It’s a day of green piss beer, and everyone talking in godawful fake Irish accents. The streets are crowded, everyone is drunk by noon; it’s loud and everything is either blocked off because of the snow or because they had to make a fucking snow route for the parade. Plus the whole city is somehow magically engulfed in the smell of corned beef, boiled cabbage, and shitty whiskey. (Okay, maybe it's not quite that bad, but it's not too far off base.)
It’s even worse when there’s some fucked up piece of cosmic costume jewelry turning your friends and loved ones into emotional super monsters on the loose.
All you want was to get a fucking drink. Except it takes a half dozen bars for you to realize why the lines are out of fucking control everywhere you go and get fed up. Bar number seven is when you finally just grab a random bottle of something that’s just within reach of a place you’re probably not allowed to be. You smile, give a bartender a wink, and blow him a kiss as you throw down a wad of cash, and hit the button on the teleporter attached to your belt.
You could have stayed out, but last year you wound up scrubbing green glitter out of your hair for a week, and frankly, you didn’t want to go through that again. Besides, you’re not sure you’d make great company. It’s not that your week was nearly as taxing, all things considered. It’s just that despite what some people might think, considering who you are and what you do, you’re not morally bankrupt. In fact, you’ve got a pretty big soft spot, and don’t like seeing decent people, people you care about, suffering. You’re worried.
So you go home, to your cluttered apartment, to your cat with no name, and pour yourself a drink, and try to put all the pieces of this week together.
Truth be told, you have no idea what the hell happened today, just that someone you knew had the ring again, and maybe they weren’t okay. Or maybe he was now. Maybe everything worked out just fine in the end and everyone made it through relatively unscathed. Was that being too idealistic? Well, probably. This was Boston, after all, and no matter how you spun it, everything was usually a few varying shades of fucked up.
All you know for sure is that shit’s been sideways all fucking week, and you feel really behind the ball with all of it, just a little too late when it comes to it.
It’s a small miracle that everyone made it through okay. Or at least mostly okay. You know better than to take shit at face value, because you’re the queen of insisting everything is fine when it’s not. Like it or not, this kind of shit has lasting effects, memories, emotions, moments in time imprinted on a person, wether they remember why or not.
It sucks.
Selfishly, there’s a part of you, deep down, that’s grateful that you didn’t find that ring, because you know you’re a mess. You smile and play pretend, you soldier on because that’s what soldiers do, it’s what you have to do to maintain some semblance of sanity when you’re one breath shy of coming completely unraveled, because life has thrown you curveball after curveball these past few years and you’re still trying to get your feet back underneath you.It’s not all bad, and most days, you’re actually doing pretty well, but it’s always there, gnawing it’s way out. It’s your best kept secret, and that same selfish part of you is the one that knows it’s only a matter of time before you break.
And you know that you should check on your friends, on the people who had to go through all of that, like some hellish emotional roller coaster ride that no one asked for. You should make sure they’re okay, that they aren’t falling apart, because no one should have to go through that, let alone on their own. But it’s a sticky situation, because who knows how they feel?
So you decided to check on them later. Give them the night, let them rest. They deserve that much. Everyone does.