Not all of us can
exceed expectations and everyone can't be
better than average. (I'm bad at math, but even I know that). The world sorts us into categories and I'm in mine. The almost was; the
couldhavebeens.
At some point, and I feel myself close to that point as each day slides into twilight, we are no longer potential. We become past tense; discarded packaging.
My parents moved from joyful, to fretful to enraged and then finally -they closed the door on all delusional optimism and walked into the other room to watch T.V. As if to say:
Your drama is no longer compelling.
That's not really what they said. It is, however, what they meant.
Friends, who joked with me when I was younger, no longer waste time or energy on my problems. Days without phone calls become weeks. Parties come and go without invites, as if I could go. They no longer make fun of my single parentness. You know things are bad when you are no longer worth sarcasm.
Now it's Friday night and I'm sitting on the back steps of my section 8 and listening to the screaming of the neighbors. Hoping it doesn't wake my baby, who has colic again.
In the distance I can hear a kid with a loud car radio cranking Aerosmith. I can barely remember nights in fast cars with reckless boys. It was probably five or a hundred years ago.