A little off

Sometimes my skin doesn't fit on my body

It’s 5:54 on a Monday.

I’m getting the sense, however slight, that everything is a little off. I walked through the kitchen and the digital clock flashing a red 5:56 in my direction doesn’t match what I’m seeing now. Maybe my laptop’s a little behind. Or the stove is. Probably the stove. And the chair I’m sitting in, which I found on the corner of 8^th and 9^th, is a little too tall for the desk I’m typing at, so my legs are squished up against the mahogany, and I can’t pull the drawer out. The slice of lemon I so luxuriously added to my water today is a little too thick, so instead of a hint of citrus I seem to have made a sad attempt at sugar-free lemonade, complete with two little fleshy seeds suspended in the middle of the glass, floating around like disembodied teardrops. I’m trying to fill out some forms, some applications, (is this what the rest of my life is going to look like), but I can’t find my license, and I know when I do I’ll be reminded that my hair was a little too frizzy that day, or a lot, like it always was when I was seventeen. The “amber” lightbulbs I ordered from Amazon are a little too cold for my taste, but these are my fourth attempt at getting it right, and the top drawer of my nightstand has become an LED graveyard; it’s too bright with two on but too dark with one off. In the living room there’s another lamp, that one’s balanced atop two art books next to the TV, but the shade is a little too big or a little too close to the screen, so the person watching from the kitchen table’s view is a little obstructed (hopefully tickets were discounted). Three girls live here but the couch only seats two. The socks my mom gave me for Christmas are a little too thick to wear with my boots, but it’s much too cold to go sockless and I’m much too broke to buy new boots, plus I said I’d try knitting and now have a reason to.

Someone said the way I write sounds a little like Sally Rooney which was both a lot flattering and a little worrisome, because am I just inspired, or do I accidentally regurgitate sentences of her prose word for word from somewhere in the depths of my severely reverential subconscious?

And I was a little hurt by your text, or perhaps a little thrown off and a lot hurt, but still I shouldn’t have responded immediately and without reflection and in that tone, everyone knows you must wait before answering something like that, or maybe it was better I replied right away; it implies I didn’t need counselling or conferencing before hitting send and have no interest wasting time ruminating over something as trivial as a two-word typed response (please just don’t count up all the words I’ve written here on the subject).

I let my pasta cook for a little too long. I got distracted trying to pick a movie to accompany my meal before giving up and deciding to “eat with just my thoughts” like I read in a NYT article, which I had to cancel my subscription to because the price went up a little too much this last time, and now the pasta’s mushy and sticking to the pot and getting cold anyway. My shampoo smells a little too much like a boy’s car I used to hang out in in high school, tight shirts peeled off my body before bed and reeking of cucumber musk and marijuana, thrown onto a pile of dirty jeans I’d re-wear for weeks at a time after someone at school said “you never have to wash denim”.

I reread the email I sent my boss and decided I was, after all, a little too unprofessional. The roommate who’d suggested I was overthinking it was wrong; if I’d just overthought a few minutes longer I wouldn’t be probably (definitely) losing my job tomorrow, (thanks Kate), and when I look in the mirror my wrinkles are a little too prominent for my age and my concealer a little too pale to still be wearing it at this time of year, but the solution to the latter exacerbates the former, and I can’t win, in my body or in my life. I’m honestly fine with the way I look these days, or at least that’s how I feel, because I haven’t been thinking about my appearance - I spend too much time agonizing over what to do with my time and my future and career and plans and death to possibly have room in my brain for something as trifling as my eyebrow shape. That’s a good thing, in a way? Thank you to teenage me for passing the insecurity baton sometime at my college graduation ceremony, onto bigger and better things I guess, how generous.

I’d like to post this little piece right now; I just wrote the whole thing and read it through, and I feel good about it. But I know when I come back tomorrow, I’ll hate certain phrases and conjure better synonyms, round off the end more fully, add periods where sentences make me breathless. I’m a little too eager and a little too impatient to be a writer, probably. I’ll give it a day. Someone will read it and hopefully enjoy it, and I’ll be encouraged to write a little more often and a little more publicly and become a little better every time.