Good Omens
It's days like today that I am not so afraid of believing in God.
I believe in signs, patterns, things happening for a reason. There are no coincidences in murder investigations; I don't think there are any in life either. Things happen, there is irony, and there is a pattern, and we just have to see it when it happens.
Today I told my mother that if I didn't make it out of the situation I was in soon, if I didn't pull myself up and make my life into something, that I would kill myself. I wasn't lying, or being melodramatic. I was serious; completely serious. I would take my own life, because there has been nothing in this world that I have bothered to live for, and if I can't get out of this, there never will be. It will be a waste, all that I have done and all that I could be, a waste. And I would remove myself from the earth than bother knowing I really wouldn't ever amount to anything. It isn't meant to be melodramatic; it isn't meant to be "angsty". In fact, I don't think that I am either of those things. I am quite literally depressed; the kind of depressed the prescribe Prozac for. And, though I have never before thought seriously about it--because, you always feel better tomorrow--but if I knew there was nothing to this life, that I was never going to be anything but this, I would end it. If I knew that all there was for me was to re-learn the same lesson over and over, digging myself deeper and deeper, I would end it. I am almost to that point. I have this moment to change it; this moment to pull myself out. If I don't take this moment, I won't make it, I will die.
I told her that and she looked at me, and she knew I was serious. And then I went to get ready for work.
I don't want to go to work. I don't want to throw myself into the same situation day after day; retail will be the death of me, truly, if I don't get out soon. As I got ready, nothing was right. I was fidgety, my attitude declining, my eyes welling with tears. Retail isn't that bad, you say; not enough to make someone want to drive their car into a snow bank just so they can call in. But, when you know you're smarter than that, when you know there is so much out there you could be doing, when you know that you're holding yourself back, and one of the ways to do it is to piss and moan about retail: retail sucks ass.
So, I was fidgeting with my hair. Messing it and combing it and straightening then twisting it around my fingers. I was pulling and shaking my head. I was clenching my teeth and twirling it in my fingers, but not in the flirty, thoughtful way. In the way addicts do when they're going sober. The way mothers do when they're worrying about babies. The way people do when they think about death. And I was telling myself to suck it up, suck it in, write about it later and be done with this right now. But I felt like I was walking to the gallows. If I went to work today, I was accepting it, my fate. If I went to work, I was giving up for nothing. If I went in, I was putting off cleaning up until tomorrow, and I need to clean up today.
I gave up on my hair and threw on a cardigan that has never really fit, but I wanted it because it was yellow. I love yellow. Yellow does for me what only beer can do, doesn't it? I see it, and I think, maybe today. Maybe I'll be happy today. On the inside, like I pretend to be on the outside. With my smile as I tell you how wronged I have been and how fucked up I have made it. Maybe the color, like the alcohol, will penetrate. Maybe I will absorb yellow. It didn't fit like I wanted it too. A button had come off in the wash, anyway, and every time I moved, another would pull out of it's hole. So, I ripped it off. Let it fall to the floor.
I stood in my room, looking at the clothes on the floor, knowing I had nothing to wear that would make me feel worth the trouble. I wanted to cry.
Pink always makes my cheeks rosy and my lips red. Facing the mirror in a sweater I love to hate, and sometimes just love, I looked pretty. I wanted to cry then too.
I have a pimple. A big, bulgy pimple on the lower, left side of my chin. The pink brought out the red in that too. Every day I work to look like I did, in that moment, and I fail. And today, when I wanted to jump into a cold river and go, I accomplished pretty. So I resigned myself, into myself, said don't care, don't feel, don't bother, nobody else works in that joint, neither should you. Tomorrow comes tomorrow, and you can make anything of it that you want. I went into my room, closed the door, and pulled out make-up. I didn't want to look pretty, I didn't want to put myself together, I didn't want to care anymore for anything than the bed sheets being pulled over my head and curling myself into darkness. So I put on foundation, covered up the pimple, lined my eyes, and glossed my lips. I resigned to the numbness, and let myself look nice when I felt like I should never look nice again.
And then I went downstairs to an empty house. I packed a lunch--a sandwich, some carrots, some cookies--and told my friend what I had said to my mother an hour before. If I don't figure this out soon, get this mess that is my life together, I will kill myself.
I had a new voice mail from a call I'd missed while making little bags out of plastic wrap. It was my manager. They where closing the store an hour before I had to clock in.
I believe in signs. I believe in omens.
I cried in the kitchen, and I thanked a god I am too afraid to believe in. But, of course god is another story.
Something happened today. I hit rock bottom. And then something came and picked me up.
Thank You