Carly Simon — Coming Around Again
I wonder how many other people this song has saved.
I’ll admit I listened to this all day.
I like how rainy it is today. Our support team is in town and the office is so full of men I almost screamed on multiple occasions. I can never wake up on time and waking up late sets the daily tone to incompetence so painfully early. Lately when people ask me how I am, instead of saying, “Great!” I wonder what they think I’ll say and what I should say and then everything swirls in front of me and my eyes cross and I realize that I don’t know how I actually am. I shrug and change the subject, waving myself out of the conversation.
I sat with a bowl of Cheerios in front of my computer this morning and read this before I’d even had my coffee. That’s how I am, but that’s not really acceptable in polite conversation.
Summer’s over, I guess. We missed it but we made it out alive. Every summer I think, Next summer. Next summer I will participate in Summer, without knowing what that means. I’ll ride a bike. These people with their fucking bikes. I would complain for no reason but there is no one left to complain to; everyone I know is telling me about their life-changing bike rides. Next summer I’ll what? Sit in the park every day after work or something. Grow tomatoes off of my goddamn windowsill if tomatoes are even a summer fruit I have no fucking idea.
What is the worst possible thing that could happen, we asked each other over drinks, the night before we mailed out the books, full of anxieties and unknowns. I said that the worst thing to me would be if someone typed out my story onto the Internet and critiqued it sentence by sentence, but i supposed even that could not take away the fact that it was written and made, a feat in itself.
And now I think one of the harder things is that it’s still all I can think about, but the word “book,” after awhile, feels like the name of a boy your friends think you should forget. Every time you say it you feel guilty and obsessive and like they want to never have brunch with you again. Then you think Fine, I will eat cheerios by myself and just refresh this tag page, and be sick and go blind.
This morning on the train I negotiated with myself, little pacts that are unnecessary and mean nothing, but helped me sort things out. If writing more and writing books meant not falling in love ever, for 5 years, would you do it? Yes. 10 years? Yes. Forever? Um, shut up. This isn’t even a real thing.
