"The Grass wasn’t Greener: Confessions of a Loner.”
Written in October of 2007
1.The City of Brotherly Love.
My eyes flew open. The bright room had become familiar to me by now. The moon had whitewashed the walls. My eyes darted to the curtainless windows. They gaped open, allowing the moonlight to spill in on this unreasonably bright night.
Thoughtlessly I kicked the white down comforter off and swang my awkwardly long legs off of the tiny twin bed. My feet hit the wood floor with a quiet thud as I padded over to the window. I stared out into the all too still July night and allowed, for the first time since I left, my mind to wander.
What would have happened if I had stayed? Where would I be? What would I be like? Even more, what would I believe in? Would I be the awkward fragment of a girl that I was now? My memory flashed back to the last conversation. The last time I heard his voice. I could hear his words, crystal clear, as if he had been standing in the pale moonlight right beside me, gazing out the window into the empty street.
“Please understand I had nothing but the best of intentions for you.”
I crinkled my nose at that. It sounded so formal. Like something you would say to a forgotten pair of shoes being discarded after they went out of style. So mechanical. So rehearsed.
And so, like the old pair of shoes, I was discarded. Taken care of. How could I have been such a fool? I wondered what shoes had taken my place. If there were any. What they looked like. Where they better than me? Did they ever remind him of me?
Having your entire life planned out at age 18 is a mistake. The plan of your life revolving around a boy is a greater mistake. I would not come to learn this for several years.
That was when it began to hurt. It hurt all over. I was hurting for all the times I had made it a point not to hurt, thinking it would go away. I had managed to compartmentalize the last three years of my life into a little drawer labeled “DO NOT OPEN”. What had I done? I had opened Pandora’s box. Twenty minutes ago I was sleeping peacefully. Over it. Over him. How wrong I was. Every second, every memory, every word came back to me then. It was all too real. I was as if not one moment had passed, nothing had healed, and I was right back where I started, standing there, in his driveway. Rain pouring down. The last goodbye.
I wasn’t aware that the sob that broke out in the quiet room belonged to me. I wasn’t aware of my chest heaving in and out, my body shaking as the tears finally forced their way out, spilling down my cheeks. I felt it all. I felt it raking through my veins like tiny pieces of broken glass. Everything I had made it a point not to feel. It all came back to me.
*

My time in Philadelphia flew by quickly, before I knew it, the summer was half over and I was mechanically going through the motions of life.
Sleep…eat…work…sleep…and so on.
I noticed I had turned into a little bit more of a human since the night I had allowed myself to cry for him. I will admit, up until that point I had acted slightly creepy. I had tossed my hair and laughed. I smiled and went through my day as if I was fine. As if I had just randomly decided to pick up and move to Philadelphia for the fun of it.
It wasn’t until that night that I realized I had run. I had picked up and run to Philadelphia. Hiding. But how was I to know? I had become such a pro at running, I didn’t even notice what was happening as I begged my father to send me away. It was June of 2005.
“Think of how good it will be for me!” I had pleaded, “It will teach me to fend for myself and be responsible!”
That conversation seemed like it had happened so long ago.
My uncle, who was the administrator of the mission, was a strong advocate of applying The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous to all areas of life. I extrapolated the general gist of the first and second rules and gently applied to my current condition.
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol- that our loves had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

And this is where my story begins.
*
“Hello,” I said to the speedometer in my makeshift car as I waited on the stoplight to change, “My name is Carrie Roberts and I am addicted to [ for the sake of keeping names and reputations intact, let’s just call this gentleman Mr. X]. I am powerless over this.”
The speedometer glared at me through its scratched up panel. I cocked my head at it in wonder. I had never been made to drive a car like this before. I was raised right smack dab in the middle of God’s country- Arkansas- in an upper class family. My father had the luxury of retiring a decade before he was supposed to. My mother got to sit around the house all day, drinking margaritas and moving furniture around to her liking. My brother lived a fraternity boy’s life and we all drove nice cars. Classic republican nice cars. We did what rich white people do; we went to Disney World while Mexicans dug a hole in our backyard for our new pool. We ate frozen yogurt and watched shows like LOST and Survivor. Typical republicans. We managed to get stressed about the fact that we couldn’t find a pair of shoes in town to match our ensemble for the upcoming Sunday School Class party. Life was real nice, I won’t lie.
That was then. This was now. After X, everything changed. With the clarity that comes with your heart being ripped out, I decided to uproot myself and go to a place far away from cotton and soybean fields. Philadelphia would do. We conveniently had family there. My mother’s brother was all too eager to accept my cheap labor at his homeless mission in turn for finding a house to stick me in and loaning me a car. Little did I know the house I would be stuck in would be the Dent’s-a family I later realized I considered as my own, and the car loaned to me would be a 1986 Honda Accord, complete with two decade’s worth of awkward bumper stickers peeled off and reapplied.
I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to my conversation with the speedometer at the stoplight.
I found that the ability to talk about it informally (to myself, that is) brought on the ability to at least think about it. The ability to think about it led to the ability to think about it often. And this, in turn, brought the entire “situation” as I had begun to refer to it, into a more visible part of my heart. I was owning up to it. Claiming it, even.
“Ello!” I filched an Australian accent to my showerhead as I lathered shampoo into my brown head of thick hair. “My name is Carrie Roberts and I am the most lonely person you’ll ever meet! And I-” I dramatically pointed to myself as a grabbed my loofah off the shower ledge, holding it up like a microphone, “just might be the loooonliest person you’ll ever meet!” I spoke into the cascading water, “I am so powerless over this minor detail.” Minor? Obviously not. I was talking to a loofah.
*
August rolled around to find me still talking to myself as well as inanimate objects, working at the mission and going to sleep at night in a room I still had not managed to negotiate curtains for. I noticed I had also begun obsessing about my weight, too. Perhaps that is something that comes with the city. I took stairs every chance I got. I drank water rather than tea, I lived on coffee in the mornings rather than sugary cereal. I hadn’t really thought about my loss of appetite until I realized my jeans no longer fit.
My ass. Where had it gone? I stared over my shoulder at my lack of a bottom in the mirror that hung on the closet door.
I remembered quite clearly the way it looked when I had first come to Philadelphia. I remembered obsessing over the fact that it was the size of two bowling balls as I squeezed into the tiny airplane seats, what a nasty emotional mess I was that day! I recalled the mascara tears I blinked back as I watched out the tiny window of the plane. Surely X would come for me. I searched the runway with anxious eyes, ready to take him back. He would be running after me, coming for me at the airport. He knew he was wrong to call us off …and was going to ride in at the last moment…
Wrong.
I yanked at my jeans-yes-they were loose, weren’t they? I twisted around looking at my backward view in the mirror once again.
“It would appear,” I murmured to myself in my quiet room, “that broken heartedness suits me…I wear it quite well if I do say so myself.” A grin spread across my face.
In a desperate attempt to look like the girls I saw on television, I danced. I danced the way I had seen the black girls dancing at the mission, popping my butt awkwardly up and down in front of my mirror. With my back to it. Watching myself over my shoulder the whole time. About fifteen seconds in, I doubled over in laughter. How pitiful was I?!
I could see the headlines clearly: “White girl dies dancing in front of mirror. Mysterious weight loss concerns friends and family.”
Yes, friends and family would definitely be concerned. I could hear my father now. He would begin with a “Wow you look great!”
He would finally approve of my figure just before his eyebrows would knit together in concern, “You’re not on drugs are you?!”
Oh no, dad. I was not on drugs. It was worse. I was a white girl trying to dance like a black girl. Something which happens to be an impossibility. In retrospect, I can say I honestly don’t care how good you did in step show, little white girl. You will never have the rhythm and the groove of a black girl.
I had begun to form friendships with people at the mission. Some were homeless, some were not. I found I enjoyed talking to them, hearing their stories. They were real people, they played no games. It was refreshing. It made it easier not to think about me, me, me all the time. I was so sick of me.
Saul had sauntered past me several times now. I was perched on a stool in the lobby waiting for five. I couldn’t wait. Five more minutes and I could go home. I would go home, exchange pleasantries with whoever happened across me on my way up to my room, and sit. I would sit and read a book or sit and listen to music. It would have to depend. What kind of a mood was I in…music or book...book or music? Decisions decisions…
“Aye.”
I pulled out of my thoughts long enough to look up at the dark figure that towered over me. His shirt draped down to his knees where blue jean…were those shorts? They drooped down to his ankles. Shiny red shoes stood out against the boring white tile of the floor at the mission. I judged him silently. Maybe he would go away if I didn’t make eye contact. Surely he wouldn’t want to mug me?! I clearly didn’t have a purse on my shoulder. He wouldn’t…violate me…would he? Not with all of these people…where was everyone?! I looked around, panicking. I was about to be raped and I didn’t even have a decent story to show for it! I could hear myself, years from now, warning younger pretty white republican girls about the dangers of sitting on stools, trying to figure out whether music or reading was a better evening activity-
“You deaf?” he asked. His voice was deep, but gentle. I drew my eyes up his figure and met his gaze. His eyes were dark. Very dark. And his skin was so black. It was beautiful.
“Huh?” he asked, I figured it was in response to his last question.
I stammered, trying to find my voice. Where was it?! It had gotten buried so deep in my chest. With all my worrying a lump had formed in my throat causing me to croak, finally, “No.” I let it out in a tiny voice.
He must have seen the fear stricken look behind my eyes, turning my face white.
“Girl I ain’t gonna hurt ‘chu!” he squealed in a pitch higher than I thought he would have been capable of, a big white shock of a smile breaking on his black face.
He rocked forward, punching me on my shoulder, I flinched and recoiled at his touch. He paused, smiling that big white smile, giving me a chance to cover for my clearly racist action. Silence. My stomach plummeted to my feet, my heart was pounding in my ears. I couldn’t move. I had graduated from a highschool that proudly sported 2.5 African American students. My side of town didn’t see anything but white. Hispanics raised the children and blacks cleaned our houses. I recall a conversation I heard my mother having with a woman from our very Baptist church. “Jewell is a different kind of black woman to have around your house. I mean. You can trust this one. I’ve quit locking away my jewelry. Honestly, Karen, I even let her polish the silver. And it’s all still there. I counted.” My mind then flashed to my mother, holding a wine glass staring at the ceiling with her lips pursed as if she were calculating Paula’s words to her.
“Aah… I see ha it is,” he tilted his head back as he spoke, his eyes tightening.
Speechless I stared at him. What did he see? Did he see I thought he wanted to violate me? Take me to Oklahoma in the back of a big white van and slowly chop me up? Discarding my mangled parts in a ditch somewhere? I could see the headlines now.
“Mangled white girl found in Oklahoma Ditch. Authorities suspect fowl-play.”
I trembled, eyeing the double glass doors not ten yards away…I could make a run for it.
His sudden movement jerked me out of my escape plan.
He merely shook his head, a genuine look of remorse flashed into his eyes as he turned and walked away, lethargically dragging his feet, causing the soles his red shoes to squeak.
I stared after him in wonder. As the rhythm of my heart slowed, I took mental inventory of my body. Yes, it was fine.
Click.
5 o’clock.
I slid off my stool and paced across the room, disconcertedly. I shoved the heavy glass door open. The northern summer heat rushed in, slid around my body, like a liquid. I broke out into a run towards the comforting grey Honda.
2.The Great Escape
I look back on that first encounter with Saul quite often. I remember it was almost like he haunted me. I realized what I had become in that short time with him. I was a coward. I was too frightened to even address him like a human being. Too busy thinking about me, me, me.
It’s not like anyone plans to turn out that way, really. I never thought it would happen to me, that I would become such a coward. It’s strange, isn’t it? How many people say that; “I never thought it would happen to me”. Looking back on that part of my life, I can only shut my eyes and thank God that I somehow managed to not lose myself completely when X had broken up with me. I understood then, that the life I thought I had been living, was in fact, no life at all. It was like being something that I knew I wasn’t. In a sense, I was cheating life, and getting away with it. I was barely living, walking around half dead, and getting away with it.
I faced my greatest fear that summer, I met myself. At the time I was sitting on that stool, shaking in my boots, I didn’t know it, but I had definitely cut to the chase and found the raw Carrie Roberts. I realized I was nothing. I finally realized what people were seeing when they looked at me; Nothing. Poofy hair. Honor student. A shell. A carbon copy of the many generations that went before me, sliding through life without real meaning.
But mostly I realized this: the reason I appeared so lifeless was because I had no life. It’s that simple. Up until X, I had played the perfect part of a cookie-cutter daughter, doing exactly what my parents expected. I won awards, baked cakes, met curfew. My life was lived for them and their approval. When X and I started dating, I became what he wanted me to be. I completely immersed myself into becoming the “trophy wife” he dreamt of marrying. Pearls, poofy skirts, high heels, mascara, three course meals cooked for him on a Tuesday night-the whole nine yards.
The absence of him in my life had left me a shell of a woman with a love for cleaning and a great recipe for brownies. I had all of these things I knew how to do, but no one to do them for.
Who was I? After being a parent’s wet dream of a perfect child, I morphed into a Stepford wife. A Stepford wife who never got the ring, or the guy for that matter.
Up until that point my life had been one big charade. I had been living it for everyone else but me. Where had it gotten me? Alone in a room, without curtains, pondering why I was terrified of the color of a man’s skin.
I had to figure out who I was. I had to escape myself.
But my escape had already begun. I was already running. I had run harder and further than I ever thought I would be able to. Had my subconscious been telling me to run before my conscious had even figured it out? When I had begged my father to send me away, was it really me begging him to send me away from myself?
I did spend the remainder of my summer in Philadelphia. I fell in love in Philadelphia. That fall, I left my heart in Pennsylvania. I swore to myself I would one day return to live a beautiful life there. Everything about the North was lovely to me, and knowing that I would one day call it my home made it easier to leave, and return home to begin my freshman year at the University of Arkansas