Dating isn't easy. Finding love is harder. But being a Delaney makes it all a thousand times worse because let's face it, with parents like theirs, the NextGen never stood a chance.
11 short stories following the disastrous love lives of:
Seraphina...
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I was seven years old when I had my first camera. It was an old polaroid camera, one of those instant ones where you take a photograph and it prints in seconds. My sister, Martha, gave it to me to help me better understand the world around me. Other people understand their surroundings from noise, from talking, but I don't. I've never quite caught on to what people are trying to say. I can hear them perfectly when they talk, I just don't know how to hear their words in the same way that they've said them.
To me, verbal communication is a minefield. In truth, simply dealing with people is a nightmare, with all these social constructs that make little to no sense. It was like a game and no one took the time to explain the rules to me, and by the time they did, it didn't make sense because it all seemed so contradictory to what I'd already witnessed. Whenever someone tells me that they're 'fine', I interpret that as per the definition of the word: satisfactorily or pleasingly; very well. It was years later when Martha took me aside and told me that sometimes 'fine' means exactly what I think it means, but there are times when it means the opposite.
But how do you know when it means 'ok' and when it means 'not ok'?
Words were created to mean something. When it ceases to mean its original definition, then someone ought to update the dictionary. And please don't get me started on slang words. Or idiomatic phrases. Or sarcasm. They're all foreign to me, just like French.
Everyone in the Delaney family speaks French. Except me. And well, Martha. She doesn't speak French, although she did try, everyone laughed at her so she stopped learning and said she was happy not to bother. According to her, she was happy to be fluent in English and Sarcasm, which she firmly believes is a language of its own and with far more intricacies than other languages.
I struggle with English. It's difficult for my neurodivergent brain to understand communication in my native tongue, so I never attempted French or any other language. Before I switched schools, I attended a bi-lingual school with my sister, Sera, and our cousin, Léa, both of whom speak French. My teachers there thought it would be easy for me to pick up another language because, despite my dysfluent speech, communication is only 7% verbal. Even if I don't understand the words, I should still, in theory, understand non-verbal cues and body language.
This is where the real struggle starts. If you say you're 'fine' and you're nodding your head and you have open body language, shoulders are drawn back and facing the person you're speaking with, you're fine.
If you say you're 'fine' but you're frowning and your shoulders are drawn forward, like you're hunching and closing yourself off to the person you're speaking with, you're not fine.
In theory, I understand this as Martha explained. In practice, it's a mathematical conundrum for me because there are too many variables. What if they're fine but they're shaking their head and their body is half turned away like they're about to run? Are they fine? Or not fine? What if they're crying? What if they say they're 'totally fine'? What if they say 'fine' but their voice is flat?
