SandScript 2020

I’m With You 1
Christopher Valenzuela
ESSAY
The day begins like all the others…slow. The sun comes creeping in to steal you
from your sleep. You feel your muscles ache with that second day burn from
the gym. You can’t quite remember your dreams, but you know they left you wanting. Your
alarm hasn’t gone off to rocket you into your routine, so you lay there. You lay there and
you scroll through your social media feeds looking at pictures of happy people, people who
know who they are, people in places you only wish you could go. You see birthday wishes,
celebrities waxing poetic about how they’re just like us, another pop song hit number one
on some chart, your friend’s adventures from the night before. You double tap each picture
you see because you hope if you send out enough love, it might get sent back to you. And
you spread love so thin it might as well be called likes. And you like every picture on your
feed.
1. Title taken from The Garden of Eden by Ernest Hemingway. “I’m with you. No matter what else
you have in your head I’m with you and I love you.”
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