Day Thirty-Eight: 4th of July Cut Short

I woke up at five in the morning. In my groggy state, I decided that watching Lost in Translation was fitting. So I did so. Then I wrote three paragraphs, crawled back into bed, and fell asleep for another four hours.

When I woke up, I spent the rest of the day trying to stay awake. Learned that walking, caffeine, chocolate, and sun all helped.

But the saddest part was when I had to leave the 4th of July party early. I usually don't do things like that, because I love fireworks and also because I usually try to make my parents happy above whatever I have going on. I think most daughters are like that; no matter how argumentative we can get, we want them to be happy with what we're doing.

But I had to go to sleep by 8:45. So I said goodbye, crawled into bed, and was very sad I hadn't seen any sparky sparky boom booms this year.

Around ten, Alex pulled back the curtains near my bed, I woke up for about ten minutes, and we watched the fireworks over the horizon together.

It's one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me.

I feel bad about where I am in life, sometimes. I think we all do. But that little moment reminded me of another time, five 4th of July's ago, in 2010.

I was living in Chicago, which means I should have been happier than where I am now. The place I live is no Chi-town. Not even a KC. But my boyfriend at the time, we'll call him Devin, he got angry because all I wanted to do on our Fourth celebrations is watch fireworks that night. He wanted to play DnD with a famous webcomic artist and a couple of friends.

After his activity, we took some pop down to the UChicago campus and sat in the middle of a road, waiting for fireworks to show up.

They never did. We could hear them, but he hadn't planned well, and the buildings were definitely in the way.

Not even just a little in the way, definitely in the way.

We went back to his place, he got grossly drunk, I watched some Futurama by myself, and I went home.

Three weeks later, when he broke up with me, one of his chief complaints was that I'd obsessed over fireworks all day, and what he did wasn't enough.

I see the kindness of Alex, and I'm reminded that the way things are going is not bad at all. I'm very lucky to be with someone who gives me fireworks without me having to leave my bed.