pressings

[the imperceptible furrow]

I have begun to notice the telltale signs of a burgeoning furrow in my brow. It has always been in the same spot, but now, now there is a shadow there when my face is still because it must rest in the muscles of my face more when I am not paying attention, and it troubles me that my recent state of mind means that I sit with a crease between my eyebrows, a skeptical glance, a puzzlement and soon, it will be permanent. Sometimes I get up and go the bathroom and when I catch sight of myself, almost like a surprise, because I don't always recognize the face that stares out from that glass, I see it, the furrow, and I force my face to relax until it is gone.

Also, there is the recent exhaustion I face on a nearly daily basis, where I want nothing more than to crawl into bed at nine o clock and sleep until the next time it is nine o clock and hope that no one notices that I am hiding away from them, haven't been to a bar in over two weeks, haven't talked about myself in two weeks, haven't cared in two weeks, just want to sleep. I'd guess that I might be depressed but there's nothing really to be depressed about. And if there was, it would have began sooner than two weeks ago. Two weeks ago (and just a bit longer) I had The Fall, which has become an important event in my world and I suspect the marker of my getting older, because I have not been the same girl since then.

It is cold here now and unlike before, I must have gloves and a hat and a scarf and I am a whiny baby without them, my coat snuggled under my chin, three layers on top, two layers on bottom, I am a bundled mass attempting to block out any chills. I used to be immune to the cold. I used to laugh at the cold. Now it laughs at me.

When did I begin to enjoy prunes? Really, prunes? I remember when he offered me one. It was the first time I had ever seen a prune up close. He kept his in the refrigerator, in a plastic container and when he peeled open the lid the smell offended me. It was like if you could smell wetness, if wetness had a smell mixed with a sickly sweet forgery of raisins. They had a similar wrinkle, but they were so big. And some of them were puckered and dimpled and others were like grotesque belly buttons and he shoved the bucket under my nose to make me see them up close and that smell filled my nostrils and I was so grossed out. He thought I was just grossed out because they were prunes and prunes aren't cool. He asked me, the way he asked me everything, the reason I loved him so, if I had actually ever eaten a prune because I might find that I quite liked them. He smiled and I ate one and he was right, I did quite like it. Now, I don't keep my prunes in the fridge, I keep them in my pantry and I try to eat five a day.

[time passing]

"She's been sober for a year," she told me. I can't quite say why this statement has been pinballing through my mind and setting off all the bumpers. The initial ones were all typical, shock, alarm, awe. Then as the details emerged, I felt a sense of affirmation, a prim nodding of the secretary in my mind who manages all the affronts incurred against my good name and even in that moment I could not resist saying, see, this is why I stopped being her friend. After that, I just felt kind of sad for her, that she's obviously looking for something and still hasn't found it yet, and maybe this is it for her. I hope so.

there was a suggestion that sobriety was part of growing up. I don't know what that means. I wish I did. I wish I hadn't held on to a semblance of what felt good for so long because I'm stuck now, this is it, I'm in the rut, I look up from the curb and see everyone passing me by, I'm in that last group of marathon runners who trained for nine months only to end up walking it, bathed in sweat which makes the perfect mask for tears. If I ever grow up it might be because I leave Chicago, because I'll be forced to do something else, anything else. Or it might be a slow steady crawl toward adulthood that I've already seen the signs of and once again I will know it's because I'm a late bloomer.

I want to be steered, to be shown what to do, because the ways that I used to do things haven't been working for me anymore. The impetuous decisions based on nothing more than a whim, it has failed me two years in a row. That has been my saving grace for two years, the one thing I could rest my fucking laurels on when cornered about what exactly I was doing with my life, I could say, with a sense of smugness and pretentiousness, I'm applying to grad school. Or, I'm applying for a master's degree. Even just the idea that I could say such a thing was a novelty, so I said it as often as possible. And now, it seems I've been bested, having failed to win those odds two years in a row, maybe I will not bother this year. Even then I could not say I will not bother. Part of me still wants to apply, part of me still considers it, and probably will until January 4th passes and I can say with a sigh of relief, maybe next year. And maybe the year after, ad infinitum until I die.

[them]

He comes to me at night for assurances. It has a pattern now, like everything; a couple weeks go by, I haven't heard a word, and I usually break my vow of silence. Lately it's him that wanders into my scope, greedy with questions, searching for love, wanting someone to tell him it's all gonna be alright. I do the best I can, for my heart is not for him and my answers seem to drop into an endless well of his own narcissistic making. I imagine all the good times we could have had if this well was absent, but even then, I was never someone he wanted that way, though somehow he desires the mother hen in me and I love soothing him. It makes no sense to anyone else, and so he will remain an enigmatic stain on my subconscious.

The day is arriving that I will meet him again, he only knows my past self from years ago, and I wonder what he will see in my future self, if he will have the same lure to me he once had, I am terrified that he will and even more concerned that I will not be able to deny him. Meeting him again has loomed over me these past two weeks (strangely coincided with my abrupt descent into exhaustion) and I know it's not worth the effort of trying to imagine how it will go, what I should wear, how much of a wall to hold up, but I endlessly find myself scraping away at those thoughts, even when I reprimand myself I still wander back absentmindedly and imagine it all. And it might seriously turn out to be nothing. A joke.

Except there is him and he has captured me with so many moments, so many reasons, but this one in particular might be the exact moment I fell like a great thunderous tree, boom! he was sitting in my kitchen and we were talking, talking about nothing, which we seem to do so well, and he was smiling and happy and we had already spent two hours next to each other, but there was no rush, and my roommate was in the other room unaware, but in the middle of saying something, he was struck by me and he whispered that I looked wonderful and me, typical me, I shied away and refused the compliment, even waved my hand as if to bat it away, but his sincerity in that moment, his carefulness in that moment was exceptional and I crashed.