THE SUN AND HER MOON
The rest of the weekend was a blur as I repeatedly did the same thing; think about how to get Fin back, lose hope, give up, realize I at least need to try to find Fin and so on. I woke up this morning to the sound of the birds chirping outside my window, which honestly wasn't so bad since I wouldn't have woken up so easily with just my alarm sounding to wake me. I got up off my bed, my bed creaking loudly behind me as I walked to my mirror. Looking at my reflection in the mirror, I looked like a mess. My hair sticking out of my messy bun from different strands and the bags under my eyes were extremely visible. I groaned as I expected the worse to come from my first day back since Finian's disappearance. Everyone would be staring at me, talking about me and trying to console me when the only thing I'd want is to be alone. "That girl has no friends without that Finian guy," I could imagine them saying. "Too bad, he was kinda cute." They would whisper when in reality they didn't care about Finian at all until' he vanished. Although that was wrong, it was how all high schools worked. You act like you hate someone and then in their hour of need, you pretend to love them, like you actually cared for them throughout the years. Everyone in high school is just trying to get by, and for some people that also means acting fake to have people enjoy your presence. Finian and I were the complete opposite. We didn't wanna just get by, we wanted to get by together with each other and not let any get to us. There had been times where people had hurt our self-esteems but we didn't care so much. Of course, it got to us sometimes but we knew we had each other and that was all that mattered to us.
Looking back at my reflection, several times, I looked at myself from different angles. The mirror made it impossible to not notice how my hip dips stood out and how wide my stomach was. I cringed at the sight of my body, my biggest insecurities, and it has been ever since I was younger.
Growing up faster than the rest of girls my age came with some perks but mostly down falls. If I'm going to be honest, there was mostly no perks to begin with. Nine year old me already had a grown woman's body, which for some reason meant I had to act like a woman too. My childhood had just started and I was expected to act the way my body looked and was seen by people around me. Being called cruel names was just another part of life I adjusted to due to my looks. Finian and I were always close because of that reason too. He didn't care I looked older than I was, neither did he care what people would say about me. "Give it a few years and we'll prove them wrong, they'll be jealous." Finian would say, reassuring me. Fin and I would always be friends; we were the sun and the moon, complimenting each other, and there was no other way I could explain it.
Due to the harsh words I've heard over the past years my insecurity was not just my body, it was the way I was perceived by my clothing choice as well whether they showed off my over-developed curves and other parts of my body. Looking through my clothes for the first day back to high school since Fin's disappearance, I could hear Fin's voice in the back of my head, telling me not to listen to what other people think. "Their opinions are invalid." Fin would've told me if he were here.
It being November and living in the Town of Greendale meant the weather was still very warm. Greendale's temperature starts to decrease around the beginning of December, meaning we only get about three months of winter starting from December to around the end of February. Basing the weather off my closet, I decided to settle for a pair of black biker shorts with an oversized band tee Fin bought me two years ago, and it still fit to this day. Wearing the shirt he bought me brought homage to Fin's disappearance. Even though no one else would know the meaning of my outfit, this shirt was close to heart for me. I could've worn the best friend necklace Fin and I had shared through out middle school, or even one of his hoodies he'd given me, but I wanted the school day to feel like as if nothing had happened. As if Finian was still here although that wasn't the case. Pretending everything was normal at school is one of my ways of coping, and I'm content with that way.
Everyone has their own ways of coping with trauma, deaths and even negative thoughts. Even if ignoring Fin's disappearance at school was a bad way to deal with his absence as most would say, it helped me get through. At the end of the day, I didn't need to focus on my coping strategies because I knew I would find Fin soon and bring him back.