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Late into the night, the traffic lights outside start to blink, as if to say, “Go ahead, do whatever you want, I don’t care.” It’s easier to apologize profusely for my room being messy than it is to clean it. I remember two times I called 911, although there may have been others. The crossword clue was: “Message written on a car window” and my first guess was SAVE ME, and my second stab was CALL ME, when the answer was WASH ME. When I was on the cusp of graduating college, I ended up in a psych unit for three days instead. Pola and I walked down the same street in different directions so that we could bump into each other to walk in the same direction and it was dark and drizzling and the headlights and streetlights didn’t help so everyone walking towards me was Pola until they got close enough and were not her until it was her. People often give me the heads up that my fly is down. As of now, I think the most beautiful song lyric is: If being afraid is a crime, we hang side by side. I much prefer phone calls to texting. I had to explain the messy details all over again when I met with a new mental health professional. I’m not sure which parts of me are worth keeping secret. The olive oil sputtered and got me, and I held my fingers and arms under the faucet so I’d have smaller blisters to deal with. Learning that the name for something that has been happening with me is OCD, has heightened my OCD. We were watching Big and Pola fell asleep before Josh Baskin returned to the Zoltar machine so he wouldn’t have to be Tom Hanks anymore. In a coffee shop, Pola taught me the basics of crocheting, and a man in a wheelchair wouldn’t stop saying to me, “Yes, that’s a good thing. Crocheting is good. There’s nothing wrong with crocheting. It’s a good thing.” For months now, Pola and I have been stealthily planting two specific mayonnaise tubes on each other’s person each time we see each other and today I found one tucked inside my Zoloft bottle and the other fell out of my hat when I got back home. My belts break at a rapid pace. I dreamt that I lost my cool at work and when I told my coworker about it, he laughed. In lieu of dinner, I ate two Ben And Jerry’s. The scab from my blister got crusty and yellow and looked like a booger and even though I knew better, I fiddled and fussed until it fell off and now the exposed skin is tender and deep red. I’m much more embarrassed when the embarrassing thing occurs in private. But there are major drawbacks to having an audience as well. I think I may have just committed the most brutal act of self-sabotage that I have ever committed in my life. While I was sobbing in a Lyft, my driver made a fatal wrong turn and, at the end of the ride, he gave me three dollars from his own pocket and said it was for making me late to work but I choose to believe it was out of compassion for the crying. I bailed on the movie with Pola because I haven’t really slept for three days. How do I write definitively about something that’s yet to be defined? I’m learning the distinctions between unhealthy sadness and healthy sadness. My phone died and forced me to listen to the things I was thinking and feeling. Cliffhangers are devices used in fiction to keep audiences hooked, beside themselves with anticipation for the next chapter or episode, and a lived life can present you with things that feel like cliffhangers, you’re left wondering what will come next, what another person is thinking or feeling, it can drive you mad, but it’s best to keep in mind that life is not a structured narrative, it happens and it keeps happening, and so I cast off my frantic anticipation and sit here patiently waiting for tomorrow without torment.
YA