Day 64 - Meagan Story

Meagan Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Meagan made mistakes.  Again and again and again.  She knew better, but she didn’t care.  She didn’t think they were bad decisions, she thought they just weren’t great decisions.  Some of them were okay, some of them were bad and then some were really really bad.  Meagan was too young to know the difference and didn’t have the proper support or direction to properly find out which was which.

Mom wasn’t there.  She worked downtown as a paralegal and notary public.  In her left over spare time she took on freelance grant writing jobs.  She was intelligent and motivated.  Her superiors recognized this and her role within the firm grew and she was able to spend a fair amount of time independent and unsupervised, researching and creating early drafts of legal documents and court papers.  Many of those that knew her assumed she would go back to school at some point in order to obtain her law degree.  But she had had Meagan as a teenager and did not have the support she needed, nor the luck of getting any breaks in her favor.  Meagan liked and respected her mother’s efforts, but that didn’t change the fact that her mother just wasn’t there enough to be a real influence.

Dad wasn’t there.  He hadn’t been there in ten years.  He had tried.  Certainly he had done that.  But he was not emotionally equipped to become a father when he was still a teenager.  He drank too much and worked too little and was never really there even when he was physically there.  He had a breaking point and walked out one night.  He had come back and tried again, but it was never the same.  He did Meagan and her mother a favor and finally left for good a year later.  He was a better man now with a better job and a better outlook on life.  But wounds are deep and heal slowly and Meagan had been so long without a father, she didn’t really turn to him now when she needed help or advice.

Meagan was emotionally disconnected from her family.  She knew she was supposed to love them, or at least thought that was what society expected, but she couldn’t muster the appropriate level of concern or interest. 

Meagan loved boys.  She loved boys that paid attention to her.  If she had realized this, she might have made better choices or at least have had some motivation to be more discerning.  As it was, she never felt self-assured or attractive enough to chase what she wanted.  She was happy enough when someone chased her.  She didn’t have many expectations and so the world was able to live up to them.

Meagan had a hint of red in her hair, light freckles on cheeks, and a radiant smile when she chose to smile.  She wore black too often and liked to powder her face to make herself paler that she really was.  Still, everyone could see through the teenage mask of pain and see a beautiful young woman underneath.  It was too bad Meagan couldn’t see that in the mirror.

Boone was a boy that made her feel pretty good and pretty special every once in awhile.  Somehow once in awhile was good enough.  She didn’t see Boone that often, but she saw him every once in awhile.  Boone was tall and quiet and liked to think about deep thoughts like man’s role in the universe.  Meagan thought that was something really special.  She hadn’t seen or talked to enough boys to really know what special was.  But when she was with him she felt like she was part of that special something and that meant she got to be unique and lovely also. 

Boone, for his part, had no idea the insecurities or inadequacies that she felt.  Boone has his own problems, as most teenagers do.  He ran with a dumb crowd that did dumb but mostly harmless crimes like stealing from convenience stores or spray painting on the sides of buildings.  One time they had found a rusted out old wheelchair and one night hanging out near the river they doused it with charcoal lighter fluid and lit it on fire.  Boone liked pale lagers and taught Meagan to drink late one lonely night.

Meagan sat in the waiting room by herself.  Her mother wasn’t there.  Her father wasn’t there.  Boone wasn’t there.  No one was there with her at all.  She was alone. 

No one knew.  No one was around enough to know.  And she didn’t know how to reach out to make people know.  She was alone.

She had decisions to make, good or bad, right or wrong.  She had made so many poor decisions before.  She didn’t want to be alone.  Not anymore.  She thought she could make the right decision and that she could finally have something, someone. 

She was so young and couldn’t possibly think about all the alternatives or realize there were questions to even ask.  She was just so young and had never had the right decisions makers around her to know what the right decision should look like, let alone intuitively feel like.

Meagan sat alone.  She thought alone.  She made decisions alone.  All she could do was sit there and wait.  Alone.