Frustration

It's Sunday.  A gloomy, cold, snowy, overcast Sunday, and I got ditched for lunch by a friend who is teaching me a lesson in communication.  More specifically, my disturbing lack thereof.  There are of course reasons why I haven't communicated as much as I should lately, but some things are best kept unsaid in forums such as this.  Regardless, my Granite City date fell through, so I went to Panera Bread for their free wi-fi, and of course, their tomato bisque soup.  Delicious.  

I'm sitting along, reveling in the luxury of having to speak to no one, except through my fingertips and this computer.  So every time I look up, I glance around at the people who surround me, and I can't help but to catch some of the most unhappy people I have seen in quite some time.  Frankly, it's bringing me down, but it also serves another purpose. I learn every day what I want from life. 

For instance, this day after Valentine's Day, I'm looking around at couples who should in theory be happy.  But the table directly in front of me is a pair of miserable people who seem to have lost the reason why they fell in love.  They are bickering constantly, snapping and sniping at one another and not communicating at all.  Of course, their tones are appropriately hushed, but I am close enough to hear everything and I have the advantage of conversing silently with myself instead of someone else.  My ears are wide open.  Then, to make matters worse, in the middle of a heated discussion, Man picks up his ringing cell phone and engages in a 5-7 minute conversation to someone other than his wife.  She keeps looking at me, and I look back at her as impassively as possible, like I'm really focused on my homework, Facebook, or whatever it is that I happen to be working on at the time.  I'm very sad for them.  I can't see his face, but she wears a bitter expression around the tight lines of her mouth, and her eyes look sad.  Overcast and sad.  

The table adjacent to me is even worse.  They have apparently been together so long that they have run out of things to talk about.  I haven't seen them smile once.  In fact, he's even been reading the paper while she stares the opposite direction.  Ugh, it reminds me of my parents.  

There was never any yelling in my household, with the exception of myself and my sister.  But what else do teen girls do to each other besides torment and occasionally exchange gossip?  For the most part we stayed in our own separate rooms, entertaining ourselves and hiding from the icy silence in the downstairs half of the house.

We had a beautiful house in the country, situated on 30 acres of land complete with a wandering creek and our own private woods.  It was beautiful, but still somehow completely untouchable.  Just two nights ago I had a dream that I went back to that house and begged my family to be the way we once were.  When I woke up, dry tear streaks stained my face.  I cried in real life because of a bad dream.  But we want what we want, and who are we to tell our hearts that they are wrong?  There is a rift there, and of course I want it fixed.  But the conscious part of me knows and accepts that it won't happen.  

But now that I am looking around Panera Bread on a dreary Sunday afternoon, the sadness strikes me again.  But it also gives me focus on the things I want, and how I intend to live.