I stumbled into my room -- the guy in my head is throwing sheaf's of paper – around they go, disorienting. I close, not meaning to slam it so hard, then conjure a disapproving face, which would only make me shrink more if anyone saw it. My mother is in ear shot, lying on the personal sofa in her room, a second room where my older sister used to reside. I wonder 'did she sigh?' in a caffeine like jitteriness. Would she bother thinking how sad it is for her twenty six year old daughter, still to be living at home preserved in a box; like a bird that lust to stay in its' cage, and pecks fingers that roams to close to its' lock? How her youth is falling away, and she's missing out on enjoying time with her friends until late evening, and, how sad it is she has to support her disability. Or let him suffer. And if he does it will be all her fault.
Calming... Everything around me: the unmade bed, crumpled and piled with nonsense, and warm sheets. The walls I know, that protect me from. From them. The bedside table and dresser with stuffed animals on them, acknowledged with sometimes fleeting looks and memories of the golden past. I toss myself into the heap on my bed, waiting for everything to slow down again, for my strength. I like the illusion. It helps me to coordinate the insane plan I've had.
Mom bought home groceries recently, so I wouldn't be left to choose 'black eyed peas" or 'cream of mushroom'. I gathered all the things that would comfort me: the soda, individual chocolates and chips. A whole box and a whole bag, I wouldn't nearly finish. I take a seat at my desk and grudgingly open the laptop. I type full-time jobs, where I live. Then I enter a job site, scrolling down the listed jobs, and clicking on ones where I'd have to suffer the least social interactions. None of them. I wasn't qualified for the ones where people didn't have to know I existed. I stuffed a handful of chips in my mouth and the sadness and anxiety, vanished. Voila.
Round two, I'm scrolling and reading the descriptions of jobs, and telling myself 'to just get on with it. Choose anything.' My head throbs – the guy in my head is having a tantrum. All my muscles are wound up.
I spiral from the computer and have brought the bag of chips along, staring at the wall and stuffing another handful in my mouth.
I think about, if I'm ever able to get and hold a job how it will feel to give my mom the money back, the wasted green, how she'll go to a masseuse, and a spa and get those big, black hot rocks on her back. I'll be able to take care of myself, and she won't have to, ten years too late. I won't allow her to. I'll give her money for the rest of my life.
