Zipcode Organic 26

Gone People

Categories. The blinking search bar is the question in my brain, the "Alright, lets get started" followed by an awkward silence when I realize just wanted to solve the problem doesn't actually help solve it. If only I could narrow this down by a series of categorical eliminations. Medicine? Health? Is my destiny located under the Social Sciences tab? Am I a psych major with an interest in journalism graduate school? Interpersonal relations, holistic wellness, arts? The question of where my life is headed is making my life hard to live. It makes it hard to get up, hard to breathe. Hard to think. I'm hoping I find my answers at the bottom of a glass of green juice. At the end of a long run. In the comfort of routine. Im interrupted. I'm hungry. I need to heal and I don't want to dig my grave, and I don't want to hear the disappointment in her voice if i don't go back. The disappointment in in my voice when I say I couldn't do it.

I need to heal. I need to be alone. I am lost.

About Amber and Mr. McCartney

Thank you for being aware of what I deserve.

The bright yellow, the conscious burnout, the drip...drip...of my deathtrap. The weightless life and death of what was. Here you are in amber, and you don't need to tell me what I know. That it doesn't make a difference if I sit or I stand.
That maybe your a man, maybe your a lonely man, who's in the middle of something that he doesn't really understand.

20

Lately you'll probably hear me offering preemptive explanations for my actions. I'm this, I'm that. Too old to drink like a kid, I'm righteous and set in my ways, I like animals too much to eat them, I'm just taking a break from school. The list goes on and on. And today I found myself saying "I don't know when I got this old and un-fun and I'm sorry." I lay these reasons around myself to deflect this idea of what I think other people believe I am, all because I inherently feel that I don't fulfill their expectations. But the truth is, I'm not sure when I became someone who has to apologize for herself all the time. What's so wrong with doing something or living a certain way simply because I want to? I think that's where it gets personal. I lived for a long time being treated like my opinion didn't matter, and "not wanting to" was a surefire way to get into an argument, because no explanation I gave was ever satisfactory. The reflection of that is this series of explanations I throw out to excuse my behavior...not necessarily because anyone else believes I'm so wrong, but because I do. The truth isn't acceptable. Who'd believe that I'm 20, and tired.

My day off

The best times are almost never planned. This afternoon, for example. On this temperate January day (I'll remind you last year, we were iced in for a week!) I took Cinc to the dog park for nearly two hours, and sat on the tables with the other regulars and conversed with a girl I'd spoken with a few times in the past. Her faithful companions are some of Cinco's favorite playmates, a burly female rottweiler named Monkey, and a wire haired mutt that resembles Benji from the movies. Benji and Cinco are well matched, Cinco bigger and more muscular, but both with a voracious appetite for chasing and wrestling. As she left, she turned to me and said "My name is Laura, by the way." I like making new friends. I drove home, and as I walked in the door with a tuckered out pup, my housemate Pii asked if we'd like to meet the dog he was sitting, and of course we oblidged. Dante and Cinc were natural companions, and ran around the backyard and into the creek together as Pii and I talked. Midway through the romp, there was a bounding of paws and Jenny and here dog Hugo appeared from around the conrner of the apartment complex next door. Jenny and I have crossed paths during nighttime walks of our dogs, and Hugo, a 5 month old great Pyrenees mix, has grown almost as big a my dog. The three dogs run around together, each with white muzzles and blonde fur, looking almost indistinguishable from each other. Pii goes back inside with Dante and Jenny and I stay out talking, then are met by Mason, Hugo's brother, and his owner, a girl whose name I can't recall. The dogs cross the creek, which only a few days ago was a roaring river thanks to the pouring rain for the past 4 days. They are led by Cinco, the ringleader, and I guess I'm a bit more lenient with his afternoon outings because the other girls try to get the group to cross the creek back over to us. As we do so, I see my neighbor Rusty and his seven year old son Jack walking towards the creek. Cinco and Russ and I sat on the rocks of the creek and talked while Jack explored, and after a suspenseful leaf-boat race between Rusty and myself, Jack and I engaged in an "EPIC" (his favorite word) nerf-gun battle. By his rules, it ended with: me- zero points, him- three points. Of course he won. 

If there is one thing in this world I can do, and love to do, it is talking to people, and making friends. It's good to remember how it feels to be young. Life ain't so bad, huh. :)

Under the bridge

It is so apparent that I lack any type of patience or willpower that the normal man develops by the age he can fit the square block into the square hole. I am driven by feverish wants whose unattended aims turn upon themselves and throttle towards the ground. My mind must remain...in control. But I don't want to live my life subdued...I don't want to live my life with the knowledge that growing up, being an adult, means you have to be unhappy. I want to open and my eyes and see my dream...I want to close them, and say I've lived.

The Gap

We're driving home and I'm listening to his dreams and far fetched wants, all the never-going-to-happens  and could-be's are filling in the blanks and adding depth, like shading to my mental drawing. As we stop, I think to myself that a hundred million hypothetical dollars is so worth watching this man poke his smiling face through the door, and gleefully proclaim "I'm going to go buy a lottery ticket!" He slams the door and I watch his back as he runs through the cold gas station, zigzagging across the parking lot with a youthful enthusiasm, so uncharacteristic of his age. A sigh and a smile. Sometimes I'm the old one.