Melted Butter

It will be a long time before everything is okay again.

The guilt of my impetuous non-decision weighs heavily on me. I walk with a mountain on my shoulders, but I'm sure I put it there myself. I sculpted it with my own hands, my head, my bleeding heart; I sculpted it with tears, with equal parts anguish and anger, a spoonful of resentment, some bitterness to taste. What have I done? What have I done?

I cried, yesterday, in front of someone that was not family. These past few months have chipped away at my veneer of false confidence and chipper life-is-lovely posture so well, so much, that yesterday I cried in front of a friend. Life is not so very lovely anymore, the beautiful weather notwithstanding.

We sat outside, AW and I, and made amends across the crate-like coffee table, sitting on twin black armless leather seats yet undamaged by the afternoon sun and occasional wind and winter rain. We sat outside because I breathe better beyond the confines of stuccoed walls, because the paranoia and claustrophia take longer to set in when the air is fresh and free of mildew-mold smells, unwashed-slept-in-sheets smells, dead-and-dying-skin-cells smells.

Enlisting

There was something wrong last night; there had to be. AW was so distant, his usual loquaciousness directed at everyone but myself, the absence of his words and attention leaving a ragged emptiness and hurt such that, during my long, long run, cruelty and self-righteous fury would intrude on and punctuate my arrogant self-sufficiency. I avoided his gaze or he avoided mine. I stood, waiting to be addressed, not daring to address, in an uncomfortable proximity, hungry like a dog for breadcrumbs of affection, finally concluding that I needed no one. No man is an island but I. I am an island.

The corpse of an idea revived itself--I would enlist. Beneath the incessent salvo of commands, the ordering and re-ordering of my life by an external entity greater and nobler than I, the island, could ever be, I would find some semblence of happiness. I would earn financial self-sufficiency.

That was the insanity, the uncertainty, the depression of an otherwise pleasant day. It was suicide Tuesday, the morning after, buyer's remorse, all bundled up with a bit of ribbon on top.

I sat in the public library, light streaming in from the windows high above, head bowed over my future in the shape of a test prep book. The librarian had paused, had asked with a quizzical bend of the brows, "How do you spell that?"

"A-S-V-A-B. The ASVAB? It came up when I searched in the library catalog...I just don't know where to find it."

"Ah, then we have it. It would be here," he was so kind as to walk me to them, even though they were just behind me, a bit to the right, in the Exam Prep books section, the various futures squeezed together onto a few shelves and organized by that greatest equalizer--the alphabet, with issues of class, status, potential income utterly beside the point. When the future is beyond reach, a mere dream for which one must study and think and question, labor and sweat and bleed; when a book represents that future, it need not be ranked, it need not be differentially valued--it does not exist.

My future does not exist.

The beginning

The insanity from yesterday still lingered when I opened my eyes this morning, like perfume put on for a party that was so exhausting you had not the energy to tuck yourself in, you just fell asleep on top of your blanket and sheets, and a restless few hours later, had awoken with make-up smeared, body reeking of yesterday's perfume and the forgettable somebody you rubbed up against the night before.

It was glorious last night, the intensity of my exhilaration, perched as I was on the edge of another reckless irresponsibility, in fact the same thoughtless decision, a choice that seemed to make itself, what had I to do with it? Of course I had to withdraw, of course that upsetting conversation with the parental units (oh, how much they care! they care too much!) meant I had to escape from their dominion, from this insufferable domination by external uncontrollable undesirable forces! Of course, of course, it had all made so much sense, I would declare myself an independent agent with my petty act of teenage rebellion...but somewhere, some unobtrusive part of my brain whispers with timidity that I am not a teenager anymore, no, I am not so young or stupid anymore.

But oh, to be young and stupid! To embrace this youth and stupidity while I have it still! No crow's feet mar my eyes, no worry lines--or at most, merely the faintest promise of them etched across my forehead, no spouse, no children, no care in the world to weigh me down in my youngness, in my stupidness. Let me be young and stupid, damn it! If youth is wasted on the young, let me--ME--not waste my youth, let me relish every destructive act for which my body forgives me, let me cherish every silliness for which I am forgiven and forgotten before the world begins to judge.

At any rate, I rode the wave of last night's high, clinging to the memory of all the hopelessly hopeful things I'd said to AG and AW when withdrawal seemed the only reasonable answer to my routine frustration and walked with AW to his 2 o'clock class today, barefoot outdoors, my soles kissing the warm pavement with each bouncy step, but with sandals in hand the better to stride into the L&S Office of Undergraduate Advising. I smiled at the man setting up my appointment and smiled at the counselor processing my withdrawal, wondering if I should veil my happiness, whether the corners of my lips ought not to be so blasphemously upturned during my act of shame.

Later, with uncooperative candor, my mind conjured an image of me, graceless, standing before a toilet, a fat wad of cash in hand, new money, in fact, with the bank's paper band around it still, readying my hand to throw it in and flush; I would not miss--I was sure of it.

So that was my Thursday. Day 1 of freedom and frustration.

Life is very long

There will be time, there will be time
for a hundred visions and revisions
before the taking of a toast and tea

Eliot's been on my mind ever since seeing the strange sweaty man with "Life is very long" tattooed on his forearm, supposedly from "The Wasteland" but actually from "The Hollow Men." Eliot, oh Eliot, with your bizarre faux British accent, with your learnedness and your allusions, your meaningless-meaningful word-sound collages, and sorrow. Melancholy, after all, is ever the popular tone, controlled suffering the pose, poetry more elaborate than prose.

Responsibility

Contemplating another withdrawal is at once exhilarating and anxiety-inducing, not unlike crane-climbing late at night, not unlike tugging off a shirt or skirt for the first time and wondering whether to be proud or ashamed, no, not unlike those things at all. And yet I suppose the consequences are greater when it has to do with obligations unmet, responsibilities intact, so many hearts yet unbroken, or broken and painstakingly mended.

What to do? What to do? The worrisome refrain is the chorus of the day, the month, the year. What to do? What to think?

What is this thing called life? This haphazard game of shortsightedness and regret? What is this thing that I hear of, whispered, half-muttered, mumbled and grumbled--this entity called Responsibility? It is such a long word. I do not think I can understand. I have not the ability to.