but those people always seem the slowest to
make up their minds and unable to count properly or write the right
numbers down the first time.
I hand the cashier my debit card and grab a
fortune cookie for my tray. The good thing about a crazy lunch hour
is that a good chunk of people take their food to work, and I’m
able to find a tiny table without too much trouble. The food is
good, but it’s easy to tell it’s “chain food.” The thing about
those hole-in-the-wall places is that the food isn’t always the
same. Sure, it might be cooked by the same person in the same way,
but every time things are a little different. The spices could have
a different heat, the breading a different crunch, the sauce a
different thickness. It makes things a little better.
Chain food also means chain fortune cookies.
Not that all fortune cookies aren’t made in a factory and shipped
out in bulk, but chain restaurants seem to have more ambiguous and
less individualized cookies. I don’t expect the place to have an
old Chinese man with a long white beard stashed in a back room,
hand-writing prophetic script for everyone who enters, but I like
having the possibility of imagining it. I can’t really imagine that
at a Panda Express.
I finish my plate before the line is
completely gone, but business has started to dwindle a little. I
throw away my plate and open my cookie as I walk out:
“Today is a good day ”
I hate fortunes that use smiley faces in
them. I can’t take emoticons seriously. Just like when you’re
chatting with someone and they send you a smile because they don’t
have anything else to say. I’d rather just be blown off than be
stuck trying to reply to a digital facial expression the person
probably isn’t even making in real life. I toss the cookie and the
fortune into the trash can and get back in my car.
“ We feel pain when things are
bad to know we can still feel.”
The third
hour is the one I’ve been scared of the most. Pain isn’t like the
other stages of grief – it’s tangible. Pain can be felt, touched,
and tasted. Pain is the thing you feel when you’re working through
all the other emotions. The pain of grief is always there, and the
only thing about it that changes is the cause. I’ve been feeling
enough pain lately. I don’t want to examine it more closely, or
strip it down and see if there is a way to stop it. I guess I’m
afraid there won’t be a way to make it go away. I realize things
work themselves out with time (everyone tells me that, like it’ll
help now) but I don’t like being in pain. No one does. It is,
however, on the list, so I make it a playlist and prepare myself to
cry.
It’s hard to describe just what hurts the
most about William being dead. I guess not having him here to talk
to is pretty high up there, knowing that things will never be that
way again, but that’s not all. What hurts the most is having my
future taken away from me. I’m almost eighteen. Everyone tells me I
have the whole world open to me now, that it’s time to “invent
myself” as an individual, but that’s not true. The one door I
wanted to stay open was just slammed in my face and no one’s
bothered to open a window. There’s no guarantee William and I would
have stayed together, but I wanted the chance to see for myself. Of
all the guys I’ve met, William was the only one I felt at peace
with. I never wanted more when we were together. He was the only
guy worth the risk of losing. Even knowing how things would end, he
was worth it. Now I have to figure out my future alone and there is
no way he can be a part of it.
That’s what hurts the most, knowing I will
never know.
God, life is unfair.
I stare out my windshield and try not to
think about anything. The music doesn’t really cause the emotional
response I expected it to. I feel hollow and numb, if it’s even
possible to feel both at once. I must be repressing something. I’ve
been crying at everything recently.
make up their minds and unable to count properly or write the right
numbers down the first time.
I hand the cashier my debit card and grab a
fortune cookie for my tray. The good thing about a crazy lunch hour
is that a good chunk of people take their food to work, and I’m
able to find a tiny table without too much trouble. The food is
good, but it’s easy to tell it’s “chain food.” The thing about
those hole-in-the-wall places is that the food isn’t always the
same. Sure, it might be cooked by the same person in the same way,
but every time things are a little different. The spices could have
a different heat, the breading a different crunch, the sauce a
different thickness. It makes things a little better.
Chain food also means chain fortune cookies.
Not that all fortune cookies aren’t made in a factory and shipped
out in bulk, but chain restaurants seem to have more ambiguous and
less individualized cookies. I don’t expect the place to have an
old Chinese man with a long white beard stashed in a back room,
hand-writing prophetic script for everyone who enters, but I like
having the possibility of imagining it. I can’t really imagine that
at a Panda Express.
I finish my plate before the line is
completely gone, but business has started to dwindle a little. I
throw away my plate and open my cookie as I walk out:
“Today is a good day ”
I hate fortunes that use smiley faces in
them. I can’t take emoticons seriously. Just like when you’re
chatting with someone and they send you a smile because they don’t
have anything else to say. I’d rather just be blown off than be
stuck trying to reply to a digital facial expression the person
probably isn’t even making in real life. I toss the cookie and the
fortune into the trash can and get back in my car.
“ We feel pain when things are
bad to know we can still feel.”
The third
hour is the one I’ve been scared of the most. Pain isn’t like the
other stages of grief – it’s tangible. Pain can be felt, touched,
and tasted. Pain is the thing you feel when you’re working through
all the other emotions. The pain of grief is always there, and the
only thing about it that changes is the cause. I’ve been feeling
enough pain lately. I don’t want to examine it more closely, or
strip it down and see if there is a way to stop it. I guess I’m
afraid there won’t be a way to make it go away. I realize things
work themselves out with time (everyone tells me that, like it’ll
help now) but I don’t like being in pain. No one does. It is,
however, on the list, so I make it a playlist and prepare myself to
cry.
It’s hard to describe just what hurts the
most about William being dead. I guess not having him here to talk
to is pretty high up there, knowing that things will never be that
way again, but that’s not all. What hurts the most is having my
future taken away from me. I’m almost eighteen. Everyone tells me I
have the whole world open to me now, that it’s time to “invent
myself” as an individual, but that’s not true. The one door I
wanted to stay open was just slammed in my face and no one’s
bothered to open a window. There’s no guarantee William and I would
have stayed together, but I wanted the chance to see for myself. Of
all the guys I’ve met, William was the only one I felt at peace
with. I never wanted more when we were together. He was the only
guy worth the risk of losing. Even knowing how things would end, he
was worth it. Now I have to figure out my future alone and there is
no way he can be a part of it.
That’s what hurts the most, knowing I will
never know.
God, life is unfair.
I stare out my windshield and try not to
think about anything. The music doesn’t really cause the emotional
response I expected it to. I feel hollow and numb, if it’s even
possible to feel both at once. I must be repressing something. I’ve
been crying at everything recently.
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