The Days, The Good, The People, and The Writing

The days..
The days are all sort of blurring together. I barely even see the days. I see late afternoons and nights. And sunrises on the worst nights. Keeping to myself doesn't sound healthy, but it seems to work for me. It's too difficult to go out, and be around others and act like I'm liking it. I don't have much good to say. And the good I do have to say I can't really talk about. And my soul doesn't have the energy to help my mind make up something interesting. I avoid missing people by pushing them out of my mind and my life altogether. Some of you would know what I mean, unfortunately.

The good..
The good is really good. It's so good, it makes the nights that I can't sleep worth the insomnia.
The good is so good, it erases everything that hurts. And all I want to do is consume myself in it. Whenever I'm not distracted by the few things that eliminate the pain, I just want to run away to the good stuff and bury myself in it. I don't care where.


The people..
The people are amazing. They're so fascinated, it seems, with any information I have to offer. They seem to thirst for it, because I can't get away from the questions. I'm wondering who died and made my life so interesting. Because they never cared before. And I don't want to have to explain.

I wish I could just bury myself in a hole and not talk to anyone about it.

And the writing..
Well the writing is hard to do.
Hard like how it feels when a dentist pulls your teeth out.
Hard like trying to get a 24 year old man to dance,
Like waiting for a long headache to pass, or a stabbing in the leg.

Not life or death. But just painful and frustrating.
And the more I can't get it out, the more it sits inside me and poisons whatever's in there. 

I mean the writing is..
Well you can see what the writing's like.

Loathe I Do, The Day

Awake my eyes stay open, thus my heart is dead alone.
It sleeps in anguished coma as I lay awake at home.
The dark offers it’s comfort and its promises it keeps
That I may ache and cry in peace
While all the world asleeps.
And when the sun peeks out
And makes the shadows disappear,
And sleeping flowers all stand up
And smog returns to clear,
My face I take and bury so I cannot see the light,
And cry in burning anger that the sun erased the night.
I sit in throbbing solitude, in quiet misery.
I hate the day because it lendeth light
To see all things.. but not my love to see.

Pain on Autopilot

I’m okay.

I'm okay until I’m alone. Then I start to get itches. I start to feel the pain flooding in. Then in the flustered result of my panicked nervousness, I begin to drown, looking for something to make it stop, to take my eyes off of it, to help me look away. Because when I was little, if I got hurt, my parents would make me look away if it was bleeding, if it was ugly... if it was bad. There's a reason for that.

I’ve begun living on a day-to-day basis. Getting through one at a time instead of looking to the next week, or the months to come. I just get through Wednesday. Check. Thursday. Check. Friday. Did it. Saturday. Room for improvement. Sunday. Check. Monday...

My face turns sour to say it. Monday.

Work was good  Monday. It was steadily slow, just like Keith said it would be, the most pleasant kind of slow. Enough to keep me alive, not robotic and work mode-ish, but not slow enough to make me lazy and wish I was home. I steadily kept care of a few tables at a time, genuinely glad to be there.

I was happy, enjoying the company of the other co-workers. I even talked about the pain a little, that’s how good Monday was going.  I talked about it casually, like I talked about a day at the doctors. Not much emotion, concern, even though everyone else showed sympathy. I’d shambolically (but surely) become numb to the pain. I sincerely did not feel it. I kept an armor on, fully equipped with shields and weapons to protect myself with. I don’t feel it. I don’t need sympathy, I don’t need hugs.
But then it hit me. Well it didn’t even hit me. My armor would have protected me from that.

It gutted me.

It took a major blow to my stomach while I wasn’t looking, while I was happily pulling my ponytail tighter and grabbing a beer from the bar. Just, mid-sentence, there it was. The pain. Clobbering at me. Choking me from behind. And it’s grip was so tight I couldn’t yell for help. I stared at Cassandra, horrified, and I couldn't explain. So I just made an urgent beeline to a place, any place, where I could be alone. Because I knew it was too late to find sanctuary.

So I just trudged to find a place where it could beat me in private, where no one could watch, and do that pointless thing where they try to comfort me. Because they don’t know that the throbbing anguish is so much stronger than they are, dominant and more evocative than the sweet miniscule words of anyone else. It continued to keep punching me through their embraces.

I was oozing with pain. And all I could do was sob in agony, completely sloppy. Wet, loud, guttural cries. That’s all that came out while they watched me, frightened to death of me, I'd imagine. How I had just been fine moments ago. Just been smiling and catering to guests, assisting co-workers, laughing at everything. And now here I was. Crying and gasping like  I had just been violently attacked.

Humiliating. Excruciatingly demoralizing.

I clutched my ribs in hopes to keep it all in, to stifle the cry, and it helped a little. Not much. But any help seemed like so much to me. I think

The pain was causing insanity and at the time, and the insanity effected my judgment.

They relieved me from work. I was obviously not functional enough to even walk out of the bathroom alone, much less take care of three or four tables in a normal, civilized manner.

They told me to ‘Just go’. Which was all I wanted to do from the very first blow to the insides.
I thanked Keith and he seemed to selflessly understand.

I grabbed my things and I let them hug me, and I don’t know who was who. I just thanked.

It felt almost too good once I was outside. So good, I could not go straight to my car. So I didn’t.
I just sat on the bench and looked at nothing, sort of like I was waiting for a ride. But I was enjoying the fresh air, I think, the smell of oxygen, and the feeling of being alone.

Time passed, and I don’t know how much. I know I didn’t want to stay too long. I didn’t want someone to come out and see me still there after they went through the trouble of sending me home.
Thus began my detachment from reality.

I stood up and turned on my Autopilot.

Now, Autopilot is different than the numbness that I (so fortunately) feel on a day to day basis.. When I’m numb, I’m still me, I’m just without the pain. I can think clearly. I make conscious decisions. I’m alive.

But when I can't keep going, when something goes wrong in the cockpit, and my plane starts crashing down, I have Autopilot to take over everything.

When I turn on Autopilot, it allows my physical being to work and let’s the rest of me go dead. My brain accesses everything it knows I’m supposed to do and makes me do it without cognizant thought. I drift completely out of my conscious mind. My eyes are heavy and still. They don’t move. My words are mechanical. My actions are automatic. I just do. But I am, not.

I walked thoughtlessly to the car, one foot in front of the other. My Autopilot knew where my car was parked. I didn’t. Autopilot drove me home. I know that in between, I got gas, sent messages, rejected phone calls, paid tolls, turned off the radio, and got off on all the right exits. But I do not remember a moment of it. I don’t remember it so much that I almost hope that I did do all those things as I thought.
I was completely thoughtless. I don’t remember the drive, the buildings around me, signs, cars, people. It is not in my memory at all.
I only remember wanting to go fast.
Flying home.
Flying home on autopilot. .
I desperately just wanted to just get to the house, get out of the jeans and dirty clothes, and have space to rip my hair out. I wanted to be alone, drink something. Clean everything. Indulge in my beautiful fortuitous escape. My sanity. Or insanity. And just write all this shit out.

The Insomniatic Severity of a Nighttime Thought Attack

I never in my life have been so confused, so muddled, so bizarrely ridiculously exhausted by a stupid desire as the one you have thrust upon me.

I laid in bed for nearly two hours subsequent to reading two chapters of my New Moon book before realizing I was not going to fall asleep in enough time to get a reasonable amount of slumber. There were only four more hours left until I had to wake up and begin my eleven hour day with Owen. Owen, the sweet, fitful, and above all, loud eight month old that I had agreed to baby-sit two to three days a week, frankly, for the price of a peanut.

But too many thoughts were screaming disorganized and hazed through my head and they wouldn’t be quiet! I did not even ask so much as to mute them, but I wished I could just turn the volume down enough so that they would become a low hum or murmur, and not this terrible screeching noise far too piercing to ignore.
I was lying in bed, crushed, crying, having a severe thought-attack. I tried everything to make it go away. I tried to run my fingers through my hair and gently over my face. That usually soothed me during a panic episode. But this was not a panic. It was much more inescapable.

I cried. I tried to plump and flip my pillows. I laid my head on the foot-side of the bed. I tried to think about Twilight, my newest area of interest, tried to imagine the velvet voice of Edward Cullen. Mmm. That only made me think more. I muted the TV. My thoughts became louder. I tried to listen to Tilsley, my muse, my teacher, my high school mentor. I tried to find his voice and imagine he was there. I tried to remember the words he used when he would tried to calm me down from a panic episode. I could hear him, faintly, amongst the bustle of memories, worries, and concerns fist-fighting in my mind.

“Turn it off. Stop listening to all that garbage and go to sleep.”
I tried to obey his aged, wooden words, but hearing them was hard enough. I wished stupidly that I could act on his wisdom.
He scolded me with love, as he tried to help me from becoming overwhelmed in thought-overload. But I couldn’t gain control over it.
“Just let the thought pass through. It‘s okay if it comes in, but don’t let it fix itself a drink and make itself at home in your mind. Simply tell it to walk on through.”
Bills and money problems laughed at me at the highest point in my head. Owen’s cry echoed and seared into my ears. Texas Roadhouse lit a cigarette and made itself comfortable, reminding me that I would be seeing very much of it in the next week.
“Come on Gallo. Do you control your issues or do they control you?”
My ex boyfriend whacked my head into a window and spit at me.
“Grow a backbone.”
Paul insisted that we were wrong for each other. That we weren't happy.
“Try to find a peaceful place.”

I sought out frantically in my mind, trying to find some place serene, some place where they couldn’t get to me. I searched. I trudged. I hollered…
But I could not find it. The thoughts jumped at me left and right. They pulled me by my every limb, blindfolded me and clasped their hands over my mouth so I could not even call for the place to find me. In my tortured frustration, I sat up, in a quick but heavy breath. I looked around and the noise was gone. I knew I had to get up to keep it away.

I decided not to shower just yet. I didn’t want too feel to clean and comfortable. I was afraid that would make me tired and it this point, it was useless to sleep. I decided to get into the frumpiest things I could find, whatever felt good on my body. I pulled my hair into a low ugly pony tail. My ears stuck out and my face was pale and washed out, dirty with the combination of old make-up, dried sweat, and fresh tears. I grimaced into the mirror. I was atrocious.

I fixed myself an icy water in my favorite stubby bulb glass and tucked my laptop underneath my arm. I nuzzled myself at the end of the couch, in between the plush and giving cushions and logged into my computer. The clock on my screen read 2:30 exactly. I knew it would not be hard for someone like me to pass 3 and a half hours without much struggle. I go through time like fish go through water…unfortunately.

I spent the time doing nothing to solve a single problem, doing no research, no damage control of any kind. I spent my time writing and finding new music. Relaxation. Eventually, I got the idea to make a ‘Twilight Playlist” on my iPod. I did a search and found every song that was played in the movies, Twilight and in New Moon. Listening to each song not only brought me right back to the scenes that the songs were played in, but I listened to them so much that they began to remind me of my own life. I listened to how each composition intertwined with my insides, how it related to me. I downloaded almost 40 songs and sat peaceful in my Heaven, smiling inside at the sound of the music. I wondered why I hadn’t loved these songs before. I enjoyed myself in a guilty kind of pleasure.

Before I knew it, 5:30 peeked in and knocked on the outer edge of the door.
“May I interrupt?” he solicited.
“I suppose” I retorted, slightly displeased, not that so much time had passed, but that I had to be grasped from the short rapport I had found with my inner self.

I crept into the bedroom, gulped at the flat, tasteless water I had left next to the bed, and slipped into the bathroom. I pulled out a crisp towel, and grinned far too wide when I realized that I could finally use my new robe that Grandma had sent! It was clean white (and I knew it wouldn’t be in the next month), with a pink stripe going down the side vertically. ‘Natalia’ read horizontally at the top in a matching color. She bought me the robe for Christmas, but took it back so she could get my name stitched on it. It was worth the wait.

My shower was a blissful Heaven, entirely uninterrupted, be it from cold water, knocks on the door, pestering thoughts, beeping text messages, or even the time. To my most gracious surprise, nothing tried to intervene. I was in a heated, idyllic wrinkle in time. Nothing was in my head. I showered a warm, perfect shower, listening to my newly added songs from the bathroom speakers.

I got the scheduled 6:10 am call from April, the one she made every morning to assure herself that I was awake, and I wasn’t sometimes.
“Hey sunshine! It’s me.”
“Hey April. No worries, I’m awake--” still.

April arrived at the exact time she always did: 6:21 am, and always “running late”.

I was almost in pain from the cold I felt as she entered my house from the brisk outside. The 22 degree weather made for a wretched disappointment in my attempt of escaping the cold Denver brisk through my decision to move to the Sunshine State.

She seemed slightly surprised at my wide awake appearance; showered with light make up, smelling fresh and my hair still wet.
“Ah, you look awake today.” The same awake from yesterday.
“Yeah, I am” I replied, accordingly with a smile.
“You took a quick shower this morning?” she prodded.
“Actually, it was a long one. Really relaxing. I’ve--been up..” all night.
She smiled, seemingly pleased. The idea that I was adjusting to this lifestyle was probably a relief in her mind, as we had discussed that my sleep schedule may be off enough to prevent me from watching Owen several times a week.

We chatted, today a little less awkward than normal. I genuinely was wide awake, perhaps that had an effect on my morning social abilities. Owen seemed especially cute today, dressed entirely in white and with a smile. I knew by the end of the day, he would look a disaster and probably be screaming.

When April left, I played with Owen so he would not realize she was gone. He was more cooperative than usual. He was giggly, happy, --hungrier than I’d ever seen-- and a pleasant company to have with me amidst my rather peaceful morning..

I dreaded the sun coming out, and it was trying to rise. It was a slow rise. The sun didn’t sneak in between my blinds for what seemed like almost an hour posterior to my seeing a shade of light in the sky. It was beautiful, but I despised sunrise.

Because when the sun was gone, life was better. Everything went to sleep and I stayed awake and made everything right in the world. In my world.

I logged into Facebook and played around, pointlessly, as my witty, blog-worthy, not to mention nocturnal thoughts tucked themselves into bed and bid me “Good day,” warning me not be sad and assuring me they would see me sometime past midnight. I fiddle-faddled and decided to check my horoscope.

It said that I should be excited to welcome my distant family back into my life and read that 8:00 am would be a “lucky” time of day for me. Just as I read it, I glanced at the clock on my screen. 8:01. I looked around. Owen was asleep on the floor and the sun was up now. Bed time.

Bianca's Pants

The cursor on the screen was standing alone on the white page, blinking, and taunting me sarcastically..
“Go on. Do it. Write something good.”

I couldn’t think of anything though. The more I stared at the blank page, the more blank my mind became, and if I navigated away from it, I became distracted by other things.

I looked at my phone. Nothing. He still hadn’t texted back. What a tormentor he was. Constantly. Always making me wonder, making me wait. I became slightly uncomfortable as the famine in my stomach mixed with the butterflies that were building in stronger anticipation of his response. Enough of this.

I closed the computer and picked up my phone. I searched through my contacts and dialed “P”
I scrolled through the names:
Pam
Pandora
Paola
Papa Johns
until I got to “Paul.” I clicked the little green call button and awaited his answer. The phone rang four times and then went to voicemail.

“Hey what’s up? You’ve reached Paul. Leave me a message and I’ll give you a call back.”
I rolled my eyes and hung up, interrupting the woman at the end of the message who said “To leave a call-back number, press one! Or just wait for the tone.” I tossed the phone on the couch. Didn’t wanna talk to you anyway.

I paced around the living room, not used to feeling like there was nothing to do. Bianca interrupted me, and spoke too fast to notice my irritation. She faced the mirror.

“Like my new pants?!” she beamed.

I was surprised at the vivid purple color of the trousers that sat loosely on Bianca’s noticeably thinner hips. It was ironic that she would ask that question, because I was almost nauseous by how much I did not like those pants. They were so purple and dull, ‘weird’ is really the word. I thought to myself that no belt, no necklace, no accessory on Earth could salvage whatever appeal there was to these pants enough to actually wear them in public.

When I realized I hadn't said anything, I tried quickly to recover, blinking several times hoping to erase any rude facial expressions that I may have made in the hazy shock of my accidental disgust.

“Wow.” I blurted, meaning it.

Her smile remained and her eyebrows raised. She pursed her lips a little bit. Happiness was dancing all over her face.

Her sense of style was so off base. I stared at Bianca. Her Pocahontas-length hair was tied up in a large messy bun at the top of her head, pieces sticking out in every direction. Her shirt was blue and said something on it in pink, something I couldn‘t read because of the poor contrast in colors. The purple pants were just dying to be blue-jeans, normal, and she wore two different socks, one pink, and one striped green.

But everything about Bianca’s face was perfect. It was absolutely symmetrical. Her eyebrows were relaxed and expressional, her eyes were deep, unlike most people with dark eyes. Innocent when I looked into them, but a lot of young pain swam around in there. Her nose was faultlessly-shaped, not too big. And her lips were the same as the ones she had from infancy. Absolutely the same. Lightly pink, pouty usually, and the top one formed an arch like a dolphin. They were the perfect shape when she smiled.
In all her weird Dr. Suessly-inspired wardrobe, she was still the prettiest girl I knew. By miles...

“I just got them!” She looked down at the pants, smiling with immense gratification.

“They’re a little loose.” she added. It was a self-compliment, not a complaint.

“They look great, Bee.” I told her. What I meant was, ‘You look great.’

“What’s wrong?” she asked me, taking her eyes off the pants for the first time and now looking at me. She never missed a thing. Bianca’s face became vacant, not worried yet, but ready to be worried if my response begot concern.

“Nothing.” I said, my expression indifferent and unconvincing.

“Are you mad at Paul or something?” she dug.

“I just can’t think of something to write.” I nodded towards my laptop.

“Oh” she glanced at the TV which was on but muted.

“Can you take me to Adina’s?”

Apparently writer’s block did not precipitate much reason for concern.

“Um. I don’t know. I have to leave pretty soon.” I excused, thinking on my feet. Chauffeuring was one of my least favorite things to do.

“Okay.” she walked away, not a dose of anger or emotional at all dripped over her face.

“Sorry, Bee.”

“It’s okay.” she said in a monotone. Her easy acceptance of my decline made me feel bad, it made me know that this was something she was used to. Something she expected. She opened the refrigerator, though nothing interested her.

She was getting so thin, and it was great. I knew how body-conscious she had been feeling since she went through that odd spurt of weight gain last year, a spurt that I nor Angelina had never experienced, and certainly not Nicholas. All of us had always been slender, skinny, sometimes too skinny, and it was a little bit abnormal when we saw Bianca gain the weight.

My mom insisted she was just going through a phase, and she would soon get tall and stretch out. It took awhile, but that’s exactly what she did. Although when it did happen, when Bianca’s weight turned into height and her once fleshy, round face nearly withered away overnight, no one was relieved.
It became worry and alarm;

“Why is she losing so much weight? Is she eating?”

Poor girl. She‘s too big, she‘s too frail. She’s eating too much, she’s not eating.

I opened the computer and hoped the distraction cleaned away my thought-overload and cleared my head a bit.

There was the screen. White. And I didn’t write anything good.

Glum Kitchen Thoughts of the Other-Blooded Sister

As I scowled upon the awful disaster that was my kitchen, I finally came back to reality. My mind had been drifting elsewhere in the last hours that I was lying still upon the couch, seemingly calm in figure, but my imagination running wildly in a thousand different places at the time, jumping around from thought to thought like lemurs from tree to tree.

The kitchen was a glum reminder of what my life was, and, even more devastatingly so, what it was clearly not turning into.

Green dishes glared at me, cross that I had allowed the red and clumpy sauce from yesterday’s dinner to dry upon them, a couple even with some stray spaghetti strands stuck to the surface. Gross. Clear plastic cups frowned with brown droplets of this morning’s coca-cola becoming sticky on the inside. Silverware, coffee cups, spatulas and pans formed a pyramid-like booby trap within the nearly invisible sink.

I let out a rude sigh and irascibly wondered how only two people could accumulate so many dishes, and in such a short amount of time. It was but yesterday that Paul had loaded and ran the dishwasher, clearing the sink and the area surrounding it of all the greasy plates and pans that had piled up in the kitchen from the night previous.

The nasty messes didn’t really bother me when Paul was gentlemanly enough to take care of it, which was often. But tonight he was working and I was not. I had done no hard labor, in fact, I had done quite the opposite. Paul had gone to work at 3:00 today, and it was already past twilight. What had I done all day? What had I thought of? I couldn’t let him come home to all this...

On top of the kitchen, the bedroom was a terrible disaster, what with dirty clothes scattered across the floor, wires and chargers spread about, water cups that collected on my side of the bed over the last few days, and little papers dispersed in all corners of the room, junk mail, I imagine. The living room wasn’t all so horrendous. A few cups and a book sat unattractively on the coffee table and Simba had chewed a hole in his stuffed frog and spit out the cotton guts all over the carpet. But otherwise, I would just need to adjust the couch pillows and throw the shoes in the closet, and then it would be comfortably presentable. The biggest demon was finding the motivation to clean those dishes!

When I did, it wasn’t as miserable as I had anticipated, which was good, but a little disappointing as I realized I didn’t really have to dread and procrastinate all those hours. As I washed, squeezing suds from the damp sponge in one hand and holding each dish upright with the other, I became hypnotized again in my own thought.

My mind is rather good at time travel. Sometimes, when it should be focusing on driving, it jumps back into yesterday. It crawls up to the door of my parent’s house and slithers inside. It finds a comfortable spot in the family room and props it’s legs up on the arm of the my mother’s grey chair, lighting a cigarette. And then it watches the fight that she and I had yesterday. It watches us yell at each other and tries to jump in front of me warning me not to say that.

And sometimes, when I should be focusing on paying the water bill, my mind teleports into the future! It jumps into the year 2014. It sees me sitting on the same couch, but in a different house, trying to pay a bill via the internet. It sees my two-year-old bothering me while I try to find some peace, and watches me wishing I had something more to show for all of my hard work, or at least for all of my hard dreaming.

But right then, while I was cleaning those nasty, saucy, coke-sticky dishes, my mind jumped back to this morning and watched the conversation I had with Angelina. Sweet, erratic, sister and best friend, Angelina. Our relationship had been somewhat strained since I got back, which was painfully dissimilar to what either of us were used to in each other's presence.

We had sat alone in my parent’s house for several hours, talking, finally back in rapport. And as the water was running over my hands and I scrubbed clumps of tomatoes off of the plastic green plates, I couldn’t get my mind off of one topic in particular that we had discussed that morning about the future.

I had told Angelina that despite what I had previously thought, I felt like she would be the first of the family to have children, even though I was the oldest. To my unforeseen surprise, she agreed, and further proceeded to tell me her life plan.

Yes. There I was, 19 years old, and in life limbo. Graduated and standing still, holding a diploma in one hand and lease in the other, while my 15 year old sister babbled endlessly about the road she was on, unable to see a stop sign for hundreds and hundreds miles.

In harmless jealousy, I listened to her map out the next 5 years to me in simple but erudite detail.

1. Finish high school.


2. Apply to and attend 2-4 years of junior college, as a technicality.


3. Get married to long-time boyfriend, AJ.


4. Have children. And then..


5. She won’t work. She will stay home with her kids. She won’t…work.


6. That’s it.

That’s it. That’s really all she wants to do. She barely wants to go to college. She doesn’t want to learn how to do anything or have a profession. She doesn't have to write letters to the school or apply for financial aid. She doesn’t have to pick a major. She doesn’t want to get a job.

She wants to be a mom. She only wants to be a mom. She doesn’t want to travel anywhere, she doesn’t want to see any place else, she doesn’t want to move anywhere. She just wants to get married and be a mom.

I felt a slight twinge of pain somewhere in my heart at the thought of a life like that, and then fanatical confusion as to how anyone could be okay with that. Could want that. The confusion became even more radical as I thought that a person of those desires could have the same DNA as me, the same blood rolling inside their veins. The same blood that I had. The same burning, ravenous, wanderlusting, angry-with-unfulfilled-desires-shade-of-red-colored blood ablaze inside the veins, like mine. It couldn't be the same.

I couldn't, still can't, decide which of us is dangerously juvenile. Am I so naive and immature to want to travel to different places and complete my studies in other countries, regardless of the cost, the time away from home, the language barrier, or the danger? Am I ridiculous that the only thing I want in life is to see the world? That I have no set-in-stone technical fool-proof plan? Am I losing it?

 Or is she so childish to want to hardly continue her education and to never work?! To only want to raise children and never do anything else! To not indulge in life, the Earth and the people living on it. To not want to see what they see. Just be home. -Enter twinge of pain-

Who here is completely off their rocker?

I very quietly envied  my sister’s gratification with having such a simple life. To be satisfied with the easiest things to come upon, it would be such a relief. But I didn’t have such a luxury. There I sat, cursed with an insatiable desire to see and do it all! Thirsting and aching to learn everything there is to know and see everything there is to see, on top of the fear of becoming a mother and wife far too late in life.

And all the while nodding and smiling, assuring everyone else: “Don’t worry. I got it all figured out.”

Physical Damage Inflicted Upon My Lips Due to the Attack of My Thoughts

     I could nearly taste the blood inside my mouth as I was writing down table 221’s drink order. The skin on the inside of my lips was wedged between my teeth and I could feel it breaking little by little. It hurt, but it hurt a good hurt. I couldn’t stop biting the skin. I presumed it was the habitually nervous result of my trying to handle a large combination of unpleasant elements that were gnawing at my insides.

     And I was failing pathetically.

     My mind was so distant from the spot I was standing in. Physically, I was in the restaurant. I was in my dirty jeans and black t-shirt, standing before a table of two people, a man and a woman in their 30’s, holding a notebook and a pen. My feet were grounded hard against the floor and I subtly shifted back and forth to ease the pain that my own weight was bearing upon me. Physically, I was trying to look pleasant. And wholesome. Physically, I was speaking in a voice that became additionally high pitched as I had to fake more and more my congeniality.

      But mentally. Emotionally. I was out in a field someplace, not even sure myself quite where I was, but I was floating around out there, physically a little lighter than I am now, but bearing more weight. Mentally, emotionally, I was half running from and half fighting back to all the thoughts that were violently attacking me.

     And I was failing pathetically.

     For one, there were all the awful things going on in my at-home life. On top of the struggles of desperately needing to get a new car, pay bills, rent, and hold onto my wages, I was also thinking about my 20th birthday which was vastly approaching, and how badly I did not want to see it come. I was thinking about Paul, how he had wanted to call it quits for awhile and then changed his mind. That was really throwing me off. And my mom and I not speaking after that atrocious argument over the phone several days ago.

      I felt very lonely. I felt a major hole where my support handles normally were and it was not doing wonders for my at-work-attitude.

     Then of course, my boss had been breathing down my neck for the last several days. After being shopped at 85%, all the years and years of hard work, dedication, and loyalty I had put towards the company clearly meant peanuts to him. I tried to explain to him that there was no chance that it had really taken me 5 minutes to greet those guests like they wrote in the report, but he refused to take my side. And although I wasn’t punished like previous servers had been in the past for such a low score, it was humiliating (in a way that I didn’t make public) when he called me out like that in front of everyone.

     Finally, I was dealing with a very large number of grouchy customers tonight, old folk mostly, and all of them ready and anticipating my every error.

     It was all I could do to resist the strong temptation burning inside me to rip my hair out, cry at the top of my lungs and throw something just to hear it shatter. The bite marks in my lips were just a literal translation of how much I was ‘biting my tongue’ throughout the night. A translation of how I was swallowing my frustration and covering it up with the mandatory smile.

     I burst into the ladies room when I finally had a spare minute and locked myself into the handicapped stall, intentionally to cry. But I didn’t cry. I pressed my back to the wall and stared blankly for some amount of time that I didn’t really keep measure of. Just stared. When I realized that my mentality was still in work mode, one that was too robust for tears at the time, I pulled my phone out of my apron. I flipped it open and to my unfazed disappointment, I hadn’t missed any calls and no text messages were going unanswered. Perhaps the most unpleasant feeling I felt all night shivered through my veins. So I pushed myself up and glowered into the mirror.

     I stared some more.

     I was still biting my lip and my expression was more glum than I intended to look. My top lip was pursed and curled in, so it looked like I almost didn’t have one, and the right corner of my lip was pulled in towards the center of my mouth. It made the whole lower part of my face look slightly crooked. My eyebrows pulled together in a very subtle but disturbed-looking way and the expression in my eyes was a tired cross between frustrated and dead. It was the face I made when I was focused hard on something that was bothering me. This face didn’t normally attend work..

      It was clean though, and unlike most nights the make-up still stuck, which was a surprise because I felt like I had been working doubly as hard to do the work that was normally half as easy on most days. Seeing that my make-up hadn’t smudged meant that I was probably not getting too much done. Pity.

     My hair was pulled back in a low maintenance ponytail and the newly-chopped layers felt light against my face. I liked them because they covered the gigantic bruise that was (for the time being) my left cheekbone and it quieted the interrogations of  “What‘s that?! What happened to your face?”
At least for awhile.

      And it didn’t so much bother me that people really didn’t believe I had run into a tray, it was more the horror of realizing how scripted and pitiful I sounded when I was really telling the truth this time.

      It brought back the memories of those days when they pointed it out and when they stared, and I knew now that no one probably ever believed my stories back then, no matter how much I tried to.

      I realized that I had failed pathetically.

    I shook the thoughts away, angry that I had even let them enter at all, and washed my hands for some amount of time that was too long. I dried them beneath four paper towels, gave a dirty look into the mirror and pushed on back to work.

Keyless

I've thought long and hard about how I want this to look.
I want it to look thoughtful. I want it to look kempt.

If you're going to be reading in my diaries, you're going to have to respect it.
You're going to have to understand that this is what I feel, what I am, it's what I believe.
And you have to accept that your name and face my pop up in my thoughts.
And I'm going to say so when they do.

You are going to have to respect that I'm not going to filter anything here.
If you don't want to know, you don't have to read it.

You can judge all you like.
Essentially, that is the sole purpose of reading someone's most personal thoughts.
Once you know what they really think, you can come back to life and re-evaluate your opinions about that person.

So please. Judge. I don't mind.


But this is my space here to express.
This is my place to heal.

This is my own quiet little area, which is not really quiet at all,
where I can walk around, poke fun, burn, bleed, fall,
and change the pace whenever my little clock says it's time to.
There's no lock on the door.
But.
It's my door :)

It's yours to read and to explore.
It's yours to find a deeper grasp on the reality of the person I really am.
It's yours to psychoanalyze, question, dissect, laugh at, cry with, smoke on, choke down, and swallow.
And it's also yours to look at, hate, click the little red 'x' in the corner, and go on your way without a word.

That is all.

Love it.
Or don't.
I'm not making this for you.

Natalia Om.Xi.