2. SHE is no longer the understudy.
SHE had been sitting alone at this table for 17 minutes now. She fidgeted with her dangly necklace, checked her phone habitually, felt her face flush with embarrassment. She stood out in this place like Rudolph’s glaring nose. No, worse. She was the inappropriately naked character in the everybody’s worst dream, wandering around with no place to hide. Could she possibly be more conspicuous? People were staring at her. And not just people – couples – this was definitely a romantic restaurant. She felt their eyes pitying, wondering, “That poor woman. Surely she’s not eating alone?”
She second-guessed her decision to come inside and be seated rather than wait in the car, but it was a hot August evening. Getting a table had seemed a better option.
Her husband should have been here a half-hour ago now, but he was routinely late. He wasn’t answering her texts, so he was likely on his way. Should she go ahead and order drinks? No. This is their anniversary. No hurry. She would continue to wait for him.
The waiter came to the table a second time. She smiled awkwardly and assured him her dinner companion would be there any minute. Then came the message: “Got distracted. Sorry. Don’t have time to meet you now, but you can come here and maybe make it in time to have barbecue with us.”
I’m sorry, WHAT??
He had just stood her up on their anniversary?
Her heart began to race; she felt her face flush with anger and humiliation, and that all-too-familiar feeling of being unimportant.
She now had the choice to join him for – of all things – baked beans and coleslaw with his buddies, or leave the lovely restaurant, go back to the hotel, and feel sorry for herself.
Suddenly she realized her third option, and this moment would serve as the catalyst for her future. A simple return text, filled with measureless subtext: “I won’t be joining you.” She had always been an afterthought in his life, and his treatment caused her to always put herself in the background as well. That ended with this moment. She would no longer settle for the role of understudy in her own life.
She put her phone away, took a deep breath and looked around the room. Suddenly it seemed no one noticed at her at all.
The waiter returned a third time. “I’m having dinner alone tonight,” she said, looking him in the eye. She perused the entrees and mustered the confidence to have dinner – very publicly – alone.
SHE hears voices.
Such was the last time I saw my sister’s face. She was twenty-eight. Tall. Blonde. Beautiful. Passionate. Protective. Determined. Spirited. She left me on a Friday. She would leave the rest of the world twenty minutes later. 
When I sat down to write this a few minutes ago, I had no idea what thoughts would land on the page. I’m not going to edit them, I’m just going to leave this here as an Ode to My Sister: “Thoughts on Her Not Having Another Birthday.”
Forget the dichotomy of the right-brained vs. the left-brained, the introvert vs. the extrovert, the optimist vs. the pessimist. The personality contrasts that most affect my life are the Thinkers vs. the Feelers.
This does NOT mean we are always depressed and gloomy. Far from it. But when we are, there is no shaking it, and definitely no faking it. We take no comfort in “Things Will Get Better” or “If It Is Meant to Be It Will Happen”. We only know it is NOT better and the thought of living without whatever it is, is more than we can bear. And we feel this, not only for ourselves, but for anyone whose story we become a part of.
By the time the little boy in the Packaging commercial throws paper airplane messages over the backyard fence, I’m sniffling. Before Tim McGraw mentions x-rays as a reason to “Live Like You Were Dyin’,” I’m overwhelmed. When Max grows tired of the Wild Things and wants to be where someone loves him best of all, my voice is quivering.. And I am unabashedly mourning when I realize that no matter how much Noah reads to Allie from “The Notebook”, there really is no such thing as a happy ending in a Nicholas Sparks story.
“Charlotte, don’t poke me in the eyes, it hurts.”
disillusioned how difficult the process is. I can edit for days on end. I can mold somebody else’s content or idea into something very readable. I know my gift. “Coming up with original content” isn’t one of them, despite my attempts at originality in life. Maybe I’m deluding myself even there. Really, I just use logic to make life choices, rather than follow mainstream thought. This has branded me a hippie, a progressive, a weirdo, an anarchist (do not read “antiChrist:”) or in my own mind, a salmon swimming upstream. A salmon with great hair. But I digress.
and not being able to escape from under the blanket that imprisoned them both, she experienced her first panic attack.
distracting you from the fact that you are paying $26.94 for a couple of burgers and a glass that contains more ice than tea.
It read, “Who would play you in the movie of your life?”
and before the name “Angelina Jolie” rolled off her tongue, her son spurted out,
After the drama of yesterday’s flat hair we wonder how much more Stephanie and the cowboy can take? HOW. MUCH. MORE? They have now entered their 50th hour without working indoor plumbing. FIFTY HOURS. That’s roughly 3,000 minutes suffering in the desert of their shared abode.
Will she be able to discern PVC from galvanized iron? Can she manage the right length and thickness?
the vent was to crawl into, and Stephanie may have to help him get back out. She tells him not to worry. She is certain if his middle is too round to fit, and he has to remain wedged there for several days in a great tightness, she will be certain to visit every day and feed him honey until Christopher Robin can help with the rescue effort.
She turns the meter on, and behold there is water, and it is good. (cue “Hallelujah Chorus”)
she said 
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