Tomorrow is my last day at a job that’s kept me busy for six months. I feel silly and grumpy. In awe. How do people DO this for years and years and years? I spent a year and a half after getting an English degree generally floating around and dealing with a few timely crises. Swore to write. Pared down my material life a little bit and cooed at my brain, it’s okay baby, whenever it tried to overcompensate for what was lost. Well, nothing was lost, really. Brat. My first world guilt is killing me, and I feel guilty about that, too. The luxury of being dissatisfied. Calm down.

I could do this for years and years and years, is the point. I’m too lazy to elaborate the journey to that sentiment (and that’s the problem). I could because I’m a human being that needs to move or die, and I’m coming to terms with it. It’s a strange feeling, closing in on a lesson learned only to see a million more bobbing in the distance. Or maybe looking back and seeing all the progress bars at 99%. Or any other thing you want to say because writing is all that makes sense to you, and damnit if you’re not gonna be a brat and swear to keep yourself alive doing it one day.

You will spend one more strained and bittersweet afternoon in the living room with your parents listening to Frank Sinatra because they’re leaving Las Vegas, and your father is a sucker, and you’re a sucker, and all your hearts are lead, and your mother has killed the sucker that used to wear her skin and now nothing can destroy her. You’ll feel all of your angry muscles start to break down into fat. You’ll knot your griefs like a daisy crown, you’ll throw it like a whip. You will hold facts in your hands like hot rubies. You will make plans to behave badly. You’ll swear to break yourself for good so that you can start putting yourself together again. You will do gentle math in your head and come up with zero.

Your mother will spend the day reading library books and asking you periodically if you know how to fix certain things, if you know how to live. Your father will crack jokes and look sad and pray to you for you.