Dissatisfaction

I’m beginning to think I need to make a change. I’m beginning to think that that may be easier than I had expected. I’m beginning to think that if I don’t make some sort of change, I’ll be stuck. And I’ve always hated being stuck.

New York is a myth, I’ve decided. It is a dream, a rumor, pure hearsay that has been propagated for centuries by movies, songs, literature and let’s not forget sitcoms. After all, Carrie Bradshaw figured prominently in mine and hundreds, if not thousands, of little gay boys wanting to successfully pull off a halter top and ballerina skirt while hailing a cab on Fifth Avenue. It’s also the small town mentality. To grow up in a town that you feel is too small to hold your larger than life dreams, the big city is the only outlet and the only reasonable solution. There, ah yes, THERE, people will understand me, will appreciate me and will love me. There I can get back at all the fuckheads who made life miserable for me. Where will they be in ten years? Doubtless stuck in the same nowhere town with the same nowhere jobs they’ve been working since high school, though I hear they’re a manager now. But when I wake up at 5:30 every morning to face hordes of shoving, malodorous, disgruntled people who hate their jobs and show up at the job I hate--stoned because I can’t take the idea of going out of the house sober--only to run through the same small talk with the same people, day in, day out, ad nauseum, well then… we’re all stuck aren’t we? Being in New York doesn’t automatically make life fabulous, only interesting; amusing at best. No, to participate in the mythology requires money and a lot of it. Which is what I don’t have. Ambition, tenacity, a lack of shame? Check, check and check. It’s just that damned price of admission.

I’m at the age where dreaming still isn’t a luxury. I’m young. I tend to forget that. And when I’m occasionally reminded of it, I get a surge of electricity through my body that seems to say ‘you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, you’re barely old enough to drink and nowhere close to collecting social security, you don’t have to do this’.

Hey, I think I’ve got a little respiratory problem. I’ve been coughing and hacking up mucus for weeks. I think it’s from my sinuses, but surely the daily/hourly blunt smoking isn’t helping. Luckily, that’s clearing up, though and I’ll be able to stop grossing out everyone around me, myself included. Seriously, a long, green trail of slime from your lips to the garbage can is a bit of a turn off in some circles. My left shoulder hurts from that Hep B booster vaccine I just got yesterday. Technically, I don’t have Hep B, but my liver toxins are so high that they’re doing it as just a precaution. Liver or not, a girl’s gotta live and that apple martini last night was delicious. I’m running out of vodka, though…hmmm. Too bad I only have about a combined 6 dollars in my bank accounts. Until Friday anyway. Payday is always the greatest day, but it has to be after surviving the Day Before Payday. After spending my entire paycheck in five hours from paying bills and/or rent, well, the only money I have left over for myself gets rolled up and sucked into my lungs. Everything else--food, clothes, chiffon--must wait for another day, another week, month, year, lifetime. Being broke the following Monday after Payday makes survival look rather grim, let alone the Day Before Next Payday. By then I’m hanging on by one pinky toe while trying not to bleed too heavily on the carpet at work. And whatever pride I've developed and hasn’t eroded through wear and tear over the years keeps me from asking for any help. After all, I’m 21, dammit. I’m an adult. And as an adult, I will exercise my right to fuck myself up at least as much as life does...which is on a disturbingly regular basis. I’m a fugitive from reality. What has it done for me lately? Or ever, really? So I’m stoned at work at 8:49 on a Wednesday morning. Some doctor chided me for being cold and impersonal in a mass email. Obviously, he doesn’t know me. Doesn’t know that cold and impersonal is my shtick. It’s what I do. It’s who I am. Plus I just wrote what my supervisor told me to. In the scheme of things, I don’t matter. At least not to that doctor. So why be sober? I’m bored as it is.

I want to run away. I actually can run away. No one and nothing is stopping me. What if one day, instead of waking up at 5:30 to face the hordes of shoving, malodorous, disgruntled people who hate their jobs I don’t show up at the job I hate. I just pack up all my care and woe. I’m tired of being pushed around by this city. I’m tired of being pushed around and told what to do, period. Ellipsis. What if, question mark. I wish jazz hands was a punctuation, exclamation point.