some stuff i wrote when the weather changed
This last Christmas was 70 degrees. It was nice out. That’s what everyone said, “nice”. There was no ice, not even a whisper of frost against the leaves, still green in the trees. There was talk of snow, of maybe a freak storm coming through and making things cold again. That didn’t happen, and we were all left to watch White Christmas and dream right along with them. It stayed warm after. The afternoons become balmy, and the mornings are tolerable with just a hoodie. New Year's Eve was spent in the basement of Elliot's house, watching a new show and trying to think of anything better to talk about than the weather. We talked and talked about a multitude of other things, and it was easy because he is my best friend, but the weather was still on my mind as we took a late night walk, the air just chilly enough for me to shrug on a cardigan. A couple days after New Years, I broke up with my boyfriend, who I had been with for a year and some change. I felt cold, but the weather didn’t change. It was warm enough for me to sit in the backyard and cry, feeling lonely and hurt. I busied myself with activities, and tried not to glance at trees which, now that their leaves had fallen, were suddenly budding again. It had never gotten cold enough for them to die, which felt unnatural. The president bombed Venezuela, and took captive their president. The president posted pictures of a situation room, one where the tv had pictures of social media instead of anything you would hope would be at the forefront of a brutal killing of citizens, a coup. Along with bombing and kidnapping, the military bombed Chavez’s grave. You can’t let a communist rest, they might come back up. There is a man in the booth next to me eating chips with a wide open mouth. It is 75 today. I love this man in the booth next to me. We have many things in common. I just ate chips about thirty minutes ago, and I’m sure it was obnoxious. We both are in Kansas at the moment, and not just that, we are both at the public library. I can hear him rubbing his hands on his pants and chewing his chips, and I think about how he can hear me typing, and how we both know that it is 75 today. He talks to himself periodically, about something he's scared about. He mentions his wife, or lack thereof, and he mumbles about people screaming in his ear. I am scared that I will not reach 25. I am scared that this regime will never die, never rot into the ground. I’m scared when I go to school for film they will ask me what exactly I want to do with my degree, and in a feeble attempt to sound sure I’ll say something about making the world a better place, and everyone will know what I’m thinking. I’m scared college will pass by, and I will never be intimate again, and I will have to go on dating apps and put myself out into the digital world. I’m scared that one day I will wake up, and realize I haven’t seen snow in Kansas for years, and I will remember that the world doesn't work like that anymore. I keep having nightmares about an asteroid hitting earth. Everyone can see it in the sky in the months leading up to the impact, and everyone simply calms themselves and goes about their days. It makes me panic and feel alone. The idea of death is distressing, the fact that I will be here until I will not, and the idea that there is not an absolute about when I will cease to be here. All very surface level worries I guess, but they feel important for me right now.