Bland.

Whenever someone asked "How are you?" Megan always replied "I am fine."

Megan had always been fine in her life. Never good. Never great. She was just fine.

But fine never meant happy. When other kids ran around joyfully, Megan wondered why they would be so happy. During teenage years, when other kids swore true love,Megan wondered why would they be so foolish. Her life was a constant parallel to reality.

She was tired of this life and every passing year was hard for her to survive.

Nothing extraordinary ever happened. She had a family with both parents, one brother and a decent standard of living.

The only special thing that happened in her life was when she lost her sense of taste. She hadn't noticed at first.But right after she finished her high school final exams, she noticed she couldn't taste the soda. At first she thought she had picked the wrong can, but the second and third one were no different. The coffee at the cafe had no taste.

Doctors explained that the taste receptors of her tounge may have damaged due to some hot or cold stuff she ate. They assured her parents that it will come back after a few days. But it didn't.And Megan being the good child as she always have been decided to keep this fact from her parents, to avoid making them worried. She thought it was a temporary thing ,going too long , but days turned to weeks and months and finally a decade passed without taste.

To keep up her facade, Megan would Google recommendation of tasty stuff or read comments about how a certain dish tasted. Occassionally she would go out for dinner with her colleagues or family, and pretend to enjoy the best meal of her life.

She had no idea why she was hiding this fact from others. Maybe she didn't want to worry people or maybe because this was the only extraordinary thing in her life and she wanted to protect it. She had people around her fooled. This was the joke that only she knew about. This was pathetic.

All these little things weren't something bad but it was devastating to Megan. The little fights her parents had, the way her parents looked happy with her brother, the lingering feeling that she doesn't belong here, the other kids being happy- everything made her unhappy. Except for Megan, everyone was happy.

But to Megan, everything was bland just like her coffee.