I hit send on my tweet. I’m tipsy and in my grocery store.
My grocery store.
Like I’m some character on a sitcom. I think this has always been my problem. I have main character syndrome. I am obsessed with myself and sometimes it feels like it’s too much. Right now, it feels like protection.
“I love being an emotionally unavailable art dyke.”
I think if I write it enough I’ll start to believe it. If I make my walls high enough, I can find who I actually am inside them. I don’t know if I’ll like what I see in the end.
There is no damn French onion dip and that alone makes me tear up. The days before bleeding feel like an emotional roller coaster. I settle for an artichoke dip made with nuts and it’s exactly as bad as it sounds. My only plan was to drink on my porch with chips and dip and even that feels ruined. I want to leave my sandals out here on the bleached wood. Some sort of acknowledgment that I exist in this space when I see them the next morning when I leave for work.
I finally sat down to find a new therapist. Hoping for Black AND gay but settling for anyone who’s not white. I don’t look forward to disassociating while I describe my trauma to them in short, clipped sentences, but I’ve gotten so good at it. The best thing about meeting new gay people is that when I tell them a sibling died and it’s no big deal, they don’t question it.
I’ve really wanted to try this protein pasta I’ve seen on bus stand ads.
“Unexpected curves!” The ad screams.
It’s awful copywriting and it absolutely worked. The orange box is on my table promising 20 grams of the good stuff per serving. I get that and pesto. The refrigerated kind is best if you can’t make it yourself. There are lots of ways to do this.
I’ve met so many new people recently and I feel my mask slide so securely into place each time. I play uno and I code switch into what I think is acceptable. I switch back into what I think is acceptable. I can lean forward and deepen my voice, or soften it. I think I’m tired.
I’ve kissed a lot lately and all I want is to be held. But I can’t. For so many reasons. I’m promising myself maybe a year of being single. Or at the least, six months. Then maybe I’ll be magically different? Or maybe I’ll always be this way: sort of just clutching and wanting and the blue-green loneliness of the lobsters at the bottom of the tank at the public market. I just can’t.
Whenever I sit on my porch, I leave my door open with the screen securely shut. My cat likes to yowl like the world is ending when I’m not inside with her. She can see me and I’m guessing smell and hear me in a way humans can’t, but I’m so out of reach.
I want easy and fluffy comforters and a chest to drool on when I fall asleep. Learning to be alone is going to be very interesting.
