Jdbftluke

“On our first date, I told you I was flighty. Impatient. Easily bored. I don’t paint my nails because I can never sit still long enough for even one coat to dry. I don’t fold my laundry because I hate the routine. I would rather buy new cutlery than wash my old ones. Maybe I’m lazy. Maybe I have no motivation. Maybe I’m just looking for somebody to grab my shoulders and give me a shake and explain what normal is and why I should do it. But sometimes I brush my teeth for seven minutes straight because it just feels right. Some nights I put my pillow on the opposite end of the bed because I’m still hopeful that I’ll wake up differently if I sleep differently. I never do. Sometimes I forget that I’m reading in the middle of flipping a page, instead struck by the thought we would rather make paper than oxygen, would rather have one less life-source than one less novel. I wonder about priorities. I wonder about people who think it’s necessary to match their socks when they leave the house every morning as if that’s what determines their character. I wonder about people who carry around purses that contain nothing but gum. I wonder about people who spend all their hours at a desk and then return to their house to pass the night alone in a cold bed with a frozen dinner. I wonder if they think that money will make them happier than other humans. I don’t like kissing when I have lipstick on, because I’m afraid of leaving a stain on a cheek, as if I’m marking my territory somewhere I don’t belong, as if I’m trespassing on camera. I stay up for twenty hours a day and spend the other fours hours knowing that the longest a person can stay alive without sleep is ten days. I wonder if my nervous system has begun to break down, leaving me nervous and broken along with it. I don’t understand the pills the doctors prescribed me even though they told me I was just upset over being broken up with. I told them I wasn’t upset, I was morose. I was downtrodden. I was a leaky ship; still afloat but getting lower under the weight of the water every second. I didn’t want to sink. I wanted to sail. But they didn’t tell me that the happy little green and white pills would make me plateau. On our first date, I said I felt flat. Not the kind of flat of calm water on a windless day, but the kind of flat that you associate with deflated balloons. All out of air or out of breath or struggling to find any words left. I felt like the kind of flat that musicians hate. That I hate and I can’t play a single instrument. On our first date, I think I told you I would understand if you didn’t stay. Nobody did and I never blamed them. I was too busy wondering about people who believed in numbers and the healing power of yoga on 3 a.m mornings and tying their shoes without kneeling down to notice when they left. I am stuck inside of a world that I don’t quite understand, with people I never seem to connect with.”