Baited Breath

I've been noticing you all week. I know I haven't hinted with my furrowed brow and deadpan expression, but it is nothing against you. I've endured too much of life as the chubby girl with no attractive feature but a sense of comedic timing, and have too far ingrained the idea that no one, from looks alone, would ever pick me out of a crowd. Forgive me for living as though I'm not noticed, and responding to those I notice as though they were as invisible to me as I to them. But I've been noticing you all week. I caught you looking, but did nothing about it; I was just getting on the bus. I stare down the new arrivals too. It doesn't mean I'm fascinated with the idea of mating with them, though I will admit I am constantly aware Prince Charming could board at any moment. But that's a daydream; I'm over hoping boys on buses will touch my trusses. It occurred to me today as I caught your eye with a blank slate that this could be the last I see you. That is not my normal bus, and save my professor should skip town again, I would have no way of boarding it. I thought perhaps you'd say something, as I faced front and opened my breakfast bag. Perhaps you'd close the gap of the aisle and speak. You didn't. I took a nap. I quickly took my favorite seat on the bus for home, ready to finish my leftover breakfast as a make-shift lunch, ready to put in my earbuds and tune out the sounds, when I met your eye. I decided to delay the music for a moment. I abolished all notion of eating, regardless how starved I was. You couldn't think I always only ever ate. You sat behind me. I felt anticipation seep through my pores. I was going to make a show of picking what to listen to, though the DJ in my head was already set on TP. You were going to watch, and comment about my music. But you beat me to it. I couldn't even plug the buds in before you spoke. You asked about my iPod case, said it was amazing. I answered the way I should have looked at you all week. I opened, unfolded, spoke freely, though scared. I'm bad at eye contact. I regret how often I turned around, I fear that's why you put your own buds in. I didn't want you to, but you did. You cut me off as I was fabricating a way to ask your name. That's what I hate you for: I have no name for your face, for your surprisingly tenor yet unbelievable voice, for your green jacket and you smile. I never remember eye color, even my own. I have my days. But your eyes were something. Perhaps inhabited by the light of your smile. I faced front, rejected, my eight earbud empty and waiting for you to change your mind. You didn't. I took a nap. Or, rather, attempted. If you did as you did to leave an impression, to deny me that "first kiss" on the "first date" to keep me coming back, you succeeded. I couldn't look pass that you could be watching me--that I wanted you watching me. I felt your Spanish-speaking phone call was a ploy to impress. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't And maybe it did, maybe it didn't What pacifies me, stranger, is that as you left you looked back. And I smiled, the way I should have all week. And the way I will when we cross paths again, whenever that may be. I'd prefer soon. I feel we're headed somewhere besides the bus route.

-for lack of a better title-

Whether it's my low self-esteem or my pride, or an odd combination of my low self-esteem and pride, I relish my victories. I like seeing I've accomplished something worthwhile; I read every satisfying blog post/essay/facebook status to the point of memorization because I'm amazed and thrilled at the way the words sound. I look at pictures from a show I felt I acted well in, or an instance that happened to be captured where I looked particularly nice. It's the later that bleeds more toward vanity, but I believe I let vanity have its moment because, to my low self-esteem, those moments are so few and long awaited and deserved that they have to be enjoyed.

I was looking forward to dwelling in this victory. I was anticipating with heightened senses dwelling in him and how I won. I was going to woo him, win him, keep him, and lie down at night with the knowledge that he was in my arms, in my bed.

And then he disappeared.

I saw Weber State University's production of Charm tonight, an up-and-coming play written by Kathleen Cahill about Margaret Fuller (female writer in a time when female writers were...less than desirable). The play focuses on women's rights and feminism and homosexuality and sexual discovery, and as much as my Mormon conservative cannot bare it, I have a confession.

I connect IMMENSELY to Margaret Fuller (at least, for the sake of the remainder of the post, as portrayed in Charm). I have for about a year or so abandoned private journal writing (catching up would require too much time, so when the urge to write about myself comes I usually obscurely blog), but I can't take the secrecy right now, and maybe I'll wake up tomorrow with bloodshot eyes and a lack of sleep headache, and promptly delete this, but I feel the urge to speak. And I know it doesn't matter because no one follows this anymore, except my father who checks up on the random. To whom I say hello and sorry.

No, I'm not coming out.

My Public Speaking teacher last year constantly joked that LDS members got married so young because, to be frank, they couldn't take the sexual frustration that waiting for marriage inflicted. Because they have to wait and can't...experience prior, everyone settles at a young age because they just want to know....what it's like.

This is the part I'm afraid of, the part I hate to admit even when I'm by myself.

I want to know what it's like.

I want to know what it's like.

But the thing that keeps me celibate and patient, besides the fact that n'er a young man will look my way, is that I have more in my heart than I do in my pants. I want a man, but I want a man that will love me. I want a man that will let me listen to and talk about Jason Mraz, become house-poor with me, go to the theatre with me, make me with child and smile at me constantly because he loves me and he loves that I'm carrying his child and I'm his and...

The Mormon conservative straightens her skirt.

The feminists rend their blazers and trousers.

I like traditional gender roles.

I crave traditional gender roles.

Not as removed as the Victorian Era, but I would be content to consider myself a possession of my husband, and I'm not meaning as a lifeless slug but...to belong to someone. To belong with someone. That's what I mean.

And it's the idea of having someone hold me not for one night or one hour, but for now until the red moon sets and the four horsemen ride and the Devil is bound for a millennium and later defeated, being in his arms forever is what keeps the Margaret Fuller at bay.

But Margaret and I do agree on one issue: no one seems to find us desirable.

But he was starting to. He was slipping toes into the water, and I was ready to greet him, to immerse him by degrees, to convince him we could work. I was going to win him, forever silencing the nag who says we'll die an old unpublished maid, eventually satisfying the Margaret Fuller, and giving the Mormon conservative a place to rest her head.

And then he disappeared.

Come Clean

There aren't enough words anymore.

This house is structured to keep me safe, to carry me through the winter and on to sunny mornings where green enfolds from fickle black branches and introduces a realm of contentment and satisfaction. The wind grew sharper today, a sting to the skin that made wonder how the same sun can cry but a separate warmth translate down. The house was cold, inside, an occurrence I had never encountered. Perhaps a window was left ajar, perhaps the heater stopped early.

They're stripping at the paint, these feeble hands of winter's wind. Tenements of color flaking down and away, the earth of timber cut for structure seeping through like death. I feel it like fingernails through clay--penetrating, obtrusive, ruining. Troughs of failure etch these walls. 

I sit against the window's glass.

There aren't enough words anymore.

The hostage situation of my mind is irritable at best. I attribute it to the feeble working of my energy reserve, and the incapatability of sleep with my being's psyche. But another thought swims within the slough: I am too far idle. I am too far driven down a path I never intended to tread, standing facing where I've been, bombarded with slurs and slays of traitor, deviant, Judas. He was at AMDA at this age. He had an agent, on the brink of getting a stable role in television. He had published his first novel.

Interesting that all my goals were set by men.

The feminists in the room recoil and hiss.

I press on, lightly informing them that 'hiss' is his. 

There aren't enough words anymore.

Thou shalt not idle away thy time, neither shalt thou bury thy talent that it may not be known.*

There aren't enough words anymore.

I have failed to keep them.

The glass folds upon itself with the molten age of years gone in days. The trees beyond are fogged by the pane; black is all remains. Green is absent yet.

Winter became custom here, for never was another embraced. Never was a season given such light, such warmth, as the cold.

I have failed to keep them.

It takes me fragments of breath to settle the voices of accusation, to remind them our AMDA, our television role, our first novel will come when these years are tucked in memory. We will have time, the air mutters as I press it through my lungs and out parted lips. 

The breath neglects to tell me I have dwindling supply of ability.

I have failed to keep them.

"You fear the world too much," she answered, gently. "All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one..."**

I have failed to keep them. 

There aren't enough words anymore.

*Doctrine and Covenants 60:13

**A Christmas Carol-Dickens (Scrooge's first fiance, as seen with the Ghost of Christmas Past)