Sometimes I think. I sit here on the roof with my pencil and a notebook. I sit here in my sweatpants, listening to sirens, letting the breeze play with my hair. And I think.

Just, think.

Sometimes when I come up here to write, the words never come. I just feel. Talk to God. Listen. Breathe. My brain just can’t stay focused on the page, and it stays white. Pure.

That’s how I feel. Here, on the roof, with the wind making the trees laugh. I feel pure. Refreshed. Like nothing is impossible. Like I am loved, valuable, fun. I feel beautiful, talking to God, looking at a flawlessly blue sky.

I feel pure.

And yet I know that there’s a mirror waiting just below me, a mirror that shows too clearly the scars and the zits and the friz. A mirror that shows me.

Just Abbie.

And I whisper to my reflection…

There’s more. There’s another side to Abbie. A secret side. A beautiful side.

A pure side.

One day you’ll meet her.

One day you’ll know.

Mirrors

The car rattles and swerves, charges ahead and then jerks suddenly to a halt.

I study the window.

One dirt streak, two, an almost invisible smear from a long ago finger.

The trees part suddenly, and the unbelievably hot August sun slants into the car, lighting up my face.

Great.

The air conditioner is on full blast, deafening us in its pathetic attempt to compete with this 112 degree heat. I adjust the panting vents, making sure that I have the most cool possible, and then settle back into my seat. I whine to myself about the heat, about the sweat, about life in general.

I turn again to the window and see myself reflected there, dimly, with a telephone pole where my nose used to be. Immediately I begin to critique. The curve of my neck, the line of my jaw, the tip of my nose. I lose a staring contest with those brown eyes.

Ugh. There’s my mascara smeared. Again.

One self-conscious pat to my hair, one questioning eyebrow, one hopeful, half-hearted smile.

And then I laugh.

Silly Abbie! The world is flying past, and all you can see is this one little hair that loves to torment you by sticking straight up. All you can do is complain about your own petty troubles. Oh Abbie, look at what you’ve been missing! The street, the people, the clouds. Silly! You are not that important. Really. No one will notice your stupid hair. Just get your mind off of yourself for a while. Can you do that, Abbie? Can you think about someone else for once?

We’re all selfish. So selfish.

The guy who risks a wreck by charging into your lane in the traffic rush. The mother who pushes away her messy toddler, afraid of stains on her new white dress.

Me. Too busy looking at myself, thinking about myself, whining to myself about how unfair life is to even glance at the hobo standing there with his cardboard sign by the side of this steaming road.

It’s Abbie, Abbie, Abbie 24/7. Selfish.

I set up a mirror between me and the world. I hide behind my reflected self, not letting anyone else’s cares get through to me, past the wall of Abbie that I’ve built. I sit there, pathetically complaining, day after day. But what if that changed?

What if I looked through the window? What if I looked around the mirror? What if I looked past myself into the world outside? What if I stopped caring so much about myself, and let someone tell me about their troubles, their fears and heart aches? What if I cared about others? What if I stopped being selfish?

Maybe, just maybe, I could change the world a little bit.

And then…then all my friends would tell me – “Abbie, you’re the most unselfish person I know.” And I would just smile mysteriously and reply, “I know, I know.” They would come to me with all their problems because they would know that I would care and then they would all beg me to write a book about myself and I would be like, “Oh no, I couldn’t.” very humbly but I would, eventually, and it would be all about me and how unselfish I am and people would love it and I would get rich and give all the money to some poor babies somewhere because I am so very unselfish and when I went to Wal-Mart my picture would be on 5 or 6 magazines and my face would flash onto the TV every once in a while and people would walk up to me and be like “Are you Unselfish Abbie?” and I would just smile and nod shyly and sign a bajillion autographs and…and…

Oh.

Oh dear.

Maybe I will just write about Selfish Abbie instead.

p.s. Does anybody else have trouble saying the word "selfish"? Every time I reread this post I ended up pronouncing it "shellfish". Oh dear.

16

Fifteen is a bothersome age.

At fifteen, I’m not old enough to drive or have a real job or go to prom. I’m still a kid.

And yet I’m told fifteen is too old to go around barefoot or to have water balloon fights or tea parties or imaginary friends. (I do all those anyway, but that's beside the point.)

Bother.

When I was three I really wanted to be five. Five was a magical age. Five was when you could play with the markers, when you could use the scissors once in a while, when you could stir the brownie mix for mom. If I could only be five, I thought, THEN I would be happy. Then I would have it all.

But it turns out, when I was five and could do all of these wonderful grown up things, I still wasn’t satisfied. I wanted to be seven. If I was seven, then I would be older than Isaac. And if I was older than Isaac – suddenly, a whole new world of possibilities opened up. If only I was seven…

There’s this funny thing that happens when you get older. Somehow, everybody else gets older too. Rats. So there I was, seven years old, and two weeks later Isaac turned nine.

Rats.

The day I turned ten everybody was very proud of me and talked about double digits (I had no clue what that meant) and growing up and “young ladies”. But really, nothing exciting happens when you turn ten. There is not much that makes ten year olds better than nine year olds. They are practically the same, only a little bit taller and a little bit snobbier.

Ten was not an exciting year.

Ten was the year that I decided that I wanted to be sixteen. If you are sixteen then you can drive yourself to the movies and watch Winnie the Pooh all by yourself and stand in line with the grownups and buy  popcorn with money that you take out of a purse and paint your toes and wear makeup and work at Maggie Moos and get free ice cream and all the boys will fall in love with you and you won’t even notice.

I really really really wanted to be sixteen.

If you are sixteen then you are a grown up, but you don’t have to deal with college or getting married or any of that unimportant junk. If you are sixteen then you can look down at all of the little ten year olds and say, “Ha! Kids!” and then play hide and seek with them and try very hard to look like you are not having fun and nobody will say anything about it (though they all laugh at you behind your back).

Even the word, Sixteen, sounds like magic. It sounds exciting. It has this ring to it, this crisp grown up edge that is music to my ears. It sounds like a commercial. “Get your Sixteen today! Only nine ninety-nine ninety-nine!” Sixteen sounds too good to be true. Like nothing is impossible. Like you can wear high heels and not fall over. Like you own the world.

Oh, Sixteen…

Right now I am fifteen. Only fifteen. Caught in the middle, between grown up and child. It really is a bothersome age. I mean, I’m enjoying it and all, but nobody respects you for being fifteen except the five year olds who can’t count that high. Fifteen is nothing very special.

In six months I’ll be sixteen. In six months I’ll be an adult, overnight. Like this magical metamorphosis. A kid one day, an adult the next. I can’t wait.

Oh, Sixteen…

P.S. All the sixteen year olds tell me that sixteen is lame and they can’t wait to be eighteen, and the eighteen year olds tell me that eighteen is nothing great and they can’t wait to be twenty-one, and the twenty-one year olds tell me that they all want to be twenty-five, and anybody over twenty-five tells me that they wish they were my age again.

Bother.

Maybe I will just stay fifteen forever instead. 

Just Abbie

I have always wanted to introduce myself with,

“Hello. My name is Abbie. I’m awesome.”

Except, it isn’t quite true. Surviving the ninth grade and three older brothers is definitely an accomplishment, but awesome?

I guess, “Hi. I’m Abbie. I’m weird.” will just have to do.

People generally like me. They smile when I walk into a room and say sweet things about me and laugh at my jokes, even when they aren’t particularly funny. Of course, it might all be an act. But they seem very genuine. I believe they really do like me!

Honestly, I have no idea why. I can be a real jerk sometimes. I’m self-centered and arrogant, jealous and over competitive, insecure and fearful. I’m very, very selfish.

Usually, when people introduce themselves, they tell you all the good parts.

“Hi. I’m Joe. I’m nice, mostly. I play soccer. I get good grades. I don’t sleep with my teddy bear very much anymore. Last year, I broke my arm and didn’t even cry.”

And yet, there is so much more to Joe than that. He has a good side, of course, a side that says Please and Thank You and Yes Ma’am and No Sir. But Joe also has a bad side – the part of Joe that enjoys pulling his sister’s hair, even when he knows he’ll get a spanking. Then, of course, there is that in-the-middle Joe who can’t make up his mind whether to be a Good Joe or a Bad Joe. You know that creepy Jekyll and Hyde thing in that one book by Robert? I think Joe has a little bit of that going on. It’s like there’s this constant war between obedient Joe and the Joe who wants to slam doors just to make his mom angry.

The good side of Abbie gives me nice, warm, fuzzy feelings sometimes. Like a man petting his dog.  I tell myself, “Nice Abbie. Good Abbie! Does Abbie want a treat?”

But then there are those days when obeying my good side means staying safely inside the fence, even when the grass is greener on the other side.

I hate those days.

Those are the days when my Bad Abbie talks to me. She whispers, “Look at that grass. So green, so soft, so perfect. Who is good Abbie to keep you from it? You’re stronger than her, you know.”

And all of a sudden the whisper grows to a constant nagging. “Only five minutes. Five minutes! Good Abbie wouldn’t mind if it was only five minutes. The pen will be right here for you to jump back into. No harm done! Only five minutes! I start pacing back and forth, my brain screaming. “ONLY FIVE MINUTES!” Bad Abbie sings.

But there is still another voice. A quiet, “No.” No fancy arguments. No dangerous threats. Just, “No.”

I jump the fence. And guess what? Bad Abbie was right. The grass is beautiful. Lush, green, soft. I roll in it, breathe it in, revel in my freedom.

It’s perfect.

Well, almost perfect. There is still a Good Abbie inside me, saying, “NO. Get inside the pen. This isn’t worth it.”

I shut her up with more arguments. Excuses. “Not worth it? Smell this grass! Feel it! How could life get better than this?

What could possibly happen?”

You know, meeting new people is a real pain. Somehow you have to convince them that you are better than you really are. You have to get across the awesomeness of yourself without letting any of the Bad show. You have to pretend to be something you aren’t.

Sometimes I am so good at lying, I even convince myself I am awesome. But to be honest, it just is isn’t true. At the end of the day, I am just me. Just Abbie.