I actually really love Mondays. I like routine. Sometimes on Sunday afternoon, I just tell myself, "You are almost there, you can make it." Because Sundays feel so sloppy and the plans are unpredictable.

Because I ate so much junk food over the weekend, I bought a bunch of vegetables at the grocery store after work to do a vegetable fast for the rest of the day. Then I went to the liquor store to get some beer and wine (I am not drinking hard alcohol for the month of May, and it is actually a great way for me to exercise self control and still enjoy a drink at dinner or before bed...) and this lady asked me if I knew much about wine, and I said I didn't, but most of the employees at our state-owned liquor store are not very helpful, so I tried to help her pick something she wouldn't hate.

"Sorry I don't know more about wine," I said.
"Well you know more than me, and you are a sweetheart," she said with a worried look on her face, and it made me feel a little taller for a minute.

But then I went home to chop up my vegetables and sliced my thumb open because I was getting too cocky.

I guess what I'm trying to say, Sharon, is that I feel a medium amount of good, right now, and there is a tan creeping into my skin.
There is a five mile run creeping into my feet.
My hair is getting longer even though you can't see it, and you won't believe it.

I'll send you a picture so you can know.

97 degrees

And then, you realize you still don't know what you are going to do with all your empty pages. You fill the squares on your calendar with different colored inks, and pretend you are not just trying to catch up with other people who also don't know what they are doing with their lives.

So you just freak out and buy a new duvet cover at Ikea, instead of showing up in yourself for others, in more respectable places.

I'm trying not to be your flakiest friend, Sharon.
I'm trying not to be the one that says she can't go to your ballet recital because of the headache that comes back with bright sunlight, and Sharon, I'm trying to pretend for you that I would like to sit at your pool party where you will not be serving martinis.

But I can't turn it off, like a brother.
I can't compartmentalize, and pretend that every time the door swings on its hinges, that I do not hope
this hope,
or think that....

I am trying to want to come to your pool party, is what is getting lost in this email to you, Sharon.
There are no excuses.
I will show up to your pool party with a macaroni salad and a bottle of Sprite, and whatever is left of me after not sleeping and not taking iron pills, and not lacquering up my skin with suntan lotion.

Mariann and me, well we stopped taking the pills at the same time, and opened our faces wide to a cold December.
To a cold January.
To a cold--well it wasn't that cold but I felt myself waking up to my hands gone numb every morning and I would look over at her and how she could sleep with her mouth closed, and I took the suggested vitamins. Told myself the vitamins made me happier but I still ended up cutting off all of my hair as if to say,
well.

I guess I wanted to say that I was a brand new shiny page in Vogue for her.
That I was something she could hold on to, but she broke up with me, and I don't know if it's about breathing with my mouth open, or if I cooked breakfast in the wrong way, or if I laughed too easily while watching the news, or maybe she liked my hair longer,       or if she didn't need me anymore to be free of the pills all by herself.

She would send me these romantic text messages from time to time, afterwards, and I would stop the car to read them, and breathing would get harder for me. I could smell her there in the car. I would lean over and touch the passenger seat. I would clench the passenger seat and whisper the words you told me would help me, and I wouldn't respond to the messages.

And I became a certified camper and would camp all the nights that I didn't have to work in the morning. I would drive myself drunk into the mountains and set up the tent in the dark, and lay in my thermal sleeping bag, and bite off all the nails that I had left. I'd re-read the messages from her. Save them for good, then delete them for really good, then wish I hadn't deleted them and then
I would conjugate Spanish verbs until I fell asleep. In the morning, I could feel alive because it was really cold.
And that's what I was going to tell you, Sharon.

That even though.


That all of this.


That I still have hope, and that sometimes the hope has nothing to do with her, and I know that's a start.

"Thank God for Vegas."
-Martha

I walked into my dark family room after every one had gone to bed and saw light reflecting off of Noah's glasses.
"Oh my gosh you scared me," I said. "What are you doing in here?"
"Well, I am really bored, and I can't find any of my clothes."
"What? What clothes are you looking for?
"Any of them."

This is a typical conversation with Noah.

"What? She only works 20 hours a week?" He said, a half hour earlier.
"That's not bad for a college student," I suggested.
"I work 24 hours a day," he said.
"No you don't," I said. "You play a lot of video games."
"Well I do work til twelve, and then I come home and play video games," he adjusted.
"Enjoy that while it lasts," I said.
"Oh, I plan to do it forever," he said. And for a moment I thought, So do I. Like a teenage boy, I will be living in my parents' basement. I thought, What is so wrong with staying still, with not marrying, with not procreating....when everything will turn to dust and it will be our time to sleep with our fathers in the ground, and after that to face judgment.

I suppose judgment is what is wrong with staying still.

I don't know all the answers, Sharon, but I find myself sleeping through the whole night now.

I ain't gonna work on Maggie's Farm no more.

By Friday, I'm usually so exhausted that my steering wheel directs me home instead of anywhere I probably should be.

I should get out more, for single-white-female-age-twenty-two. Oscar says, "Come dance with me." And it was like, when did you come to know my name so well? I should be at Alison's birthday party. I should have multiplied my time.

But instead, I pour myself a drink, eat my sisters' home made soup and lobster shaped biscuits, and watch Drunk History with Philip. My phone turns itself off, as it permits itself to do because it is old.

I find myself, here, Sharon. Admitting these things to you.
I admit that the admirers I took in my youth are married and are having children now.
I admit that I rub my arms on perfume samples in magazines, sometimes.
I admit to avoiding going out because of the rising prices of fuel.
I admit that I have dreams involving Fred Armisen showing up to church more than fortnightly.
And I admit that I will never buy a Mac because I am too old to bend to change, and too lazy to learn other technology.

And the thing I can never admit to the hipsters is that: I took a shower every day this week.

Forgive me Sharon. I should keep these things to myself.