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.

Today, we dug through clams that smelled of the sea, granting the privilege of purchase and later consumption to those we deemed worthy, that is, those that were alive enough to squirt or close when we squeezed, tongs and giant metal spoon in hand the better to examine our unfeeling prey. A Salon writer had made a convincing enough case for oyster consumption by vegans--could not the same arguments be made for clams and mussels, save that of not disrupting the environment in the harvesting process? Are they not just as unfeeling, just as non-sentient, these little bundles of programmed responses to stimuli?

AW: "Look at them, they're so cute!" as he dug through the pile. We reminisced about that scene from Alice in Wonderland, where the walrus lures the poor, adorable clams to their buttery death. On that note, the clambake directions say to serve the food with:

Melted Butter.

The dinner conversation inevitably circled around my recent foolishness (when does it not?), and I finally heard EZ and TS's thoughts on the subject--EZ, ever the precocious Asian parent, TS, empathizing but more responsible than I could ever hope to be.

"Oh, Sophie...Why didn't you consult me first?" EZ sighed, shaking his head.

Although, I'm not sure what good that would have done. I have never been one to benefit from others' wisdom or mistakes. I have always insisted, headstrong and proud, that I make my own, forgetting, always, the second part of that process--the prolonged wallowing in self-loathing and regret.