Que Sera

By Julia

Girl: Mom? I'm scared.
Mom: Oh, sweetie. I checked your closet. There's nothing to be scared of.
Girl: No, mom. It's something else. I'm... I'm scared no one will ever love me.
Mom: Oh sweetie. I love you. Daddy loves you. Lots of people love you.
Girl: No, I mean... like a boy. I'm scared a boy will never love me and I'll die cold and alone and no one will discover my body until it's rotted into the floor of my cheap rental apartment because who needs all the space of a house when it's just you and your bird, and my body rot starts dripping through the floorboards onto my downstairs neighbors.
Mom: Darling, that's absurd. If you die alone of natural causes your body won't leak. It will decay, and your neighbor's dogs will notice the smell and start barking. This will prompt them to call the police.
Girl: Mom! I'm scared a boy will never love me. I'm scared of being alone.
Mom: Well, sweetie, even if a boy does love you, and stays around til death do you part, he might be the first to go and you still might die alone. And then your children will rifle through your things as if you're a Goodwill, not their dead, beloved mother. It's best not to worry about these things.
Girl: But daddy loves you
Mom: Daddy is bound to me by a cultural pressure to provide for the woman who spawned his progeny. If your father ever loved me, he stopped long ago, and developed an unhealthy obsession with Marion Cotillard and spends his nights watching YouTube clips of every time she shows her breasts in a movie, and sometimes he has cyber sex with lesbians in adult chat rooms under the screen name “wetpussy4MarionCotillard696969.” You see, sweetie, most people walk through life alone, or thinking they're alone, or stuck with someone terrible because they're scared to be alone. Rotting through the floor, though undignified and scientifically improbable, sounds like a refreshingly appropriate end to this miserable journey we call life.