Moments of clarity

Distraction

The museum wasn't a place of peace for Aisling.
To begin with there was never peace in her mind, at least not since she had admitted to her best friend that she had a slight infatuation with her. She had been rejected cruelly.

It had been so hard, coming out, to her parents, her family and the people she dicoursed with on a daily basis.
And then as she had taken the courage one day, in a moment of braveness, she had been let down by the one person she had never thought it to be possible with.

Lowering your defenses wasn't necessarily a good thing, she decided from that day on.

Aisling didn't have peculiar looks, neither did she look especially beautiful.
No, Aisling looked quite ordinary, at least if one didn't take a closer look.

She was her most beautiful when she smiled.
And it was not the kind of conventional beauty, that was placated in the magazines all the time.

The beautiful thing was the way she smiled, it seemed almost too big for her face, an almost gaping hole, letting out booming sounds of laughter.

It could light up a whole room, her mood easily converted on others, a virus, but a good one.

Now, as she roamed the museum's halls there was no ever present smile on her face, instead she looked exceptionally solemn.

For her the museum had always been something far more important than a place of peace- it was a place of distraction.
Since two years ago, when she had gotten her license, she had driven there whenever a conflict turned up.
A failed test? A fight? Sadness? A problem with university? Whatever problems she had to face, she would jump in her car and drive the journey from Los Angles.

The position of the buildings on top of the cliff had a strangely relieving effect. It was exceptional.

A cleaning of the soul.

Life could be a complicated riddle, many opportunities stemming from only one right or wrong made answer. More often than not Aisling had absolutely no idea how to move forward to the next check-point.

Why was everything always so difficult, so excruciatingly confusing?

~~~~

Her heartache was not the kind that seemed to crush and pull you in depression in the blink of an eye.

It was of a different kind, it seemed to eat her up from the inside, nagging thoughts, a constant echo in her mind, that whispered about failing and not being enough. A torture produced solely by her mind.

Art was a welcome distraction for now.
After all the friendship with her best friend had crumbled apart after her revelation.

Ivy couldn't help Aisling anymore, she was the reason for her problems to begin with.

At first Aisling had thought that Ivy wanted a sort of distance to decide how to react. She had known that her friend wasn't gay, so she knew that she would get a no to love, but she simply couldn't keep on living without at least telling her.
They spoke about everything, so many secrets shared between them over the years, whispered underneath blankets in the dark of night, the only source of light a small flashlight.

But the distance stretched and Aisling finally realized that she hadn't only gotten a no to the possibility of love(which she had known from the start) but also a stop to their friendship.