The One and Only
I’ve never really belonged to any one group. In high school I hung out with theater people, but I wasn’t ever in plays or musicals. I hung out with druggies, but I never did any drugs. I wasn’t really into school, but I dated the school body president - who a year later was fighting deportation because he was an illegal immigrant, but that’s another story. I didn’t try very hard, but skated by with a B average - so no one really noticed me. I wasn’t smart enough to earn attention and I wasn’t lazy enough to be punished with attention. I was just kinda there.
I liked to hang out with my friends, but I would also gladly stay home on a Friday night to watch “Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman” if I was tired. I worked 30 hours a week at a camera store on top of school. I always knew I had to go to college. I had to get a job. I had to get married and I had to have kids. It was all just kinda there - as much I was I just kinda there.
I tried to rebel…but really, I’m just not good at being bad. Maybe I’m too lazy. When someone asked Matt about me our sophomore year his reaction was, “who? that quiet girl with the book in the corner?” (which is funny, because if you know me in real life…you know I am anything but quiet).
Somewhere in high school, through notes and, later, emails I began signing my things “The One and Only, Kel”. I’m not sure why I did this - but I felt it was really important. I used to want my license plate to read that - but my Dad’s an ex-cop and personalized license plates are frowned upon.
Anyway, I felt proud to be “the one and only” - I felt strong about it. It was the one, quiet, way that I said something about myself. It felt good. It felt solid. It felt like something. It was a way to remind myself that high school wasn’t the end of life - that there was a whole life out. My life - my one and only life. It was hopeful.
I haven’t signed anything with those words in over ten years. Ten years since I have felt that way about life. About myself.
I feel like I have been trying to find that voice again. Find the me that is “one and only” and more than just find it, I am trying to find my way to liking it. Liking me.
I feel closer to all of this than I have in years.
