Standing Still

Prologue

Do you ever wonder if it's possible to get something right? Not in the way where it's simply just acceptable, externally okay, but really right, where all the kinks and problems- big and small- cease to exist, where everything just flows and goes the way it's supposed to? Where you know, deep in your heart, that you've done good?

This was something I had mastered. Or, at least, something I'd always thought I had mastered.

It was an occurrence I had always seemed to run into; fixing problems. Making sure things were clean-cut and to the point, all problems being nipped at the bud so they wouldn't blossom or thrive. This was who I was- The Problem Solver.

I'd managed to get not only myself and my brother through my parent's divorce, but also my mother herself. I was the one who was approached when the tv remote couldn't be found, or the right phone number for a colleague of my mother's because she would always jot the information down with one hand, the other pressing the phone against her ear, and then stalk off to another room, accidentally knocking the notepad to the floor- it had always boggled my mind as to how she managed to do this every time- and I would pick it up and rip the page out, sticking it neatly under a magnet along with all the other numbers I had gathered for her before.

They were small things, mostly, the things that I did. But any action, whether it be microscopic or not, that prevented a large problem from abounding was worth it. Anything to make my mother's hectic life easier, less complicated, was something I was always prepared to do.

I'd developed the habit of washing the dishes every day, cleaning the counters, the tables, basically following my brother's every step as crumb after crumb fell from his hands. He's the world's messiest eater, I swear.

I had learned to be good, the type of girl who went to school, did her assignments with no back-talk to the teachers, who would ride the bus home and only home everyday. I would do my homework and take a shower and go to sleep, repeating my perfect schedule every day, practicing it over and over until it became routine. And after a while it was all I knew to do with myself.

But, eventually, I learned more.

It seemed, though, I always had a knack for pushing aside my own problems to deal with everyone else's. A bit ironic, I know, to better everyone else's lives while paying little mind to my own, but this was not something I could change overnight.

Rather, it was the over course of winter that this happened.

It was painfully slow, like pulling teeth, or the elongated strip of procrastination that you're able to drag out when you're avoiding something you truly do not want to do. But, it happened.

Usually, it's the crazy summers that you hear about, the wild parties and the drinking and the hook-ups, but no, mine was different. I didn't need crazy and wild in the physical sense. Instead, I learned about new people and people you thought you knew, and the adventure of falling without knowing wether or not someone was going to be there to catch you, letting yourself go free and figuring out what is that you want, and why it is that you want it.

That winter, I learned, finally, what it means to get something right.