First Date Conversation

on our first date, i told you i was flighty. impatient. easily bored. i don’t paint my nails because i can never sit still long enough for even one coat to dry. i don’t fold my laundry because i hate the routine. i would rather buy new cutlery than wash my old ones.

maybe i’m lazy. maybe i have no motivation. maybe i’m just looking for somebody to grab my shoulders and give me a shake and explain what normal is and why i should

do it. but sometimes i brush my teeth for 7 minutes straight because it just feels right. some nights i put my pillow on the opposite end of the bed because i’m still hopeful that i’ll wake up differently if i sleep differently. i never do.

sometimes i forget that i’m reading in the middle of flipping a page, instead struck by the thought we would rather make paper than oxygen, would rather have one less life-source than one less novel. i wonder about priorities. i wonder about people who think it’s necessary to match their socks when they leave the house every morning as if that’s what determines their character. i wonder about people who carry around purses that contain nothing but gum. i wonder about people who spend all their hours at a desk and then return to their house to pass the night alone in a cold bed with a frozen dinner. i wonder if they think that money will make them happier than other humans.

i don’t like kissing when i have lipstick on because i’m afraid of leaving a stain on a cheek, as if i’m marking my territory somewhere i don’t belong, as if i’m trespassing on camera. i stay up for twenty hours a day and spend the other four hours knowing that the longest a person can stay alive without sleep is ten days. i wonder if my nervous system has begun to break down, leaving me nervous and broken along with it.

on our first date, i said i felt flat. not the kind of flat of a calm water on a windless day, but the kind of flat that you associate with deflated balloons. all out of air or out of breath or struggling to find any words left. i felt like the kind of flat that musicians hate - that i hate and i can’t play a single instrument. on our first date, i think i told you i would understand if you didn’t stay. nobody did and i never blamed them. i was too busy wondering about people who believed in numbers and the healing power of yoga on 3 a.m. mornings and tying their shoes without kneeling down to notice when they left. i am stuck inside of a world that i don’t quite understand, with people i never seem to connect with.