Dragging feet.

Today was the first of the 50% off sale at work, which meant a excess of ladder climbing, lifting, bending and reaching of all kinds. Moving inventory from the stock room to long folding tables in the center of the floor.

The store was hot and humid, my cat eyeliner felt greasy and itchy around my eyes and I wanted so badly to wipe it away with the back of my hand. We threw a lot of the boxes to each other, at the tables. We kicked them. We swore like men in a garage basting themselves with grease and testosterone and laughed like maniacs when a customer caught us dropping a mother of pearl.

I slapped a few HALF OFF THE ORIGINAL PRICE signs up and we sat back with a hot pizza from the place next door.

Well, come and get em.

My boss and another salesperson had a home brewed beer inside of a water bottle. I laid on the floor with my book and a bowl of fresh sliced strawberries I'd brought from home, nibbling them slowly. Strawberries have always felt like a luxury to me. So cold and tender. I love the way the freckling of seeds concentrated on the tip of the berry feels on my tongue. I listened to Beyonce, Crazy In Love and wiggled my hips a bit against the carpet to the music, swinging my feet.

Truthfully, the work day consisted of few hours of actual work. The rest was lounging, waiting to drive home with the windows down, shouting along with the staticy radio to go home and take off my pants.

The sky darkened. I crawled into a chair, he took a nap on the floor. When he woke, we drew tiny dicks on boxes of Clarks. Some with wings. Some with capes. We giggled and talked about how we'd suffer at our next job with such a long, long time of basking in such freedom for so long.

Our lives are devoid of responsibility there. We open late. We close early. We try on shoes. We watch movies. We drink. We make sex jokes. It's enviable, from the outside looking in, but my god, I miss someone expecting something from me.

Sold out show.

There's a girl sitting next to me talking to her friend. She's so sweet and polite and happy... Really just cheerful. Possibly Canadian. I don't think I've ever had a friend that sounds like her. I'm a little depressed thinking about it.

A light post on something heavy.

A lot has happened in the last few days, but I don't know that I want to talk about it in much detail.

I visited my great grandmother again. I'm still a runt who will die alone, especially after I gave up my hair.

My sister and her husband came to visit.

I've worked nearly every day.

But let's keep this light.

Want to hear what's in my bag? Probably not. You can learn an awful lot about a person from what they carry with them. Of course, you can learn an awful lot about a person from their writing. But this my blog, so eat it.

In my purse, and mind you, it is rather large, I've got a great lot of practical things. I'd love to model it after Hermione's charmed handbag or Mary Poppin's satchel.

Keys. Work keys. House keys. Grandparent's house keys. Old house keys. Jeep key. A hand sanitizer. A metal tear drop shaped keychain with my name bought by boy in Frankenmuth during one of our many breakups.

Snow White Wallet. $90.04 in cash. A debit card. A worn college student ID where I'm at least 20lbs heavier. My sister's address. A few free Redbox codes. Kroger card. An awkward picture of boy from when he was 14.

A cork screw. Self explanatory.

A tea tin containing loose Lady Grey tea and a few fat little packages made up of a coffee filter and loose tea leaves. A tin tea ball. A tea cup with little geishas painted on it.

The Bell Jar. Pristine, but read four times. Inside there's a receipt from when I bought the book, but the text has worn off.

A small notebook. I doodled mermaids on the cover. There's lists of things to buy and things to do in there. I still rather I'd be the only one to read it, thanks.

Three ink pens. One I stole from work, one I stole from the bank and one given to me last week at work because I was kind to her. It's my favorite. It's a baby pink color with a rubber ball you click. The ink flows smoothly.

One pair of socks. I hate wet socks. They make me angry. It's a precaution. You're welcomed.

A keeper. If you don't know what that is, it's a small rubber cup you insert like a tampon that holds the fluid instead of sucking it up into a wad of bleached cotton. You wash and rewash it. I've used it long enough to save me $30. So... There's that.

My birth control. It's a pale yellow compact with the look of disapproval drawn on it with Sharpie. It used to make me violently ill, now it just let's me be free and live my life.

A condom. I remember kind of using the other two in the pack. For like five minutes. Then we remembered we hated them. It's the thought that... Coun... I'm an idiot.

A pocket knife. It's about four inches long and is covered in pink cupcake stickers, but oh, it's sharp. I usually use it for cutting little plastic tags off something I just night and can't wait to use.

Lipstick. I have about thirty lipsticks to my name. In my purse I keep a dark raisin color called Hera. I keep a deep purple called Black Cherry. A pretty peachy pink called Delight. Then my favorite, with the lamest name, Really Red. It's a matte, classy red that I wish to god I didn't feel like I was playing dress up in it whenever I wear it.

So that's it.
And everything is quite necessary.

Sylvia Plath, help.

“I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.” 

So I'll tell you a story or two.

I remember one night telling him how it didn't make any difference as to whether or not he thought he'd break my heart. We were laying on a mattress on the floor, his bed, under the guise that I was staying at a friend's. We listened to the fireworks from that humid room, murmuring all sorts of wonderful things to one another between each pop and flash of light. I was foolish enough for lying in regards to my whereabouts with a boy I hardly knew, but wise enough to stop him when he uttered such a naive sentence. 

"You can't say that. Some day you will and it'll hurt very much." 

"You can't know that." 

But I did know. I knew that I'd given a part of myself away to him. I gave him a place to live in my mind and leading roles in my dreams, day and night. I gave him my heart and promised my innocence. God, you know, I didn't even like boys any more, only him. I shook my head. "You will, and it's okay. I want to feel everything." 

What a statement for a 19 year old girl. Feel everything. Bathe in heartbreak, regret, remorse. Give it all to me, I wanna feel it all. What on earth was I thinking? And how can I get it all back? I felt so brave laying next to him in that little apartment. He watched me intently, his eyes glittering in the dark. He kissed me. The kid made me feel like a goddess. I knew I couldn't see the future but I didn't care. In that moment I was beautiful and powerful, now alone in my bed, I feel so small second guessing every word I write. Then again, since that moment I've felt quite a few more things. 

"I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited."

And I suppose that that's what I meant. I was inarticulate in my youth and my mental status. Laying in bed with boys does that to me. It ties my tongue in knots and plays keep-away with coherent thoughts. It makes me brazen and oh, routinely unfathomably stupid, but that's a story for another night.  

Oh.

"kiss me and you will see how important I am."

And of course, I haven't been kissed in over a year.

The last boy to kiss me was a boy driving me home from a bar. I was very drunk. Very drunk and very sad. I asked him to kiss me. He was kind enough to tell me I didn't know what I was asking for. "I don't want to hurt your feelings," he said, sliding my necklace around my neck so that the puzzle piece pendant was centered between my prominent clavicles. I shivered. "I just met you and I know you aren't yourself right now. Later I will, okay?"

He drove me home. We talked the whole way. He told me he was studying to be a cardiologist. A heart doctor. I cried. I wrapped my arms around his neck and he held me for a moment. He hushed me gently and gave me a peck on the cheek. I pretended not to notice. Later, I pretended I didn't want it, but I really did need it. Looking back, it was such a reassuring thing. Such a kind stranger. Thank you.










“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” 


What a terrible way to end this piece.




I need a kiss.