my favorite personal agonies
the agony of a colliding past and present
one saturday morning my boyfriend and i walked into my neighborhood coffee shop and the last person waiting in line was my ex, who looked tired and dirty, and wore a single turquoise earring in his right ear. we both groaned in agony to ourselves, i’m sure. we stood apart awkwardly and in silence, and i almost cackled at how uncomfortable it was to be standing in between two people whose only connection was me. i wished to disappear.
the agony of repeated, unsolicited information
my mother’s no. 1 source for health & wellness advice is the internet — particularly from websites that promote dubious home remedies. every day she sends me two to three of such urls in different group chats on different platforms. today she sent me a video about yoga poses and 40 “useful tips for weight loss.”
the agony of political regression
straight white men still move the world.
the agony of being in love
in retrospect, being in love is overrated. i’ve mostly forgotten the people i claimed to love and the way i claimed to love them; what i do remember is the frustration of wanting more of something that there’s nothing left to have of. being in love means never having enough of myself to give, it means being paralyzed by an emotion so strong that i — sometimes quite literally — can’t do anything else. it means allowing someone to witness up-close all my flaws and failures, and trusting that they won’t abandon me because of it. love is humiliating.
the agony of writing
broadly, the unceasing struggle to adequately explore my thoughts through words. specifically, going through that struggle to write about things i don’t believe in, or care about. this is the most self-hating of personal agonies.
the agony of bad pictures
why is my face like this?
the agony of waiting
waiting to hear back about a job; waiting to eat on an empty stomach; waiting for love to die; waiting for summer; waiting to be home; waiting for a lull through thin walls to fall asleep; waiting for food to cook, undisturbed; waiting for a part of the song i like; waiting through bureaucratic inefficiency; waiting for a package to arrive; waiting for my idols to die; waiting for maturity; waiting for people to get their shit together; waiting to be alone.
happy m o n d a y. (2/20)
-clarissa
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