We regret to inform you...

Exactly what administrative position does she hold, this angry waddling subscriber to gloom? She waddles around as fast as her bowed legs can manage, with an obvious abhorrence for the students. She possums out of her disgusting office to dart in front of them in the microwave line, putting her food on a time just higher than socially acceptable for a shared lunch break. (As if it isn't enough that there is one microwave for the twenty of us.) Always that look of disdain sits sloppily on her hateful, triangular face.

I had made up my mind to hate her long before today, but today cemented her in my stone book of demons.

I had arrived early, by new custom, to take advantage of the quiet moments before class - before the herds of girls dragging their wheeled cosmetology kits behind them. I had brought my favorite breakfast - a seven dollar treat to myself: a Mexican Mocha coffee and an everything bagel slathered with Johnny's heavenly pimento cheese. I had a Tom Robbins novel which I was approximately three-fourths of the way into. My one spidered vein, testament to a soul sucking career as a casino cocktail waitress, throbbed in my lower leg as it dangled off the tall chair. I had just tucked my long legs gently into the chair with me, opening my wondrous novel and taking a delicious bite of whatever Johnny puts in his "Dream Cream," letting out an internal sigh of satisfaction, when along she came, scuttling around the corner to snap at me in a most disapproving voice, "Please take your feet OFF the furniture!"

The pimento cheese turned rancid in my mouth. Was she serious? Did she just appear from the depths of whatever hell created her to ruin my perfect breakfast; my perfect morning?

In came the wheels. In came the warbling voices of gossip and complaint. The cacophony rebounded off of every flat, glossy surface and rang in my ears, reiterating the ruination of my peace. I swallowed hard, slowly closed my book and thought, 'This is war, administrative person. This is breakfast war."

Sometimes when you have become absolutely certain (or as absolute as certainty can be) that you are not alone in your life and that other people actually do exist, they sit right down and prove you wrong. Sometimes when something seemed genuine, "finally, a real moment in time," it was insignificant to the person you thought had shared it. You thought he caught your meaning, then you realized it was just the beer that made his head nod. Distant, glassy eyes are easily confused for emotion these days, and what isn't? Every interaction is a Missed Connection and every last lying, fucking, shitting human being on this planet will let you down. So what is there to do? Stop being surprised. "Shit happens," as they say, and this holds true for mis or non-interpretation as well.

Disjointed

It isn't that I don't complete the ideas. Heavens, no, it isn't that. It's that I leave them for myself...wherever I've left myself.

I feel my very medicines have become poisonous. My intuition catches what my eyes have missed, but not before my lips commit the mutiny. Secrets don't make friends...but they keep them. That's what the running joke was. I wish I could, in some capacity, retain my own friendship, keep my own secrets.

As it turns out, vacations are a needed thing. I can't figure how they work, exactly, and I'm sick of second opinions. Second opinions, no matter how sound, are like good intentions: they count for naught. This is just my way of screaming in a crowded room for everyone to shut up. My mind feels like the living room of my dysfunctional family on a crowded holiday. The usual suspects vying for the familial spotlight, age old arguments masquerading as some new contention, and a series of small outbursts before the big eruption and slammed screen door. Someone is running upstairs to hide their tears just as grandma's disapproving voice draws out the offender's sopping name, dribbling disdain from one end of the room to the other as it travels. Meanwhile, I sit vaporously in the corner turning my cousins into palm trees.

What is happening here?

I'm not sure of the meaning of anything, anymore.
Or if anything has one.
And I don't know what is going to happen.
Even insofar as my own actions are concerned.
And I'd like to scream and run away.
But that hasn't worked to date.
So now what?

What comes next?

She called it "Winter Blahs"

A cold that settles into your bones so deep that fifteen minutes under a steaming shower isn't enough to draw it to the surface.

Dry skin. Too many layers of last year's clothes. "Seasonal Depression."

What can cure this? A shopping spree with power bill money? A hamburger with extra mayo? Ten minutes in an ultraviolet coffin holding pre-cancerous cells to their promises?

What's Eating Merita Bread?

The day was dragging by...
I awoke still sick with cold and dressed slowly. I couldn't feel comfortable in anything I put on, but settled for old jeans, sneakers, and a raglan tee. I threw a pre-made sandwich in my bag, poured a glass of tea and trudged out the door and down thirty-eight stairs.

I spent three hours with my first Special Needs client, then picked up my second. We grabbed the usual Chic-Fil-A and went shopping for Blue Blue nail polish.

"Do you think this is Blue or Blue Blue?"
"That is definitely a Blue Blue."
"I don't know...it looks kind of Blue to me."
"That is the Bluest Blue nail polish I've ever seen."

And that was my day. And this is my life. It goes on and on. Zero romance. Zero adventure. Blue Blue nail polish and fast food.

Secrecy.

Words I've never written. Words I've never spoken. Never whispered in the dark. Never entertained the idea of forming my lips around them at all. Never let this pen or any other scroll out boldly on a blank page as evidence to another.

Things I know and what I've done and what my life has been.