Ava (I)

Ava had a tough time making eye contact. She constantly swung her weight from one foot to another, although discreetly enough to go unnoticed. She had been there for only thirty minutes, but it had already started to feel like an eternity. She always hated such events. She tried her best to look interested and cheerful in her simple, fitted black dress, but she always felt awkward in social situations and would generally talk uncommonly little for fear of saying anything inappropriate. And this time was no different. It wasn’t that she didn’t like people. Ava loved being around them, studying their facial features and gestures, their words and the way they interacted, making up stories in her mind about their backgrounds, their darkest fears and their guilty pleasures. She found comfort in her imagination, because there she could make everybody be whoever she wanted, but most importantly, she could escape the reality she hated so much and just be somebody else, somebody better.

She started to think of imagination as her closest ally at an early age, when she realised that she needed something to help her fight her demons. And she had a handful of those. They came in all shapes and sizes, telling her she was just not enough: not talented enough to pursue her dream of becoming a painter, not good enough to continue with her dancing career, not driven enough to do a PhD. She would often put her headphones on, play her favourite music, which almost always consisted of some sobby Latino ballads, and replay hurtful conversations in her mind. She would then change the storyline to her advantage, so it would hurt less. She would imagine being smart, fierce and admired, and having all the right answers. She would make the people who had left her feel sorry for bringing her down and being so awfully inconsiderate of her feelings.

This was her coping mechanism, the only one she could think of, and it seemed to work sometimes. But most of the time, it didn’t. And even though she was remarkably smart, all the years of judgement and extreme criticism made her so sure of her mediocrity at everything, that she couldn’t remember a single moment when she felt special. Or anything, really. In fact, most of the time, she felt like nothing. And she spent all her time trying to hide it.

That weirdly warm autumn night had felt wrong from the very beginning. Ava felt strangely uneasy as she retouched her makeup after work, but she couldn’t place a finger on why. She chalked it up to her exhaustion, secretly wondering if this could get her out of having to attend this event. But she promised. And she hated breaking her promises. Her father always used to say: ‘In the end, all we have as humans is our word’, and Ava took that very seriously. So, she pulled herself together and put on the dress she had chosen for this event a couple of weeks ago. She remembered how much thought she put into this, trying to find something that was rather elegant than sexy, because even if she was flattered by the fact that people found her attractive, she wanted them to respect her for her intelligence and her skills.