F3 - Cycle 42 - I'm Late

Letting  Go and Letting God

Amazed by what she lost, Hannah Sharpe stares at the girl sitting across from her. Maya, oblivious to her acquaintance’s anguish, chats casually about anything that comes to mind. As she works to sufficiently contribute to the conversation, Hannah’s caught between enjoying the moment and dreading the future because she knows the moment won’t last.

                “So, what’s your major now that you’re transferring?” Maya asks.

                “English.” Hannah responds. “I always kind of had it in the back of my mind but wasn’t confident enough to declare it.” She smiles. “Do you know what you want to do?”

                “Nope.” Maya sighs. “No idea.”

                “It’ll come to you.”

                “I sure hope so.”

                Hannah wishes she knew what to say next, but then Maya simply moves on to another subject and keeps going. After a while, the room starts to fill up with others arriving at the party, and Maya soon gets lost in the throngs of people, her many friends surrounding her. Hannah, sort of out of her element and bummed out, searches the crowd for some of her own friends, if she can even call them that, and checks her phone incessantly. Eventually, they show up, and Hannah tries to have a good time, but whenever she sees Maya, her heart sinks a little.

                Hannah has never had a really close friend and she knows that Maya could have been it. Angry at herself, she tells her friends she’s heading out and makes her way, slowly, to the door. Weaving through the masses proved harder than she thought it would be. Halfway there, Maya spots her and looks at her expectantly, probably wondering where she is going.

                “I’m taking off.” Hannah yells over the music. “It was cool seeing you again!”     

                “Oh, you too, totally!” Maya yells back.

                Hannah wants nothing more than to just blurt out everything, all of her regrets, how much she wishes she could just go back in time and make things right, but the blaring music and common sense quickly dissuade her.

                “Good luck with school!” She says, making to walk away, and then inwardly kicking herself for doing so.

                “Thanks! You, too!” Maya laughs and starts dancing again. “We should meet up if we’re ever both in town again.”

                “Yeah, that would be cool.” Hannah hides any trace of excitement.

                “Alright, then, I’ll see you around!”

                “See you around!” Hannah turns and heads for the door, knowing that they will never both be in town again at the same time. Going to different colleges a country apart usually keeps people at a pretty good distance.

                Hannah she knew she was too late, that Maya was no longer the young girl who wanted Hannah’s friendship more than anything else, all those years ago. Why did it have to take so long for it to hit her that she was making such a massive mistake? The regret that plagued her now, it was futile. She couldn’t do anything about it now. She was too late. The opportunity was long gone, any potential for a friendship she ruined for herself when she denied Maya access into her life. What had her problem been?

                Hannah drove home slowly, unable to recall why she never took the last step between her and Maya. It could have been because she was shy, that Maya was sort of intimidating, but that didn’t seem right. Thinking the whole way home, Hannah gave up. She could think of no justifiable reason as to why she now had to live with this huge regret. There must have just been a wall. Thinking back, Hannah had been sort of numb to everything going on around her. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be friends with Maya, it was that she didn’t particularly care to be friends…with anybody. Oh, and now, oh how she wants to go back and scream at herself to wake up. She could have had it all.

Hannah wonders where she had been all these years. She always knew she should do something about Maya, try again, but the desire was never like this. She wishes it had been when there was still a chance, because then she would have done everything possible to make up for her failure. She almost would have rather never come to this realization than come to it too late.

                Getting out of her car and quietly making her way into her parent’s house and up into her bedroom, Hannah wishes the summer were over so she could go back to school and not think about her mistakes. Lying in bed, she cries, and prays. She prays a lot, desperate, not sure why she is feeling this way all of the sudden.

                She prays to get rid of the regret, giving her burdens to God, and she prays for a friend like the one she lost for herself. She wants God’s will for her life, and eventually she starts to realize that maybe her regret over Maya is a part of it. Through her suffering, Hannah learned to lean on God, and she figured that if God could manifest this odd love in her for a friend she never had, then He could certainly help her love her actual family better than she already does. She decided to take it all as a lesson, and trusted that God has a plan for her that surpasses anything she could ever imagine, and that maybe, just maybe, Maya had already done her part.