I have to wonder if any of this will ever pay off. This slow preoccupation with numbers has quickly manifested into a full-fledged lifestyle. My morning begins with a number that dictates another. Then I check my bank account. Listings. Postings. Friend count. 14. 17. 18. 21. 25. 30. Aren't these years supposed to be milestones? Aren't I supposed to have certain things done by each? How am I failing so badly? How are all these numbers so wrong right now?
What they don't understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when
you're eleven, you're also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four,
and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you
expect to feel eleven, but you don't. You open your eyes and everything's just like
yesterday, only it's today. And you don't feel eleven at all. You feel like you're still ten.
And you are—underneath the year that makes you eleven.
The tissue poked out of my tooth and in the back of my throat it still tastes like rust. Nothing has closed. 2. 2 weeks. Slow healer. When a part of me breaks down, it decomposes completely down to the roots. 1 bruise on my left knee. 4 mosquito bites. 1 nail, imperfectly smashed.
Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk
or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one.
There are some days when I think that I should check up on M. Until I realize that he is the one checking up on me and what exactly does that say about myself? Was it me all along? Who have I been lying to all this time? I wonder a lot about him, his mother. I wonder about a lot these days.
I don't know if I am cut out to 'love'. This heart of mine beats out of sync in loud, disjointed patterns. And I don't have the capacity for kindness that I used to. I am unsound. Disappointed. Reluctant. Uncomfortable. Done.
I am in hiding.
I feel like I belong here, for now.
Untouched. Out of reach.
