My family is a godsend.
They are here for me. To nurture, love, console, empathize. To be the only people in my life that I know accept every one of my flaws. To forgive my miscommings and help me work through each of my seemingly inconsequential problems. Without them I would be lost in turning sea of loneliness, easily sweeping victims into its relentless riptides. A mother, a father, and two sisters were given to me and without them I would be nothing.
A mexican restaurant is familiar to me as few other things are. Survivor on Wednesday nights, the hum of a lawn mower in use, take-out on Fridays.We walked into the festive restaurant filled with colors and the full, spicy scents of mexican cuisine. Everything was too bright, too loud. The paintings on the walls of “authentic” mexican fiestas cheap; some fading, peeling, stained with years of past use and lack of needed touch ups. The air was engulfed with a mariachi band’s bright songs, the chatter of many people, and the rich smells being passed around with the meals that carried it.

I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to be on that vacation, in that city, sitting in that bright and happy eatery. I wasn’t grumpy, that wasn’t it, it was anxiety pressing down on my chest. My anxiety of leaving the solitude of my home was like a wrecking ball that crashed into me the second the thought entered my mind. Nothing traumatic had brought it on, I had just been festering in my thoughts for too long. Sometimes that happens, you know? You think, and you think, and you think and sooner or later there’s nothing left to think about except for the things that you shouldn’t and that you can’t without the poison of those thoughts fully immersing themselves in you. I forgot how it felt. Feeling like I was falling in a black abyss of my own making, somewhere I knew that once I reached the bottom I would never come back from. Dark thoughts are dangerous. Self-pity makes you loathe yourself and wonder what’s so wrong with you that no one will reach out. Sadness causes you to remember only the bad things, only the pain and never the light, part of the healing process. Loneliness forcing you to make it worse, retreating from the friends that you need, but no longer wish to enclose yourself with.

After we were seated I drew more into myself. I laughed and talked when appropriate; this is something I think many, unfortunately, truly master. Pretending. People worry when you aren’t constantly smiling and conversing and acting like the world is a bright, happy place. They’ll label you strange if you prefer to sit alone and read; if you just want five, measly minutes to yourself instead of surrounding yourself with people that aren’t even your friends, but because of the few you are friends with you are expected to instantly like them.

We were in a booth; me, my parents, and my two sisters. They filled the alcove with their menial chatter, my mother’s bright voice overpowering the buzz that fills most restaurants. I longed to rip my book out of my bag. I wanted to immerse myself in those perfect stories, especially when the idea of leaving my home is like the idea of going to war. Books understand. They infuse you with the sentiment the author wants, needs you to feel. They remind me that although I can’t be with me friends without retreating, wanting to be alone because when I am surrounded by them my  loneliness grows into a beast that rips my insides to shreds, I can feel something worth feeling.

The air inside was cold, too cold for the summer clothes most wore mid-July. Most of those eating were families. Mothers and fathers taking their kids out for a Saturday lunch. The elderly couple in the corner sat, smiling at each other; they were one of those disgustingly cute couples, the rare kind that had been married for fifty years but still acted like newlyweds. Those kinds of couples never failed to make me crack a smile, for it’s nice to see a couple that has loved each other for the majority of their lives, that ignore the divorce rate in this country. The three families in my line of sight were the usual. One single mom, two parents still together from the looks of it. The children ranged from the unruly ones who couldn’t help but run around the table until they were panting like they just crossed the finish line to the stuck-up tween sitting on her phone glaring at anything that dared speak to her.
In the booth of a hard, uncomfortable back and leather tearing on the corner of the bench I looked at my family. My father’s worn, sun-hardened skin. The lines in his cheeks etched there like they were made out of clay. He always kept his short, curly brown hair tucked under a baseball cap. His happiness was something I loved to witness. His laugh was as rare as a canary’s song in December. It wasn’t common for most and it was a fulfilling sound that made you want to be around him and take part of that laugh. I loved when I was the reason for his laugh. Even if I had no inkling of what he was guffawing about it still always forced a smile onto my face.
My father was known for a few things: always being outside, watching the cooking channel every time he was in front of the TV, and always preferring being around his family than his friends. You loved him even through all his “suck it ups” when you jammed your toe into a leg of the table and couldn’t force your tears down in time, and his unbearably good mood at the ungodly hours of the early morning.

I looked at my mother, smiling, giving my youngest sister the indulging smile she gave when she didn’t think you were funny, but she couldn’t not laugh since she saw it as her personal responsibility for you to think you were the most hilarious person on the planet. Her pale blond hair was swept up into a ponytail and her almost black-while-still-being-blue eyes were set over high cheekbones. As per usual, she had on a ratty long-sleeve and jeans. She and my dad are the epitome of opposites attract. Where my father is loud and an introvert, my mother is soft and constantly making new friends. Everyone was attracted to her as a moth is to a flame. I don’t know a single person who doesn’t adore my mom after the first time they meet her.

I tuned into the laughter taking place around me. I didn’t know what they were laughing about, but their laughter always helped. It helped convert those venomous thoughts into ones that weren’t so bad.

We ordered our meal from the waitress in her black outfit who may or may not have been faking a spanish accent. She gave each of us a cold stare when we opened our mouths, once or twice she would crack a small smile as if just remembering that looking like you wanted to rip out the customer’s liver was not very appealing and, surprisingly, fairly frightening.

My two younger sisters were already going at it next to me. Their fighting was so constant that when it was missing from a family gathering you would think something was terribly wrong. The thirteen year old took an hour every morning for hair and makeup, making her blond hair board-straight and her eyes framed in liner and long, black eyelashes. The ten year old chopped off her hair into a short bob, never insisted on any added help for her long, round face, and her eyes round as discs. The glitter that constantly adorned her clothes made her easily findable in a three mile radius.

I loved these two as much as I hated them. The only time they would agree on anything was when they were relentlessly torturing me. Me being the oldest doesn’t affect our sibling dynamic unfortunately.

We ate our food and my laughs finally became ones of joy. I started regretting my actions toward them. They didn’t deserve me retreating into myself ignoring them just because of my lackings. The social anxiety that threatened to drown me didn’t apply to them, my loneliness dissipated just enough around these people who have been the only constants in my entire life. Tears stung my eyes as we walked outside, into the sweltering parking lot smelling of cigarette smoke and car exhaust; the sky pale as a robin’s egg, no clouds marring the evenness of that color spread throughout the atmosphere. Piling into the car, I rolled down my window and let the hot air caress my skin, sweeping my hair up into the current of the wind, listening to my mother’s warm voice and smiling into the summer breeze.