom, I talked all that talk just to end up exactly where I started. My friends are all starting their lives and it feels like I am just stuck in some timeless dome waiting for everything to pass me by. It sucks. I want to be better, I want to leave, I want…I want to be proud of myself again.”
There was a silence before her mom answered. “Nat, you chose to come back all on your own. You chose to take time and look after yourself rather than bash your head against the same wall for the rest of your life. Maybe things seem stagnant now, but it's not like your life is over. You fell down, and sooner or later you will get back up."
Natalie knew her mom was right, but it was hard to remember something so obvious when all you have around you are obscured bits and pieces of recovery.
“I know you are right mom, and I promise I am working on it…I would just appreciate if we could just act like things were normal for once”
“Nat, you're overthinking your whole life and I am just trying to help you in anyway I can. Things have never been more normal for us."
They both chuckled. It felt good to laugh, felt good to feel some sense of connection in isolated house in the barren hills. She sat at the counter for another hour, just happy to have a reason to laugh.
Later that night she heard that California should be out of its drought soon. If the whole state could find some sense of rejuvenation after such a dire crisis, maybe she could too.
End.
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