“What do you do for a living?”
I blink at the tall and deliciously dark Brazilian Google programmer.
He rewords the question: “What do you spend the most time on?”
“I boss people around,” I prevaricate.
“Wow…. How can I get a job like that?” he jokes.
“I’m contracted by a pharmaceutical company, working on vaccines for the pandemic bird flu,” my sister puts in with a flirtatious tone. Mentally, I stick my tongue out at her.

It bugs me that I have such personal problems with just telling people I work at a pet store. They always get this…. disappointed look. And they’ve known me for two shots and a song in the dark. Why should that matter so much to me? I haven’t figured out yet how to get over that….

Because they never really ask what exactly I Do at the pet store. From the expression on their faces, I’ve been relegated to a mindless drone working in retail. Should I bother to correct them without prompting? Should I exert the effort to tell them: yes, I oversee a staff of ten people in a store that ranks in the top 25 of 800 in the company located on a main road of Silicon Valley and we’re doing very well and have the potential to lead the industry within the next 5 years or so. *Sigh*

Fuck.

I’ve tried telling people that I write – I’m a writer.
Then they ask what I write about – have they read any of my works – do I make a lot of money off it, since it’s such a fickle career.
I always want to tell them to fuck off after that.

After being a blogger for a handful of years, I know now that I’m not just writing for myself. It’s impossible when everything gets flung out into the ether and people run around with their butterfly nets trying to catch entertainment or information or the simple understanding that I’m going through it, I’ve been there, everything will turn out ok because here’s the path I’m treading through the danger and the darkness and you can hold my hand or follow me until you can find your own path again.

And then someone suggests I should make money off it. Become a troll taking tolls at the bridge between despair and hope. Or have someone tell me that I’m not good enough at something I’m so obviously helpful at. To “make a living” would kill me.

But it’s not all open hands and sacrifices, not at all – never believe that. Because every reader gives up time to read, maybe even thinks about something I wrote, applies it for a millisecond to a decision in her day, whatever…. and should I ever need anything be it advice on what car to buy, where to visit for my next vacation, how to deal with the repetitious disappointments of single-hood, what I need is here – somewhere. And I bring out my own butterfly net and start running.

Please. Stop.

Do you want me to beg?

Please, I beg you, stop it.
You have no right, coming to me when I’m asleep, when I’m sposed to be safe from -
And then you come, with your fair face and your kind hazel eyes – glinting with some deliciously grown-up knowledge, and we walk through the airport and you’ve known me all my waking life and I’m looking at you, out of the corner of my eye, and you’re tall and handsome and serious, and free – so free…. and I want to hate you but I don’t know why, because all that sears through me right then is the pleasure of being reunited with a lost limb.

And you talk with your tenor-tinted voices, words paced and measured like a teacher, with more patience than a parent, and still that glint of something in your eyes like you know something I don’t

And someone hits me with an elbow to the head and for a second I see double but when I look at you again, you’re gone, and pain gives me twice what I think I want but takes you away from me and I wander the airport, the carpeted ramps sheathed in halls of sunlight that stream through impossibly tall windows and I look down over a banister and there you are, looking up at me from the lower floor, chagrined and impatient that it’s taken me so long to realize where I was headed.

“About time,” you say, in that not-quite-condescending way that makes me want to crawl onto your lap and find the source of why you smell like summer lawns and lemon cookies and I tell you without speaking that my head hurts.

A dozen yellow packets of pills fall down a chute to tumble in a heap at my feet. Pills of all shapes and sizes, and I squish them with childish glee through the crinkling wrappers. I don’t know which ones to take, I say with my eyes.

“Take two of the red ones,” you answer sagely.

And the pain goes away.

And we walk through the airport.

And board the plane.

And get married.

And have children.

And I’m driving home from work on that road that winds through the mountains – driving home from a job in a career that means something to you and it scares me, driving down the one-lane road with a fantastic view but acute switchbacks and it scares me, doing things like that though they scare me because you’re so proud of me and I’m happy and me cell phone rings and I glance at it on the passenger seat

And it rings and I remember

And it rings and it’s too good to be true

And it rings and I’m dreaming and do I want to wake up and do I want it to end?

And it rings and I remember how too good to be true everything was and do I want everything to end and it’s such a horrible choice – do I dream and dream knowing nothing is real but knowing that nothing is real makes me want to stop dreaming and everything cascades down like a landslide of crumbling red bricks with sharp corners so I close my eyes and take my hands off the wheel and wait for that elusive myth of eternal peace

I wanted that darkness

But I woke up instead.

I’m hitting a manic phase right now. Mmph….. hopefully, I’m writing this at the tail end. And it’s better than it used to be. See – complete sentences and everything! I want to say there’s more discipline in my body and the mind follows. But it’s more like there’s more purity in my mind and the emotions are overruled.

Everyone keeps trying to set me up with people they know. At least once a week, I get propositioned with “Come to _______, I have a friend/brother/neighbor I think you’ll like.” And inevitably, it’s some decent, nice guy who has some of the qualities on my list for suitable life partner, but more often than not, he’s much too young.
“He looks so serious….. Is he serious?…. Being a Marine, I s’pose he’s got to be somewhat serious about….. stuff,” I ramble, mostly to myself, as I hold the glossy bit of color between my forefinger and my thumb. I glance from the photo to the father and find no resemblance other than the straight slash of a small and inexpressive mouth, the downturn at the corner of the eyes.
“That’s his graduation photo. They told him to look that way when it was being taken,” he responds.
“Hm…… He’s definitely handsome…… How old is he again?”
“Nineteen.”
“………..Cradle Robber!” I gasp, “I’m not a Cradle Robber!”
“How old are you???”
“I’m old!” I want to tell him I’m 35, because that’s what I tell everyone else. Makes me feel …. I dunno, Warhol-esque. But I settle for telling him I’m almost 30, which is technically true. Dita tells me I look/act like I’m 25, which is prolly why I keep getting set up with the young’uns.
Seriously, I’d like someone more my age – in all aspects of that phrase.

“Smoking is bad for you,” he mutters, sliding into the passenger seat of my car.
I turn my head to face him as my key twists in the ignition, the car jumps to life and in the gloomy half-hearted light of the parking lot, I find the glint of accusation in his eyes.
“Living is bad for me,” I gently correct him, but the smile only makes it halfway across my lips.