Adjusting to Adulting: June 11, 2006

I sit on the balcony to my first apartment and it rains. The rain looks gold in the lamplight. Lightning flickers like a near-dead streetlight. The beer can leaves wet rings on the cement floor. A clamshell is my ashtray. I like when there’s a lot of ash and filters left; it feels like friends were here.

I started my new job today where I write motivational posters and a newsletter full of driving tips, but I’m a bad driver and can’t even motivate myself. My little toe wears a Band-Aid where my new shoes gave me blisters. Those shoes lie on the rug near my mail and coupons addressed to Occupant.

 For a moment I think about writing in a journal but I don’t because I don’t have much to say. I smoke the last lucky cigarette and make a wish involving my soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend but I think the only kind of lucky smoke wishes that come true are the ones where you hope for lung cancer. Everything gives you cancer these days—even deodorant, which is what I think about every time I put it on. Wishing gives you cancer.

I go inside and make myself a meal of hot dogs and cottage cheese but it doesn’t taste as good as it did when I was a kid and my mom made it for me. I can’t think of anything else to do that I even want to do, so I turn off all the lights except the one near the door—it’s a habit; my mom used to leave it on for my dad so he could see when he came home from work at night.

I sleep on top of the sheets because despite the rain I’m sticky with heat. I dab my pillowcases with my favorite men’s cologne and then lie down to the soundtrack of thunder. I turn on my side to look at the lightning out the window—it’s getting closer. In vain, I check the missed calls on my phone and think, So this is my new freedom.

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