Just Writing, no references to anyone is deliberate!

The background murmur of the coffee shop drowns out the subtle idea that maybe she noticed me. I saw her as I walked in, hearing the door slam shut behind me caked in ice, the warmth of the shop reminding me that I was alive. Immediately I began to scan the room. We all do this, we scan a room upon entry and measure the responses of those already inside. We all hope for different answers, some of us want the room to notice and enter with flair trying to draw them in, whilst others want to slip in ghostly silent and avoid any attention at all. I always look for her, perhaps this is exactly why I haven’t found her as of yet.

This time I thought I might have captured a glimpse of her. The real deal, the one and only, the girl for me. Then her husband sat down with their little boy strapped to his chest sipping on his chai tea bull shit and making her laugh. Immediately removing all feeling of hope and replacing it with the usual feeling of loneliness, hopelessness. One more person out of the dating pool, removed from any opportunity of providing me with happiness.

The words of my mother rebound around the hollowness of my skull, “your happiness can’t rely on someone else.” My friends tell me I have to stop looking and it will happen by itself. I on the other hand worry, what if it doesn’t. I am not a passive person. I am, as my friends and I refer to it, a “doer” a person of action. Unfortunately my action occurs most of the time without foresight or thought. I jump into the fray swinging at anything and often come out with a new wound that I watch heal into another scar. My baseball coach hated this about me I always tried to hit every pitch. He wanted me to wait for the perfect one. Guess that’s why I like hockey, I hit everything in that game and it all works out in the end.

So back to this girl and her yuppie husband and their perfect little child. Did I mention that I felt a sudden urge to vomit? It’s not that it really sickens me to see them happy in any way other than with jealously. How do people manage to navigate the intricacies of the human relationship? Some people seem to have been given a handbook that some of us apparently traded in or where looking at something shinny during distribution. I find them incredibly difficult, I think I am good at it but always I wonder if I am failing on some account. You see at my core I am a people pleaser, one who seeks the approval of those around me. Within this search for approval I seem to have lost the very essence of self.

However, I preach and teach to my students regularly that they need to figure out who they are. That the real answer to finding joy in life is within the bounds of self definition. Must be some sort of desire to see one of them succeed to reassure me that it can happen. I always latch on to ideals that I would like to define me but I never seem to truly absorb them into the core of my being. I guess if I had to choose a philosophy to define me I would choose Zen or Taoism. The sad thing is that I only have a cursory understanding of either of these but refer to them as my belief system. Perhaps it isn’t hard to see why I struggle with my decisions in my life.

Well, I hear the barista bellowing out my order. Why do they yell so loud? It’s not like I can’t hear them, even if I am the only one that ordered and am standing at the little piece of granite countertop that they designate the “pick-up” zone. They still yell out my order as if they are hoping someone else will come take it. It’s like they don’t want to give it to you for some reason. Then when you step forward, from crowd of one, to claim your prized beverage of choice they act both surprised and gracious that you finally arrived to receive their blessing in a cup. Self-righteous pricks, you make coffee, stop yelling, get a haircut and stop stretching your ears.

I often look down at my latte and think it is so perfectly chaotic. The milk is mixed at some perfect level with the brown softness of the coffee below. Then I add sugar and always feel the slightest sadness as I stir it all away and force it to meld into a unified color of diarrhea . Then slowly I sip away at it until it is all but gone and I begin to hit the keys on this board. I let the words pour forth in hopes to find some string of them that will make sense. Is there an answer hidden in here? Is my soul their on the “page” hidden between the lines awaiting analysis by some pimply English major who hopes to be a successful professor, but will setlle for teaching grade 3 kids to spell. Well if you find it please give it back, I need it.

Bukowski had it down. He let it all fall on the page, the sad truth of the human condition. We all strive for and rarely accomplish lofty heights of human achievement. Then there are the realists, the ones who live life and realize it is really a combination of shits, sleeps, random sex, desires for random sex, masturbation and hopefully sports. In between theses events we tend to delve slightly into our minds only to hit the barrier of our own limitations. Then when these become over bearing we find our own releases, some of us will drink, others use, some run till they hit euphoria and the lucky few manage to convince someone to share their miserable existence and procreate. Can’t forget to turn the proverbial wheel of life and ensure there is a new generation to suffer the consequences of all our mistakes.