“Love,” Joy said aloud to herself. 

She said it without initially realizing that she had said it out loud. She only intended to say the word to herself internally within her thoughts (as she often did). 

She was immediately embarrassed.

As she uttered the word (one that still felt so mysterious, awkward and sad to her all at once), she managed a slight smile that just as quickly turned back sideways to the frown she usually conveyed.

She was sitting in the front passenger seat of her mom’s car. 

It was raining all over the car, all over the cars and trucks on the street around them, and all over the kids walking to school along the sidewalks outside. 

It was the pouring, relentless sort of rain. 

It was early December and even though the rain wasn’t coming down as ice rain at this point; it was coming down cold. 

“What?” Her mom asked, sounding perturbed. “What about love?”

The car smelled like a combination of the wet sidewalks outside and the leather seats inside with just a hint of her mom’s coffee. 

Joy had been too late getting ready for school and missed the bus at her stop, so her mom was already moody about having to drive her to school before she went to work. 

Even when irritable and moody, Joy’s mom had an undeniable beauty that even strangers pointed out to her on a regular basis. Joy’s mom was one of those “rare beautiful” type of people who had a timeless quality to them that would have rendered them “beautiful” regardless of the time period and culture they lived in. It was the kind of beautiful that could transcend trends, bridge cultures, and echo through lifetimes. Joy heard people describe her mom’s face as “cute,” her mom’s body as “sexy,” her mom’s choices in style and clothing as “pretty” and her mom’s overall appearance as “youthful” and “ageless.” Her mom was one of those people who never had a wrinkled part of her clothing, a smudge in her makeup, or a stray strand of hair sticking to her face. Joy’s mom was one of those people, and she carried herself in a way that reverberated a quiet energy that she had full confidence in knowing this about herself. 

Joy’s long dark hair always seemed to be wild, frizzy and everywhere as it ran over and past her shoulders. She rarely tied it back or placed it in any style. She allowed her hair to be free and frizzy. Today, the ‘frizzy situation’ was somehow even more the case due to the weather and her lack of any sort of preparation. This was much to the annoyance of her mom who had made a comment about it before they entered the car. 

“You asked me what keeps me going in life even though all the other girls don’t like me. I think about love.”

Joy maintained her trademark resting-frown as she said this. Her mom didn’t reply right away as she glared out at the road over the steering wheel. They were stopped at a stoplight, and her mom was holding her to-go cup coffee close to her lips to allow the steamy warmth of the coffee to climb up her lips and cradle the lower part of her nose. She was close to taking a sip when she decided against this and put the coffee back into one of the car’s drink holders. Joy had noticed that her mom didn’t let herself savor any of the food or beverages she consumed, even the ones she loved. It was like even enjoyable moments or activities in her life were a chore, and her mind was anxiously already on to the next event or set of events she was planning to engage in. 

“Joy, I’m going to tell you a secret that most women don’t learn until later in life and that most men never really learn, so are you ready for it this morning?” 

“Probably not...”

Her mom sighed an exaggerated sigh before launching into her planned speech anyway: “Most of the men you’ll meet don’t know what it means to appreciate a woman. Trust me, most of these idiots only go by sexual attraction, especially in high school. Most men never learn anything about how to truly see a woman they are drawn to for who they really are. They literally can’t know or see a woman’s qualities past the way their own minds and bodies are responding to the woman they are attracted to. Their sexual attraction blinds them from your character and your abilities to the point that they’ll only say the right things to you just to have sex with you or to keep to staring at you. 

“Pretty much the one thing they have to offer is, well— words. It’s the words they think they need to say to get you in bed. Their words have no meaning or connection to who you really are. Men don’t have the ability to understand the depth of a woman or even begin to understand how sophisticated, diverse and complex we really are. They just get frustrated and confused. I know it’s sad, but it’s true. Nearly all the men you will meet will never get past that level either, and that’s why most men can’t have authentic relationships or even real friendships with any woman they are attracted to. I thought your dad was different at one point, but he isn’t. I learned right before you were born that he was never interested in anything about me except my body and maybe my popularity when we were in school. But that was it. Nothing else. 

“I know you already think you know what love is now, Joy. But I’ll be honest with you— you don’t. Girls your age don’t know right now. Many of them end up like me where they don’t learn until after they’ve spent years in a soulless marriage or relationship. Many of them settle with that kind of relationship because they don’t know any better, think they can’t do any better, or think they don’t deserve real love. Many of them don’t want to believe that real love exists. Even some of those women who learn any of the things I am sharing with you right now don’t teach their children what they’ve learned because they are either bitter and resentful that they had to learn the hard way, or they still don’t want to admit to themselves that ‘real love’ is really out there even if they’ve seen it or experienced it before. 

“I’ve never experienced it, Joy, but I know it’s out there. I’ve seen other people experience it and I am doing you a huge favor by sharing this all with you now. If you don’t experience real love in a relationship then, at best, you might get a guy who never learns real love but knows just enough about relationships to still give you his full attention and kind of fake it— like your dad still does with me. But that is hard work to them and never quite fulfilling for us, even if it sometimes feels like it could be enough. ‘Real love’ is different. ‘Real love’ is unconditional trust, unconditional respect, and unconditional faith. It’s rare. They say it’s even more rare nowadays, but Joy…I think it’s always been rare. Do you know what I mean by ‘real love?’”

Joy remained silent, but not because she didn’t want to give a response. She wasn’t sure how to respond. Her mom had never told this to her before, and she didn’t want to say the wrong thing. However, she could sense that this silence still annoyed her mom anyway. 

Her mom groaned at the lack of response. She looked at Joy for a split second in anger as if to say something, but initially remained quiet. She then groaned again. What she said next was much more familiar to Joy: “Some people are the type of people that you can tell just by looking at them that they will end up alone. You know within seconds of seeing them,” her mom explained with an air of exhaustion and resignation that people often have when repeating themselves on a subject they feel like they shouldn’t have to discuss, “and if you don’t want to end up like one of them, you’ll have to stop dreaming. Be more realistic about who you are in this world and what you can get. You’ll have to take what you can get if you are going to get anything at all. And you, Joy, you are going to be limited in what you can get. So, you better accept that now. The sooner you accept it, then you’ll at least make a few friends who are like you, and then maybe have a boyfriend if you’re lucky. It won’t be nearly as easy for you as it was for me, and I’ve admitted to you that it didn’t turn out to be all roses for me either. You are going to be much, much, much more limited with your options. But you can get around some of these things if you start listening to me.”

Her mom had told her this second part of today’s lecture repeatedly— almost daily. 

Within the content of some of these lectures, her mom pointed out the people who she perceived as having ended up alone or on their way to ending up alone whenever they were out in public. On this occasion, the largest girl in her class happened to be standing eight feet away from the other kids at a nearby bus stop as they pulled up to another stoplight. Everybody else had umbrellas or were standing under somebody else’s umbrella, except this girl. 

That girl was soaked. 

Completely drenched. 

She was so soaked that her clothing had the appearance of being freshly painted over her body. Joy couldn’t comprehend how the girl was able to stand out there without wearing a jacket and imagined she must have been freezing. 

“You are only slightly better off than her,” her mom reminded her, “and trust me, it’s going to get worse as you get older if you keep going down this road you’re on.”

Joy replied by quietly maintaining her resting-frown. 

Her mom then pointed out a homeless man looking defeated, alone, and soaked like an unaffected, weathered statue as he stood motionless on the sidewalk in the torrential rain outside of a holiday-decorated convenience store: “You’re on your way to ending up like that,” she added as they drove by him.

He didn’t look back at Joy, but Joy still felt like he observed her looking him, just like she felt like the largest girl in the class had noted her gaze too. 

It felt like there was a vague connection of loneliness between all of them (despite leading very different lives) that didn’t need to be overtly acknowledged.

When she was eleven years-old, she remembered she was with her mom at the grocery store in the frozen aisle and her mom couldn’t take her eyes off a very lonely-looking woman with black-rimmed glasses dressed in clothes a size or two too tight on her. Her mom was staring at her so intently that Joy felt uncomfortable as though she was the one being stared at. But the lonely-looking woman didn’t seem to notice her mom staring at her from halfway down the aisle. Instead, the lonely-looking woman was staring intently at a bag a frozen broccoli she was holding and had indecisively motioned toward the freezer door at least two or three times to put it back. But instead of putting it back, she simultaneously kept reading the nutrition label on the bag of broccoli. On another near-attempt to put it back, she anxiously dropped it on the ground. As it fell, she bent over so quickly to try to catch it that she split the back of her pants across her bottom— right in front of them. She stayed bent over after the splitting occurred, still staring down at the bag of broccoli without even reaching for it anymore. She continued to look at it awkwardly– as though she was still reading the label. Joy’s mom burst out laughing in such a sudden rage, that it scared Joy and she felt like it was echoing through the entire store as though they were in some deep majestic cavern that carried an endless echo. Joy wondered if she was more embarrassed than the lonely-looking woman since the woman was still reading the label (or at least pretending to) and was seemingly unaffected by her mom’s laughter.

“See, if you don’t start getting yourself together,” Joy’s mom had laughed at the time, “that will be you someday. You have no other choice, you have to live this life to the best of your limited beauty.”

Back in the car, her mom paused and started a little hum to herself. Joy had noted her mom normally did that hum before she would start saying things that were weird and arbitrary. 

“I wouldn’t be this beautiful and or be as popular as I was when I was in high school if I hadn’t been a princess in my previous life,” her mom explained. “You see, there is no greater opportunity to be raised on how to have class, etiquette, education, and self-care than to be born as a princess. I’ve done everything I can to teach you all of those important characteristics from birth, but you’ve ignored me. I’m telling you, Joy, they are so important, especially for a girl like you who wasn’t born with natural beauty. You can still live like a princess, even with your limitations. I have all the tools and know all the ways; you have to start listening to me.”

Yes... Joy thought to herself. She does the humming thing to herself before things usually get weird. She briefly smiled a little bit at this thought and didn’t respond to her mom. 

By the time her mom turned to look at her for a response, the silent resting-frown had returned to her face.

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