1.
$5.15 an hour. $21.98 to fill the tank. 21-year-old pet cat paddles my face violently. (She's declawed.) 13 resumes dispersed. $16 dollars in tips. (For 27 skinny vanilla lattes with whip.) 2 glasses of wine at dinner. With 2 parents. 3 doctor visits. 9 nights of insomnia. 5 monthly bills. 89 salty tears on a shoulder, (x6.) 3.8 miles around the park. Somestimes fast. Sometimes slow. 10 hours of dreams, that seem oddly real. Just in time for a self-imposed 11 o'clock curfew. 49 surreptitious steps from the kitchen to my bedroom. 8 years ago, my bedroom.
Is this my life? Am I really breathing this? A stale space somewhere between boredom and frustration and Groundhog Day the movie. And if I am certainly occupying this space and time, how? Just how? What birthed this subtle reality, a bland calculation and tabulation of the ordinary?
An overdose on the ordinary.
Approximately four nights a week, I ask myself these questions. Right about the time the first 6 sips of a bloody merlot penetrate the cerebellum, and a whisper of escape glints in my skull.
I look to my left, and sitting in front of a crisp red and white woven checkered placemat, I see my father. His face has character, the creases are evidence of an animated existence; a warm demeanor that softens with each wince of joy. He chuckles with every bite, and his crows feet deepen.
I look to my right, and hovering over an identical placemat is my mother. She is chipper and professional. Her hair is newly clipped, always. And her makeup a compliment to the powersuit of the day. Her teeth radiate as she tells us precisely how parents of today have myriad difficulties.
I look directly in front of me, and I see a wall adorned in white paper, speckled with miniature red fruits; a hypnotizing flat space. There is a visible seam between two panels of wallpaper, and it invisibly divides perfectly our table in two. Half of me existing on either side, a reflection.
Where I see the wallpaper, that's where my sister should be. But she's not. And that was the first sign that maybe I don't belong here anymore.
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