#it's melanie back at it with a maya drabble bc i just have too much muse for her all the time

[mayahirsch-a]

TITLE: GROWING PAINS. PLOT: An insight to Maya’s everyday endeavors and how she comes out of them the same person, always. DATE: January 5th, 2022. TRIGGER WARNINGS: sex, sexual themes, nudity, mental health, parental abuse, slightly misogynistic slurs, mentions of misogyny.

The ceiling looked the same but different. There was a new crack as well as all the same ones. Maya traces the ones she knows. The one that looks like a ghost, the one that looked like a misshapen smiley face, and the little blob she named Paul. There’s breathing beside her. Right. There’s a man there.

11:14AM.

“Wow, Maya,” He says, breathless, pulling her blanket over his naked bottom half which makes her face scrunch up as if she’s sucked on a lemon. “You amaze me every time.” Every time. God, was she that easy? At least it was a compliment. She chuckles, “Yeah, thanks.” Maya says on impulse, watching as her “friend” moves to stand up and grab his pants. He was nice-looking, that was for certain. Just her type. Tall, broad, brunette, and a thick beard. He looked like a lumberjack who actually used decent deodorant. At least that much she can respect, right? 

Oh, and he’s Paul. The guy the blob is named after. He’s somewhat of a regular. 

“What’re you doin’ after this?” Paul asks.

“After this? You make it sound like we just kicked a soccer ball around.” Maya replies, laughter weaving through her words. 

“See, that’s what I like about you. Always joking.”

Maya isn’t sure how to take that statement. There’s a part of her that’s thankful she’s being set apart from his other crusades. But then there’s another part of her that feels grossed out by that. She wasn’t a joke, she was a woman. 

“Always the charmer, Paul.” She decides on, forcing a laugh. Maya sits up, pulling her blanket back towards her as Paul puts on his pants. She hates the way he jumps while he does it. He jumps when he pulls the zipper up too which confuses Maya. Did he need to jump to do that? If he didn’t will his stupid little dick get chopped off? The thought almost makes her laugh but she refrains. He scurries around her room then in search for his shirt, then his flannel, then his jacket. Now he really looked like her vision of a lumberjack. Maya pretends, for just a moment, that this was her sweet lumberjack husband and he was about to go out into the yard after a morning of fucking to chop wood for the fire. 

“You’re like, the sexiest bitch alive.” Fantasy ruined. Maya forces another laugh though her brows furrow, so it looks a little like she’s conjuring an evil plan or just uncomfortable. Paul notices this and his face drops a little. Maya feels terrible though she knows she shouldn’t. He did just call her a bitch, but in an endearing way. Right? She tries to think of it that way but only not to hurt poor Paul’s feelings. Because the last thing she wanted to do was start her day off by upsetting a man. 

“Thanks, that’s sweet.” Maya replies and Paul’s smile finally returns. There’s a strange heavy feeling in her stomach. 

“Alright, I’m gonna head out. I’ll see you, alright? Thanks for this. You’re such a good friend.”

Friend. Oh, God. She was always the friend. The good, giving friend.

Maya nods, her lips pursed in another forced expression, “Sure, yeah. Thanks. See ya.” She mumbles and Paul heads out of the bedroom. Maya waits in her spot for the sound of the door opening and closing. And when she hears it, she’s quick to groan, sinking back into her bed that now smelled like Old Spice and socks. She stands, still naked, gathering her pajamas from the evening before up from the ground and throwing them on. Those too smell a little like socks and sweat but she doesn’t mind it. This was her stench, not Paul’s. So, she tears her sheets off and throws them into a pile near the corner of her room. She’ll wash them later before bed. 

She pads around her room, gathering things that she needed to clean or just toss. The brunette shimmies over to her phone, plugging it into the little speaker she has settled on her nightstand. She picks Forever & Always by Taylor Swift, obviously, and begins to gallop around her room and dance poorly. Maya grabs piles of laundry in her arms and sings along, skipping her way to the little at-home laundry machine she bought from Amazon. It can’t fit too much but it was good enough. She’ll wash a couple pairs of underwear and maybe a sweater to wear for work tomorrow then worry about the rest after. 

“‘CAUSE I WAS THERE WHEN YOU SAID FOREVER AND ALWAYS!” Maya sings with her entire chest, pouring laundry detergent into the machine. The dancing continues, Maya whipping her head around in the kitchen. Then, the jumping starts, and Maya starts to jump all around her apartment to her favorite songs. This was her exercise for the day and it was a daily occurrence, really.

3:26PM.

Her laptop is on the ground. Since her dance break, she’s been working and folding her now clean clothes ever since. But, a hitch, her mother calls. The encounter starts the way it usually did. Teresa Hirsch asks how her daughter was doing and attempts to sympathize with her situation because Maya, her daughter, makes the stupid mistake of opening up.

“I don’t know, I guess I’m just feeling lonely. Or, I don’t know, not lonely. Just bored, I guess. Maybe I need to explore the city more.”

“You’re bored because you don’t have a job, Maya.”

“I do have a job, mom. You know I write.”

“Yeah, you write. But that’s not a job. You’re not out hounding politicians or reporting on a new crisis in the country. You’re writing about shit you made up.”

And here we go.

“It’s not shit I made up. I write about what I’ve been through and how I feel. A lot of people do that, you know.”

“You haven’t been through shit, Maya, please. I’m starting to get aggravated now. That article was bullshit and lies. You know me and your father still get asked about it? I know your father’s an asshole but that’s not anyone’s fucking business.”

“We all went through a lot together, mom.” Maya replies, knowing she’ll now have to weather the storm of her mother’s hurt feelings. This was a common theme. Maya was always mothering her mother and fathering her father. She was a parent without children.

“You’ll never know how much I went through. I had four kids to take care of and I had no fucking choice. You have choices. And you never understood that and you were a fucking brat.”

Maya can feel her hands shake so she removes her phone from where it’s pressed to her ear, setting it down on the coffee table. The funny thing about being on the phone with Teresa was that she was so loud that you didn’t have to put it on speaker. You just had to leave it and listen, if you dared. 

“You were always ungrateful, Maya. You fucking kids should’ve been happy that you had a place to sleep and food to eat, do you understand me?”

“Yeah, yeah, I hear you.” She replies nonchalantly and without a care. Maya’s heard it all before and she’ll hear it until the day she leaves this planet. She begins to sweat, sorrow and anger taking over. And her mother was still going, ranting on and on about how Maya was a terrible daughter and a bitch. 

This goes on for a couple minutes before Maya explodes, her face and body red under the pressure of her growing anger. “No, no, you were the fucking bitch! I was a fucking kid, you fucking stupid cunt! Yeah, yeah, keep going, you stupid old bitch. Fuck you. Fuck you!” Maya screams into her phone before hanging up. She’s sure her mom will keep calling to continue the fight but Maya won’t pick up. By the end of the call, she could hear her father in the back getting worked up too, because they always had to team up at some point. It was an endless cycle.

The next few minutes are spent sitting on the ground beside her laptop, coming down from the argument. Tears eventually swell up in her eyes and Maya doesn’t fight them. She lets them fall down her tired, reddened face. Soon enough, the sobs begin, and her head falls onto her knees that press into her chest, her entire body curling up. Maya thinks to call Harlan or Melissa or maybe even Anthony but doesn’t. She didn’t want to bother her siblings with stories of their mother because they’ve heard it all before. They’ve been through the same damn thing. Maya was just the only one stupid enough to keep calling, to keep pressing for a relationship with the people who have hurt her the most. 

When the crying stops, Maya plucks herself up from the floor along with her laptop and moves into her bedroom. Her laptop is tossed onto her bed which was still stripped bare. Fuck, she forgot to wash her bedding. Her head whips around, finding the sad pile still shoved into the corner of the room. 

“Fuck my stupid fucking life.” The woman mutters under her breath dramatically, fighting the urge to throw a tantrum the way a small child would. Somehow, she holds back, and instead crawls onto her bare mattress and lies there for a while. She thinks to get naked, to go back to a primal state in order to feel more in tune with the world again. Because now she’s been flung into space and all she could do was watch her body from a far distance.

10:02PM.

Maya wakes up drenched in sweat and with a bad taste in her mouth. She had work tomorrow and she was waking up in the dead of night, alone, and unwashed. She turns to her window on the right, the night sky bringing her no comfort. There were no stars in sight, just buildings and other windows that she couldn’t see into even though she wishes she could. A groan sounds from her as she moves to stand, all her limbs cracking as she does so. That almost makes her laugh but she couldn’t find it in her to even chuckle a little. Usually she’d make some joke to herself about how she’s getting old. All grown up but not at all. 

This time, she does strip naked, and Maya makes her way into the bathroom, turning the shower on. She holds out her hand, waiting for the water to run warm. Once it does she steps inside and allows the water fall over her face and down her body. She’ll proceed to clean herself of all the things that trouble her. Paul, sex, being the friend, the art of never being the one, her mother, her father, and all the desires in her that she may never fulfil due to not feeling well enough or there yet.

Really, her body was aging, but her brain was not. But tomorrow was a new day.