Lonely At the Top
"The problem with royalty is this: that throne only seats one." Rory POV
Summary: The musings of a lonely queen. Spoilers for all four seasons, most notably "Raincoats and Recipes," the season 4 finale.
~*~*~
The brakes squeal, the lights flicker, and the train comes to a shuddering stop. Silently cursing the public transportation system, she closes the book she hasn’t even glanced at, throws it in her briefcase, and makes her way through the sliding doors. Her heels make pleasant clacking noises on the concrete steps as she climbs up to street level. She is greeted by exhaust fumes, the sound of cars honking, and much to her dismay, the spattering of rain on the sidewalk. She squints up at the gray sky. She's never learned to carry an umbrella.
As she hurries along the sidewalk to reach her apartment building, she muses on this city that she's supposedly conquered. To hear her former neighbors talk, she might as well be queen of New York.
The problem with royalty is this: that throne only seats one. She wishes someone had warned her about it beforehand.
She's got everything and nothing all at once. She has a top-notch education, lots of fast-track career opportunities, family, friends. In a word, success. She, Rory Gilmore, is successful. She tells herself that as she opens her apartment door, juggling a bag of takeout in one arm and her briefcase, coffee cup, and keys in the other. Keeps telling herself that as she glances at the answering machine (again, no messages), rifles through her mail (mostly bills, one card from her mom), and finally sits down to eat her Chinese food.
The word "success" tastes bitter in her mouth, makes the moo shoo pork taste stale and unappetizing. Killing herself to make a living, having no time to breathe, not having a real relationship in over two years. This is success?
She can't help longing to be sixteen again, to be safe and protected in her house in her little town with her mom. Can't help remembering how it felt to have a boy with dark eyes look at her, really look at her, for the first time. Can't help wishing all her problems could be fixed by a kiss or a refurbished car or an "I love you, you idiot!"
But that boy is not hers, and everything associated with him is gone as well. His eyes and smiles and kisses haven't been hers for years now, and somehow she feels that whatever made her special in his eyes is gone as well.
She knows they did a big thing badly, and in many ways it’s shaped these years of her adult life. If he were standing in front of her now, she'd tell him that. We did a big thing badly, Dean, and we hurt a lot of people. Maybe she'd tell him how she's never quite recovered from seeing that look of disappointment in her mom’s eyes. She's never been able to rid herself of the faint disgust she feels when she looks in the mirror, when she sees a girl she barely recognizes anymore staring back at her. That girl sleeps with people's husbands and makes excuses for things she knows, deep down, are inexcusable. Rory doesn't want to be that girl, and even though she's not that girl, not anymore, what that girl has done is ingrained in her past and she can't seem to shake it.
Rory Gilmore at sixteen had fallen victim to the common fallacy of wanting what she couldn't have. She had loved the Harvard dream because it had seemed so distant, so unattainable, so much grander than something a girl from Stars Hollow could ever hope to achieve. As for Jess, well, the Lorelai tradition was to love the dangerous boy, the one who promised passion and heartbreak with a simple smoldering look—and Rory was nothing if not her mother's daughter. She had loved Jess passionately, and the heartbreak she'd felt when he left her was intense.
It's taken years, but she knows now that passion, true passion one person feels for another, can be more than just that sexy, inviting feeling of danger. It can be true companionship—looking into someone's eyes and seeing something you want to see every day and night for years to come.
She felt it that night, she knows she did. But she had waited too long, and once again found herself wanting something she couldn’t have. That soothing, searing passion in his eyes belonged to someone else, and she knew it, even as the ring was slipped off and laid on the nightstand. She'd realized what she wanted too late, and something that should have been right ended up all wrong, for everyone.
Rory Gilmore, aged twenty-six, knows that being happy with what you've got is one of the rarest and most precious qualities you can have. She knows the value of holding on to a good thing, of really appreciating something that makes you feel safe, protected, loved. She wishes she'd known that ten years ago.
Of all the things she wishes for, she wishes she'd known that.
end
Posted by Carrie on 02:06 AM