Allie

Today at the cafe I give them a different name. When the order popped up on their computer screen, the one that shows the receipt of your order and asks for a tip, I see the barista had typed in "Allie." This could technically be a nickname for me but it never will be.

I leave my laptop screen open to get up and grab the avocado toast I had ordered. This screen was left open - the very one you're reading right now, these words plastered across the page for anyone to read while I was gone. Allie. Like the gothic dress I'm wearing to look like Wednesday Addams, it was all to pretend to be someone I'm not.

Allie. It's actually literary. I'm re-reading The Catcher in the Rye. It is the name of Holden Caulfield's younger brother, the one who died of leukemia. I'll never forget reading that section, how Holden smashed every glass window in their garage after Allie died, with his fist, later, unable to fully close that fist. He later tries punching his roommate with that fist and fails to get the result he was looking for. This anger, boiling hot, that unfairness - this is what drives me to write.

Last Friday, I heard from the fifth and final law school I had applied to. I had been rejected from the first four and thought, okay. I have one left. They took so long to respond that I thought for sure they were contemplating my application, re-reading and considering me. It's personal, applications. Did I pass the test to be above average?

I had not. Last Friday, upon hearing from the fifth and final law school, how unfortunately, they had had too many applicants to be able to accept everyone, how they had so many qualified applicants but not everyone can have a spot in the incoming class, I punched a wall.

Perhaps we are all pretending. I'm not Allie. I will not become a law school student this fall. I'm not Wednesday Addams. I didn't bleed after I had punched the wall. Even at that, I had failed. I hadn't left an impression on the hard plaster, or whatever it is that my fist had hit, whatever you call that hardness that can't be moved despite pushing against it. Anger that is misplaced, failing to reach the cosmic universe, swallowed whole and producing nothing but fists that can't close, blood that doesn't spill, a name I can't call my own.

It hurts when you don't get what you want, when the universe is seemingly conspiring against you. It hurts to be a writer, to spill these words. Why was I afraid that someone at the cafe would see my words plastered across the screen, read that I was pretending to be someone I am not?

Isn't the point of pretending to want to be convincing, to leave the impression against the metaphorical wall?