Tuesday, June 21, 2011

At twenty three this City was full of life. Waking up half-skunked off cheap wine and liquor and heading to work hung over was just another Thursday morning. The night here always feels young, always holds the most open ended promises of whatever your heart secretly makes to itself. There is possibility here. I love it here, so why now is there a splinter of sadness slithering its way down into my stomach and making a bed there? I resent my birthday. As smoke rises from each candle there is a silence in the back of my head as my ambition for what once seemed so sure wanders through my body. Looking for a place to settle and start its fire. My hands that once crippled themselves around a pen and wrote feverishly have lost their place on the paper, like a half way prayer it goes nowhere.

I have started my "slow burn" in life, as a friend put it. I have been a server for too long. I have no use for the pen and pad there, I write nothing down its all by memory. I have worked so many hours per week, per year I can memorize a table of twelve's extensive order, but can't even memorize my own poem. If waiting tables was a career I would be CEO. I work for a corporate restaurant group, and for a corporate place is pretty easy going .  Except I hate it. I hate being twenty six and waiting on a table full  of young successful people. All the credit cards handed to me are Amex company cards. I feel stupid, and ashamed. I feel my age cracking through my position and they could see I have long expired the societal age standard for this type of work. A panic sets in as I am wringing out the same specials again, and all of a sudden I see outside of myself. I see myself standing there, older than I want to be and the voice in the back of my head says "what the fuck are you doing ?!" This is not what I wanted. This wasn't suppose to be this way. I was to be an artist. I wanted to tell stories through myself. Instead I overhear conversations from my tables. A guy in a suit and tie says "Yea, they're all artists..." As if to say we failed, that his average personality, and goals in life got him thus far. I must admit it must be nice to have health insurance and weekends off. I can't blame him.

Its not just what our family and society expects from us. It is also what we expect from ourselves. I do want all the standard American dream amenities. House in the suburbs, kids, picnics, security... All of it. I found myself wanting it more, especially with the current person I am with. Not only did I grow up in such a manner but that life seems complete. It is wanted by many. The American dream has been the cause of many broken backs in this Country. Yes, there are parts of me that scream out and want to forever be a vagabond in this City. Exchanging cash for booze. Travel to a foreign county, work on a vineyard in Argentina. Learn a new language, adopt new eating habits, swim in the ocean, jump of cliffs, exasperate every part of my being until I die. Until I settle down in a cottage in the country or at the beach. Write out my life. Drink from my wine cellar and feel happy. However I am getting older and I don't want to spend my days alone. And maybe when I am older I will think of me now and say "I was so young, I had so much time". Maybe I will think of myself as a lost fool, who wasted time on worrying about how to make up for the short amount of time I spent doing the things I didn't want to. I want a lot of things. I am unsure of so many. The one thing I am sure of; Waiting tables is not working! So for now I'll apply for front desk positions, and half heartily to grad school. Hoping I find my niche, make everyone around me proud. Keep around the one I want to stay. And happily spend my summer weekends at the beach. I have a pinkie finger grip on my dreams which still call out to me at all hours of the night, as if they were the wolf and I were the Moon.