On Waiting For A Sign
Indecision and loneliness are the only two things I can be sure are there for me.
The rent for all the anxiety that lives in my head is cheap, but I have to pay by the hour. Writing looks like work and it entertains the noonday demon well enough that it retreats for a while.
And so.
I am in this small room in this big city. It is so quiet that I can match my breathing to the click of the thermostat. When I go outside, it is so loud that the air brakes of the Montgomery County bus mute my headphones. Everywhere, there are bent heads. No one looks up from their phones.
Loneliness lives in my shoulder joints for some reason. Maybe it’s because I can only hug myself most days. It’s a temptation to turn on myself and remind myself that I chose this. I bet on this. I believed that in taking the harder way, I’d somehow be signalling the universe that yes, I am worthy of something bigger. It’s that something bigger, that something more, that vague, inchoate vision that I did this for.
WHAT’S NEXT? She asks me. He asks me. And I have no answer. This irritates her. And it annoys him.
“Whatever. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble once you put your name out there.”
