Jigsaws and Building Bricks

Vanessa Smiatek

by Vanessa Smiatek

Story

Have you ever watched someone lose their edge?

Hannah was turning 30 this year and more and more people she grew up with were settling down. Most of them were just acquaintances on her social media feeds. She scrolled through their wedding pictures, mostly indifferent. There were no hard feelings. They were getting the fairytale that had once seemed so obligatory. But times, opinions and options change.

As she finished her beer and ordered another, a familiar voice behind her said: “Make it two.” The voice belonged to Nate, the friend she had been waiting for. A friend she made while demonstrating as a teenager. They later went to so many that it was hard to say which ones had been in favour and which had been against something. But she still cherished those memories of marching alongside each other wishing to change the world.

The Nate that was standing now before her looked well but different. The messy waves that used to hang down to his shoulders or were tied in a messy bun were cut short into tidy shiny curls, and he was wearing regular black shoes instead of the flip-flops she had met him in.

When the beers arrived, she raised her glass: “Congratulations on your engagement.” Both of them smiled awkwardly. Life was busy, and they didn’t quite know where to pick up from. Admittedly, they had both moved past the days of drawing signs in the middle of the night. But they had moved in very different directions. He found a steady job, met a nice girl, joined a local soccer club, and was planning to buy a house in the area. Hannah, on the other hand, changed her job and the city she lived in, whenever she felt as if she stopped growing wherever she was. Both were content with their own lives, but the contrast irked them.

Nate was the first to have his tongue loosened by the beer: “Shouldn’t you also at least think of settling down? It must be lonely like this, without community.”

Hannah laughed and replied tauntingly: “I’ll take that loneliness any day over conforming to these expectations. Communities want people to form and strengthen one picture together. But people don’t come in shapes, that just automatically fit in this picture. The sharper ones just aren’t made to fit in, so they get their edges ground and dulled down. It’s like watching beautiful misfit jigsaw pieces that could evolve into an individual masterpiece turn into uniform building bricks: useful to society, easily fitting in, exchangeable…”

“Some people don’t want to step on people’s toes, but you’re up to dance a full tango on them. Maybe you should worry that your stubbornness and arrogance will scare people off, to put it mildly. If you keep this up, you’ll always feel out of place wherever you are”, Nate replied with a scoff.

“If I end up feeling that way, then maybe I’m just in the wrong place.” Hannah took her half-full glass and finished it.

© Vanessa Smiatek 2024-08-19

Genres
Novels & Stories
Moods
Emotional, Angespannt
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