𝐂𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐘

[02] Her Depth

h e r  d e p t h
CONRAD'S POV:

The wine was light bodied, soft, and slid coolly down my throat as the alcohol chilled whatever lump was forming in it. This paper. It was immaculate. Pure. Vulnerable. Authentic.

It rendered me speechless.

They say I'm immature, but I think I just care to appreciate life for what it is.

Okay, understatement of the century right there. She's way more than just immature. And who the hell cares about appreciating life? There's nothing good to appreciate here. Hello, we're all fucking miserable.

As a kid you're more oblivious to certain things. More so than you are when you're a little more grown up. The arguing of two perfect faces behind closed doors was morphed into a façade of picture perfect circumstances, and from a young age I saw the hypocrisy. The empty promises. The broken bridges. Every lie was only blotted out by Wite-Out, and the remains of it were still engraved upon the pages.

This is so raw, so pure, so real. But why?

As I sat and watched, I wondered Why. There was always a Why for things like this. Why things got to a certain point. I mean, Why were they so unhappy? Why Why Why? It came down to the fact that they hated looking in the mirror. They didn't like who they had become.

I didn't want to be miserable like them.

Everyone is miserable, to be honest. I hate optimism. 

So at ten years old, I sat in front of the mirror and looked at myself through their point of view. A hateful point of view. And I took a marker, drew on the skin I didn't like and circled the areas I appreciated. The large apartment room I was stuffed in felt suffocating at that moment in time, being left with the remains of a broken face and broken heart all at once in solitaire.

Did I even like who I was anymore?
If you met you, would you even like you?

Absolutely fucking not.

And that's what I tried piecing together. Appreciating life for what it is, and learning to live with the good and the bad. The hope, the fearlessness, the idea that there is good in everything. Then dealing with the expectations of perfect lines, stereotypes, and the judgments of other people. But still, at the end of the day, all I have is myself.

And so I ask: Who are you to judge me?

More wine, I needed more wine. There's no way in hell Covey Jensen, as in Covey Jensen, turned in this paper. Like she said, she was immature. So, she had no depth. She was disrespectful, couldn't read the room, and acted like it was okay to just say things.

But yeah, who am I to judge her? I only saw her in the lecture hall for an hour.

Yet one hour can tell a lot about a person, and so can their eyes. Covey's eyes were like golden speckles of sunshine and optimism while mine wanted to shut down whatever happiness she thought she deserved. Because that's what I do.

I criticize people and pick them apart from the outside in, scrutinizing and tearing down every piece of their outward image.

Covey said what she thought without thinking beforehand. I easily learned that too. She was the odd one of the bunch, obviously. Her social skills were a mess, her idea of 'explaining herself' was far-fetched, and she walked around like she was in her own little bubble. But there was something about her. And this paper, her depth, proved that.