Eating breakfast alone is one of the loneliest things. Waking up alone is lonely, but you are not quite awake enough to realize how much. It's when you set the table for one and crack only one egg for french toast, boil only enough water for one cup, and only take one clementine out of the basket that it sets in and you're alone. That's why I take two.

It's funny how everything is changing, yet, at the same time, nothing has changed. I am still doing exactly what I was doing one year ago. It's the people that have changed so drastically. Half the people I spend my time with now, I barely knew, or had never even met one year ago. The other half have been the same for years. Yet I feel like I care for them equally, with few exceptions.

I am getting so used to break-ups. I feel like I have a routine for them now. Comfort, distract, love. Comfort, distract, love. Comfort, distract, love. But it's much harder when they are both your best friends. I am doing twice the comforting, twice the distracting, and twice the loving, with a hint of guilt over each of my heads.

bake it in a pie, hold it up real high

These past months, I've just felt like every person I encountered was a living, breathing "give me" machine. No one wanted to be kind for the sake of being kind, everyone needed more than a thank you. No one listens for the sake of me, it's always for the sake of you. When did we stop putting each other first? When did we decide that "I" was more important than "you"? I go through months like this one and I know the only way I will make it through is if I take it one day at a time. I must have learned that in kindergarten, or maybe from an old friend I used to climb crabapple trees with. Because, damn, sometimes I am tired. Sometimes I remember childhood or the summer spent sailing in the San Juan islands or sophomore year and break-ups and miscarriages and redwood trees and light summer nights and soft winter days spent in bed and summer fig-colored bruises and people dying and I wonder how it can go on like this forever, if it's just like this in my head. Sometimes I wonder at the slow kiss of the sun and the horizon and I want to see the other side of it all. I want to see only the easy. But sometimes a day can be a blooming surprise. A day can leave you as happy as you felt when you woke up that morning-- more tender, less jaded. Some days don't have to wear and tear on you. Those days haven't happened in a long time. I wonder how much more of this I can take before I want to keep my love-crumb eyes shut tight forever.

Smelling Like Sleep

This time it had nothing to do with the man and the dog he threw in the river. This time we had no warning, we had no way of knowing it was going to be like this. Half the time we feel guilty for feeling lonely and the other half of the time all we want is someone to wake up next to. You think we'd learn to give up more easily, you would imagine our skins have gotten thicker but, in truth, nothing has changed. We are still the same kids who had our first kiss under mistletoe and who buried sticks on the playground and pretended it meant something. It all meant something. Not something you can see or touch but something you can kind of smell on each other, something like the sweet smell of sleep. You tell yourself you're 20 years old but you aren't completely happy and that doesn't smell as sweet. Nothing quite works out the way it should. But you have your best friends and you have a warm bed and you can pay the rent and you can listen to music and you can drink until you can't sit up and you can chain smoke till your fingers rot and you can never get away because he put his hooks in your heart and now you can't get them out. You pretend it's okay because they'll start to rust soon anyway. I have my own set of scars. Scars from not being a good person, a good daughter, a good girlfriend. I have scars in the shapes of Sicily (when I fell at the pool, ti ricordi?) and I have scars from when I got the chicken pox at age 6. I have scars from you. You have my scars, too. But I'm telling you, I'm telling you and it hurts for me to tell you, but there is no clear end in sight. There is no map to find a way out of here. There is no way of telling you how long it will be before we wake up again with someone next to us, sweet and smelling like sleep.

Because it's not Sunday anymore.

Monday.
I remember when I used to like Mondays. I'd be up late on Sunday organizing my color-coded folders for school and making sure all my pencils were sharp. I remember waking up early on Monday mornings and getting ready, thoroughly enjoying every minute of it.
Now I wake up to a Monday and I try so hard to not get out of bed. I try so hard to skip my classes and call in sick to work, to pull the down comforter over my head and sleep until Tuesday but I never do. I get up and I get through another Monday.

I don't know why I've started a blog. I've always thought blog was a funny word. I don't know, I suppose it was always coming. This is a big event for me. Something like a sister's wedding, or a friend's welcome home party. I guess we'll see where this goes.

All I know is that it's not going anywhere until Monday is over.