Someone Else

         Have you ever wished you were someone else?  I’ve spent so many years wondering why all the things other people took for granted were the exact things I found just out of reach.  I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania, in a trailer park.  By the time I was in 7th grade the difference between me and everyone else was obvious.  “Trailer Park Princess,” that’s what they called me.  The local grocery store owner’s son, who teased me all through high school for being fat, ugly, poor and generally a loser also happened to ride my bus.  Lucky me.  Much of my family isn’t poor.  The one thing worse than being poor is knowing exactly what you’re missing.  Seven course dinners in fancy restaurants, shopping at stores I couldn’t hope to afford.  It was all there. 
         Me, I got a dad that got drunk and hit his wife.  One who begrudged everything he ever gave us.  The gas bill was too high because we washed the dishes and our hair too much, the couch wore out because we were too fat and we sat on it too much, and we could have had a million dollar house if only we hadn’t “eaten so many cheeseburgers.”  Yes, cheeseburgers.  On Saturdays my mom and I would go grocery shopping, the one time we got away from the house, and we’d go to a fast food place with the money we saved with our coupons.  So, a couple burgers a week cost us a happy existence.  You know, even now, 20 years later he still brings up those burgers.  I hate him for that.
         My mom left him when I was young.  Moved back in with my grandparents, and you know what her own sister told her?  “Grow up,” that’s a direct quote.  Grow up and go back to that monster.  Who cares if you get hit, if you’ll spend the next 25 years in a hell that’s worse to being alone?  She could have found someone else, someone who would have loved my sister and me.  Someone who would have loved her the way that she deserved.  When I think about it, it makes me so damn mad. What right did she have to push her in that direction?  To take away any hope of my having a father I could talk to or count on or depend on?  I lost something then that I’ll never regain.  I lost out on feeling like I deserved something.  It took me years to realize that I never have any hope of being normal.  He took that from me, made me feel like I was nothing, in a way that no school bully could.  It took me almost ten years of dating to be comfortable having a man buy me dinner.  Like I wasn’t worth it, like he’d regret it. 
         Then I found one, a beautiful tall, blond haired boy.  He made all the difference.  I fell for him like I never thought I could ever fall for a man.  He was everything my dad wasn’t, kind, smart, generous.  When he kissed me I’m pretty sure I floated right up off the floor.  I knew the moment I met him I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him.  Till I had to hear my best friend say, “I’m sorry; he loves me, not you anymore.”  They didn’t even stay together; she was only using him for sex.  Funny how that works out, isn’t it?  He followed his dick to greener pastures and stepped in shit.  Somehow I find justice in that.  I’d have loved his sorry ass forever, but after that I couldn’t even stand to look at him.  At least she saved me from wasting so much time.  On the both of them.  So much for love. 
         That’s when I realized I had to find my own happy.  And I did.  I went out a got a job, low on the pole but in a big company.  For three years I worked my way up, and my ass off.  I could finally tell all the people who looked down on me to go to hell, and I did.  I made more money last year than most of my high school classmates will make in a decade.  Maybe I should have put a little more in investments though, instead of shoes and perfume and jewelry.  I went a little overboard, and when the SEC decided to squash the company, and it was subsequently sold off in pieces I was back where I started.  Well not quite, but filling out job applications and interviewing just to find out that someone else will be getting that job becomes tiring.  Especially when the only reason people want to interview you is so that they can be curious about what really did happen to that poor old company? 
         Nothing though, nothing in my life has ever made me wish I was someone else, until today.  Today I had to tell my husband that after three years, two miscarriages, every fertility drug known to man, and three rounds of IVF (third times the charm right?) our last hope of having a baby is gone.  The test was negative.  I wonder if he still thinks he picked the right girl…