"I've been sitting in the coffee shop for almost three hours, reading the second book I flipped through at Powell's four and a half hours ago. I could be a writer, if I were disciplined. I'm great at first drafts. I don't even like to read, but this book and I have quickly developed a strange and very fast relationship. It's like it knows me. It's like the book is reading me. It simultaneously makes me feel less and more lonely than I did last night, when I cried emptily into my soft pillow with the lavender case, the inky mascara stains growing bigger and inkier with each plea.
I prayed for sleep. It took nearly four hours, two glasses of water, one muscle relaxer, and the sun setting, but God finally answered. While I slept for what felt like an unnaturally long time, I awoke alert and weak at 4:15am, wishing there was more sleep left in me. I remained still, like I didn't want the other person in the room to know I had woken, only there was nobody. I stayed curled in a tight ball, wishing myself away. Wishing I could reverse time. The hole of loneliness in my belly grew bigger and more intense, throbbing, urging, and then waned, over and over again, in a terrible cycle. Somehow, though, I was able to keep the tears back with each sweeping wave. I did this for three hours, until I couldn't take it anymore and finally agreed to one cup of coffee, and we would see how things go. (And by "we" I mean Me and Myself.)
The stories in the book are both deeply disturbing and also comforting. The tales of broken women and the desperate quietness of their shortcomings strike me as equally beautiful and tragic. The beauty is the part that makes me less lonely; the tragedy, more.
I have been drinking the same cup of coffee for three hours and I've yet to see the bottom of the mug. It's probably because it makes my stomach hurt, but I drink it anyway, because I love it. I suppose that is an unhealthy perspective and not too dissimilar from an unhealthy love relationship. I am writing now only because I spent this time reading a book by an author I have never read, and now I am writing like her. It makes me think I am too impressionable. I see drawings and mimic them in my own. I see women and think I, too, can be adventurous in fashion. I read a particular style of writing and want it to be mine.
I have only spoken to two people today and both were working registers. My face has not moved really, since last night when I finally found relief from my own mind. It feels like plastic.
It is warm today and my eyeliner is melting off, leaving smudges underneath, and I don't care. I am so still, and my hair is ugly, and I keep drinking the coffee, and I don't care.
I have a hard time being the rock in the stream. I am always the water. Is it because I am easygoing? Or because I am afraid? Or some woven combination of both? I have needed to pee for one half hour but I can't make myself go. The thought of asking someone to watch my backpack for two and three quarters minutes makes me cringe. And I despise public restrooms.
Today is not about talking to other people. Today is about being away from home, about not being alone, and about being silent. Though, I am starting to tire a little from the R&B music that is playing the slightest amount too loud. The kind of volume that interrupts the thought every three to four minutes or so, making it very difficult to write the first draft that I am fairly certain I will never finish. The coffee shop has nearly emptied out but I am reluctant to leave. Maybe the too-loud music is the only thing keeping me from myself right now. I don't want to be at home. The evenings are the worst. But I am impossible. I want to live alone for seventy one more years but I do not want to be lonely. I cannot help that my Sun, Moon, Venus, and Mars are all in side-by-side signs. It is a non-complementary duality I keep telling myself the perfect person will be able to negotiate. Preferably, with skill. Maybe it's just too complex a thing.
Maybe I actually do like the R&B filling the warm, still room with the high ceilings and worn wood floors. (This town is pretentious about the decor looking just worn enough.) Maybe the R&B is keeping me from myself, just enough. The pressure in my abdomen has increased to such a degree that I won't make it fifteen more minutes before needing to locate the nearest loo. Only, I am going to make it more challenging by refusing to use the public one, even though mine at home is probably dirtier, and the floor has more hair on it. It's been almost four hours now. My face is hot and I am stuck in a rock wall of indecision.
The sun is going to be out for at least another three and one quarter more hours and my bedroom just doesn't get dark enough to sleep before it's time. I may need to invest in some Tylenol PM."
