These days, it just won't stop pouring.
July 30th means that it's twenty-nine days until school begins and I did nothing this summer. I didn't see all those people I meant to see. I didn't play in the park or stroll along the boardwalk. We still don't have a couch or a new comforter. I just worked and worked and worked. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. I stayed in bed and watched movies and shows and mindlessly snaked and every other week I had a drink or two.
I can feel the weight of school's return already. The constant reading, midterms, papers. Trying to connect with classmates and teachers and make each day even slightly more bearable. Coming home feeling defeated and exhausted every day. Although, I suppose I'm already doing that. I work this job, and it's just waitressing, but every day feels like a battle. Every day is a test of my patience and strength. It's not easy. I come home and I can barely walk. Sometimes I'm so mad I want to blow through my house like a hurricane and destroy everything in my path. Most days I want to forget work, just sleep in, turn my phone off, make a big breakfast, and then hop on a train going anywhere and never come back. I want an apartment for dirt cheap in a town where everyone isn't so fucking loud, where a Corona doesn't cost seven dollars at a bar and I don't have to feel like I'm being judged all the time. I want to buy a little car with a stick shift and race along country roads again--the winds blowing knots in my hair, singing all my favorite songs at the top of my lungs, smoking cigarette after sweet cigarette and writhing in my seat to the beat of the music.
I want to feel what being me was like before because these days I don't feel like much of anything.
I come home and he's here, watching TV. And I love this boy to death, but he lost his job and hasn't gotten another and I bust my ass every day to feed us, to pay our bills, to buy him subway fare. We are broke. I'm tired. It's been over three months and I have sacrificed everything I have this summer so that he can keep his head up and we don't starve. And he's always here. A couple hours alone feels like when I would come home from school and John would be at football practice and James would be at Dylan's and my mother would still be at work and I would turn on my music downstairs really loud and dance like a ballerina on amphetamines through the dining room, living room, kitchen and then back again in circles, singing all the while. I feel like I can accomplish anything when I'm here alone. But I rarely am. And so the house stays a mess because I can't clean when he's here and he's always using my computer so I can't mindlessly browse through Anthropologie or Victoria's Secret online. I just sucked into his mindless routine of watching shows on Netflix instant until the house comes when my eyes just automatically shut.
This is not to say that I hate this boy. It's not that at all. I love seeing his face when I get home, making dinner with him, having play fights. He's the one thing I have to look forward to, even on his bad days. Right now, I'm waiting for him to get up so that I can make breakfast because I've got a hankering for raspberry-blackberry pancakes with scrambled eggs and veggie-sausage patties. And, once he's up I can make the bed.
I wonder what today will bring since it seems that I've stirred up a lot of emotions in me. Perhaps I'll see Care, but I've learned to never count on her. Maybe I'll send Johnny off to the store while I clean the tub and listen to the new Regina Spektor album. I can only hope it doesn't rain. It's been raining in New York and, as they say, "when it rains, it pours." Or, in the case of this week, "when it rains, it monsoons" and I get caught in it on my way to work and show up looking like I just stepped out of the shower when I was supposed to show up showing off my hair that I just had colored and trimmed. No matter. I'll forgive the skies eventually, but will I ever forgive myself for being too stupid to check the weather online and grab my umbrella just in case? Probably not.
I'll be back, I promise.
Alethea.