Leaving a party, hungover and crammed into the back of a friends car I sat, lit cigarette at a gas station, in Boston, no ashtrays in the car. At the time I was just finishing a few months of heavy drinking and my first lesbian "phase". I was still in love with my first love, had escaped an engagement to an asshole who thought he was my second love. I was 70 pounds lighter, a much heavier drinker and absolutely in love with life just as much as I hated it. I sat in that seat, lit cigarette, no ashtray, hoping and daydreaming that life was more than a series of friendships we'd grow out of, one night stands and falling for the one person who would fuck your head up the most, more than working towards that something more you know you want but can't name at 20 years old.
22 days from my 27th birthday I am trying to quit smoking but the feeling of those thoughts of uncertainty, the fears of 2o growing ever closer to an urgency at the close of 26 than the few moments of contemplation in the back seat of a friends car at 20. These feelings, the memories attacking the moments I live in here and now, they remind me of that panic as I sat in that back seat watching the ash grow, knowing eventually it would come down to ashing on the floor and feeling like an asshole. I have that same feeling sometimes when life becomes cloudy and the crystal ball gets shaken.I'm a living adventure filled with bitter candy and fear of becoming some sad character living in regrets of things I never dared to do or say. I say out loud what most people wouldn't admit they think, but ask me who I am, ask me what I feel and its lit cigarette no ashtray. So close to 27, I sit here in my barely affordable one bedroom apartment, unemployed, uncertain, frightened, and wishing I was still young enough for a few months of drinking and a few meaningless one nighters to mask the mess I've made just long enough to find my next big adventure. I lay awake at night wondering if there is anything more to this human condition than this hardwired urgency to do it and do it better. I watch the people I love struggle to become more than they are and to accept the lives they've stepped fallen or been pushed into. I watch this struggle and I struggle to understand how I didnt know I wanted these things earlier. How even now I don't see myself in those roles as easily. Sometimes I just don't see my self at all. I see this cloudy crystal ball and these cloudy feelings and it hurts to breathe and these watery things keep falling from my eyes and a watery drop puts out the cigarette. I am a phoenix and this is my next adventure.
