THE SAME PLACE - by Yemi And The Pen

The Thing About Other People Cynthia dreaded opening Instagram these days. Every time she did, someone she knew seemed to have something worth celebrating. It was either an engagement or a new job. If it wasn't that, it would be a relocation or a new car. Even her secondary-school classmates, whom she hadn't spoken to in years, appeared to be making remarkable progress. Meanwhile, she was still living with her parents. She was still sending out job applications and trying to figure out what to do with her life. At twenty-four, she felt embarrassingly stuck.Her friends weren't helping matters either. Their conversations these days had become a series of updates about promotions, weddings and exciting new opportunities. For them. Yes, she smiled, congratulated them and joined in the excitement. She always felt genuinely happy for them, but each announcement left her wondering when it would finally be her turn. One evening, Cynthia sat on her bed wondering, just like she'd always done. She wondered how she'd fallen behind. Had she wasted too much time? Made the wrong decisions? Was everyone else simply better at figuring life out? Where did it all go wrong? She held her face in her palms and fought back invisible tears. It seemed she'd cried so much that her tear ducts had nothing left to give. The following morning, she received a message from an old classmate. She remembered her. Lara was her name. They hadn't been particularly close, but they got along.The girl claimed to have come across an article Cynthia wrote months earlier and explained how much it had helped her through a difficult period.Cynthia read the message twice.She recalled the period of her life she used to write introspective essays. She had almost forgotten writing that piece. At the time, she had considered it a small achievement, barely worth celebrating.Now, for the first time in weeks, she smiled without forcing it. The sensation felt strange but she welcomed it.Again, she thought about her life in the past few years. She hadn't achieved everything she wanted. No. She still had a long way to go. But she slowly realized her life wasn't empty simply because it didn't look like everyone else's. Maybe she was making progress in her own way. It's not a race, a voice in her head said. For some reason, she imagined it was Lara. Cynthia closed Instagram and opened her laptop. She still a life waiting to be lived. And she didn't want to spend all of it watching other people live theirs. It was time to start writing again.

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