the habit of being

Sitting on the floor next to a tub of Edy’s Double Fudge Brownie ice-cream with a spoon sticking out. Getting a stomach ache, slowly, and no quick fix. I am anxious, I’ve had a hard day, and I look at my writing with squinted eyes. I am tired of writing like a girl with emotional problems. I am tired of writing like I’ve been hurt. I am too old for this. I am too fucking grown up to eat ice cream out of the carton, on the floor, and think it might make me feel better.

It worries me, that I can’t seem to sit down and write for more than two minutes without mentioning sex or my boyfriend. I feel sleazy and dependent. I feel like a girl with emotional problems. I don’t really think about sex that often. I don’t really care about it that much. I like it more in theory, the idea of it before the actuality, and I’ve always been that way, though I have had some indescribably beautiful nights. Indescribably. But sometimes I have to remind myself of what is happening, physically, so I don’t take it for granted, so I appreciate the act itself and not fixate on all the emotions I should be having, the emotions I may or may not be having. And about my boyfriend, he said “you don’t love me, do you?” and I said nothing. I lose my identity when I am near him and I have to remind myself that this is not his fault. Sometimes I am tearfully devoted; sometimes I am so far away.

I feel so sickeningly cliched, so predictable in my cyclical moods, and shockingly unsatisfied with my life. (I practice yoga regularly, I keep a diary, I email my stepfather. I even have a job I do not hate. What does this add up to: not enough.) The only thing I never counted on was my newfound capacity for anger. I did not think I had it in me. I get pissed off at the Foo dogs for not holding up my books.

That saying “you can’t love anyone else until you learn to love yourself” is just echoing in my head.

I was walking to Jennifer’s to return her roommate’s CD that I borrowed four months ago and never listened to but managed to scrape up horribly. I was walking to the bookstore to see if there was anyone there who could give me my last two paychecks, because I quit unexpectedly in the middle of rush by sending my manager an email saying I wasn’t coming back and I thought they would mail me my money but they didn’t (there’s wasn’t anyone). I was walking to Safeway to get the most chocolate-saturated ice cream I could find. I was almost home when I noticed my scarf was gone. My grandmother’s cashmere scarf, the only heirloom type thing I had managed not to lose yet. It must have flown off in the wind; it was windy, afterall. I looked behind me, down the road. It was nowhere. It could be anywhere. It was name-brand; someone would’ve picked it up. I came home and laid on the bed and was sad. I cleaned my room and was nonresponsive.

I wish I had a camera so I could just take pictures of myself in my underwear and not have to expend so much energy trying to express myself in an artistic manner.