Saturday, August 21

The Day I Panicked A Little Because The Future Holds So Many Mysteries And I Can Only Hope I'm Ready To Handle It

This is it. 

This is the end of a chapter, the start of something new. I feel like I've been standing next in line for a roller-coaster I've been stoked to ride, yet now that the time to ride has arrived,  I'm suddenly harvesting butterflies in my digestive track. I won't lie and say that none of this nervous anxiety doesn't ignite the flame of regret in the shadow of my thoughts. I've got that newborn put-me-back attitude. I'm standing at the lip of a diving board I never actually thought I'd jump from. Metaphors to cover the fact that I ended a steady relationship and part of me misses the consistency. I'm not changing my mind or anything. I'm just saying that the feeling is there, and it haunts me as Moving Day approaches, and it's planting such nagging questions as "What if this isn't the right thing to do?" and "What if something goes wrong?" and "What if it doesn't make me happy?"

I tell myself that I'm being ridiculous. 

By this time next week, I should be in my new Midtown home. If all goes to plan, I'll be sleeping there after work Thursday night, with or without a mattress. 

After that I get privacy (not that this borrowed room hasn't been private, but it's never felt like mine) and the freedom to decorate. After that, I get to save my tips for other things beside gas and parking (although I've recently defeated the parking fees by riding a bike from East Sac). After that, I see what a year in Midtown feels like. 

It doesn't help that I've had all closing shifts for the past few weeks. That's five per week, in a row. That's a lot of sleeping in, which is a benefit, but a lot of long, drawn-out, tiresome and lonely evenings wasted feeling like a waste, and doing that so often can really wear on my demeanor. I used to come to work as cheerful as a Wonderland oyster. Now I drag my feet and zombie my way through the first two hours until the caffeine kicks in, and then I mindless-task my way to eight o'clock and tick down the minutes until closing time. Put that on top of the depressing drive back to Carmichael, and my weeks of late have been overstocked with buckets of bummer. The month of August has been a draining, yet undoubtedly progressive experience. The sour shell around a sweeter core. 

Tomorrow approaches quickly. Sundays (my Fridays) are my only early shifts. I should have been asleep two hours ago, but sleep isn't really a huge priority these days. Fuck these days. I don't care if I zombie my way through the rest of this week--it's all just gray to me, until I move. This is the commercial break. I'm honestly not paying attention to anything that's happening to me, since it's all going to be stuffed away in some forgotten folder in the back of my mental filing cabinet. All I'm really going to remember from the past two months is Finding a Room and Getting an Internship. Everything else was painful progress, like learning your multiplication tables before taking algebra. 

At least I'm going to bed before midnight. Maybe. I might read for a bit. I'm reading more, recently. Feels good.

- Left to Fry

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