When I was mad

It feels like fall of 2012.  I feel it deeply in my chest.  I remember those days.  Waking up, going to bed, waking up, going to bed.  It seemed that as soon as Christmas would come, another one would follow shortly after.  Cookies, coffee, wine glasses.  TV playing in the background.  Quiet office below me, except for those three winter days where Santa came to come make the neighborhood kids laugh.

How did I do it for so long?  I must have gone mad.  I think I may have.  I faintly remember sitting on the stoop under the street lamp, hair all crazy, shiny black 6-inch stilettos.  A cigar in one hand, a glass of red wine in the other one.  A pen and a pad helplessly lying on the weathering wood.  Red lipstick smeared around the edges of my lips.  My thick liquid eyeliner in excess running below my eyes, darkening my already-dark dark circles.

The neighbors would walk by and smile at me but I knew what they were thinking.

Now here I am in 2014 and it feels like I was transplanted into a different world where I’m doing the same things, and I should be.  It’s 7:30 a.m.  I still have that coffee cup that’s bigger than my head.  It still has the same French press coffee nestled inside of it with a little bit of soy milk and organic cane sugar, how I like it.  I still have candles lit in front of me, the window is open.  They’re different candles, it’s a different window, but it still feels like 2012.

I think my fatal flaw this summer has been my overactive brain.  I’ve always been one for thinking entirely too much.  He left me.  Whatever.  Move on.  Be Nicole. Be alone and be happy in your loneliness.  Go to the canal, go to the pond.  Go to the willow tree.  Go to the frogs where you used to write poems and smoke a cigar.  Go to the strip clubs where you used to watch women slither down the poles and sit in your idling car with a white chocolate mocha with cinnamon on top.  I feel like this all hit me a week ago so I have just begun lighting candles and opening windows.

                                                      

Who am I?  That’s a good question.  I want to be a Nicole that I’m proud of.  I want to be the young professional that I am, but I don’t want to be too professional, otherwise the “young” part might disintegrate faster than I want it to.  I want to travel by myself and listen to the wind.  I want to write poetry that is so beautiful on the first try that I hardly have to edit, maybe just a punctuation mark here or there.  I want to go eat breakfast by myself.  An amazing breakfast that puts a smile on my strawberry-loving face (so it must surely have strawberries). 

I just want to be happy with BEING.  Just that, being.  Being what?  Being anything.  I just want to be content.  I want to feel like the world wrapped it’s arms around me and snuggled me closely.

Nicole it’s not all that bad.  It’s NOT all that bad.  And you liked yourself when you were mad.