Ketchup on the Side Please
My expedition ended today. I am done with the drama. There are really some things you have to find elsewhere because the menu you’re looking at, the one you’ve looked at for years, doesn’t offer it. The menu never really had it on it’s selection. You just thought that maybe, if you stared at it long enough, if you’ve been patient with it, what you want will miraculously appear. Why not, right? You’ve been a very good girl. But no, years later, after eating the same food over and over, the thing you like still isn’t being offered. They don’t make french fries the way you like it. So okay, enough. You tell yourself the whole martyr bit is going out the window and you finally gather the courage to get your own fries.
On July 16 will be my 100th day without a cigarette. To get to the 100th day is so not a walk in the park. There have been countless times when I felt stressed or piqued and thought that just one ciggy, just one puff, could turn the day around for me. There were 2 days in all the 99 days that I gave in ( so okay, fine,l maybe my 100th day should be on the 18th). But you know, at night, before sleep takes me, I feel truly happy that I said no to a habit I’ve been wanting to kick. And I go one day at a time so I have something to be thankful for everyday. Maybe life is all about habits. The funny thing is, some things are much harder to quit than others. I’m not sure if it’s the silly hope in you that makes you carry on (maybe things will look up) or it’s your stubborn streak that insists you stay. In any case you might not know it yet, or are in denial, but these compromises, they kill you.
Today I said goodbye and it felt a lot like good riddance. I went home, took a shower, dressed up for school, and had a hearty, balanced breakfast. As I ate I thought of the lost, wasted years I spent thinking how this particular story would end. In my mind there was a confrontation, a showdown with all the yelling and crying you’d find in formulaic, sappy movies. Then there would be a long reprieve, a moratorium from each other, where no communication would be had. Silence. And of course for the finale, there would be finding each other again, meeting up, and becoming friends again.
Today’s goodbye was nothing like I thought it would be. It was quiet, anti-climactic, unilateral. Nevermind that we are gone from each other’s life forever. May I never see him nor talk to him again. And I’m not bitter. I have done more than any normal person would do in the same situation. It’s just the end of the road, finally, thankfully.
So what to do now that a tune I have been listening to has faded? Move on of course. There are many other things to be busy on, people to meet and places to see. I wonder if that resto on the next block serves french fries.
