Unexpected Versions of Ourselves

I bumped into her on the way to my hotel room. A striking, beautiful young woman, she seemed to practically levitate off of the ground with happiness, her tousled auburn curls bouncing wildly.

We walked together because we were both going to breakfast. “Where ya headed to?” she asked me, in a giddy, confident voice.

“I don’t know, at this point,” I said. “I’ve been traveling all over the country, mostly to get away, I think.”

“Get away from what?” she asked.

I thought about it for a moment, and found that I couldn’t quite answer. What was it that I was running from, necessarily? I wasn’t just running from my Alaska. Not just from my family.

Now that I think of it, I stayed on the road because I was scared to go back to my old self. Now that I had started traveling, I didn’t ever want to settle again. I shrugged.

“I understand,” she said. “It’s been so much more free out here.” She let out an excited giggle. “Sure, it’s been tough, and—“she lowered her voice, pouting “—I’ve been in a little bit of a pickle recently, “but I’ve been the happiest I’ve ever been without Daryl.”

“Daryl?”

“My husband,”  she said, in that sweet, syrupy Southern accent of hers. She let out a laugh. “I was that obedient housewife, can ya imagine? And look at me now. I just drove across the country with my best friend Louise and kissed the cutest young man that’s ever crossed my path.”

Thelma was that obedient housewife—the ones who didn’t dare speak back to their husbands and cooked and cleaned all day, I bet. I was that obedient daughter. Friend. The girl who sat in the back of the classroom and never spoke. The girl who always followed the unspoken rules and conventions, held my tongue when I needed to, and didn’t speak unless spoken to.

And here we were, out in the dust-smote heartland of Oklahoma, having kissed the people we shouldn’t have kissed, having done the things we shouldn’t have done. We were supposed to prim, acquiescent girls with duty and yet, in our own ways, we both threw away peoples’ expectations and became the best, truest versions of ourselves.