Un-unique

Elaine Terre, Ellie to her friends, leaned gracefully over her egg white porcelain sink. Her eye make-up smudged all over her upper and lower lids. Trapped in the corners of her hazel eyes were the remnants of tears she was attempting to wipe away.

"I'm just done." She thought it out loud. "I'm just," a pregnant pause, an exasperated sigh, "done."

She'd been fired. It felt like a glorified dumping. Broken up with by the career that didn't want her anymore. Left alone on the skirts of Unemploymentville Co. Population: her. She felt like a cliché, and all of her thoughts backed that feeling up.

It happens to everyone. The phrase echoed in her head from a conversation she'd finished earlier that evening with her sister. Her sister, Carolyn, was an attractive young woman, aged 29, single, with a semi-high-powered career on the way to an actual high-powered career in fashion merchandising. She had little empathy for anyone when it came to relationships, jobs or general livelihood, likely due to her lack there of.

Carolyn and Elaine had a tumultuous relationship growing up, not unlike most sisterly relationships. Elaine, being the younger, found talking to Carolyn exacerbating, and would dodge opportunities to do so regularly —that is she until Carolyn would figure out a way to corner Elaine into conversation, often by trapping her in actual corners.

During the summers the pair would play a game in their country club swimming pool called, Spider. Essentially, one of the girls would hold onto the sides of the pool, often in a corner, with their legs spread while the other would have to attempt passage through the triangulated legs and arms of her sister without touching. If one indeed touched, even a hair, a strike would be marked. Three strikes and you would have to run around the perimeter of the pool. It doesn't sound as bad in retrospect, but summers in the midwest still brought about a cool air that made the pool a warm sanctuary once you were in, as the outside world remained an icy fortress.

Ellie thought about all those memories as she starred past her own reflection, wiping away her history and whatever Revlon still clung to her cheeks. Still, more tears clouded her vision.

Was I wrong? She questioned for the nth time. But she knew the answer. No, she wasn't wrong. And, she shouldn't have been as upset as she was.

It happens to everyone, El.