God my skin is flawless, thank you.
She thought, applying the last of her roommates lotion to her face. The self compliment was directed to God who just recently started paying her attention again. She didn’t feel guilty for this moment of self-absorbtion though. It seemed like recently all her thoughts did was find ways to destroy her self esteem. Fuck that, she thought, stirring the sea salt and warm water mixture needed to clean her new nipple ring. She had just got it pierced over Thanksgiving Break with her two besties and one ex-bestie. (Another story, perhaps, but hopefully not, to be continued later).
X sat and faced her computer. Tonight was the night she would pick back up the novel of her life. She had started this method of journaling in 8th grade. At the time, it was something her and her best friend did to delve into each other’s lives and tell each other how they really felt about each other without having to start a fight or share that incredibly intimate moment of looking at someone and telling them something honest about themselves. She wished she had a cigarette. Not because she smoked, but because she liked to be dramatic.
Before bed she grabbed a pair of granny panties, most likely a stocking stuffer from her mother from a past christmas, and a big sweat shirt to sleep in. Heh…she smirked seeing the one she had chosen. She looked at it and wondered what he was doing right now, aside from not texting her back. He was her boyfriend. A rap star somewhere on the lower east coast of the country plotting his next big tour at this moment. She looked around her room, her pink and white stripes she had painted diligently on the wall herself, her pink teddy bear she slept with religiously, the pile of half read books on her book shelf, and thought I wonder if this is how people picture rap star girlfriends living.
The day had been unfortunately expected. Her alarm went of at 8:45AM. For the past two nights she had overcome her inability to fall asleep until the wee hours of the morning and actually had gotten a decent nights sleep. However, on this particular morning, as with the morning before it, she simply hit snooze and got back in bed. In fact, she had laid there thinking I’m really not tired…I should just get up but had conversely chosen to stay exactly in the warm, incredibly comfortable and seductive bed she was in. She slept through her 10AM, considered getting up for her 11 but turned back to sleep and was determined to then go to her 2:00 but stayed put for that as well. Finally, 3 o’clock PM showed on her clock and she decided enough was enough…she would start her day.
Luckily she hadn’t missed anything incredible. Campus life pushed forward the way it always did, feeling like you were missing out on a bunch of nothings going on. Today, however, she had business to handle. Drop one minor and pick up another. X was a creature prone to changing her mind or even never settling on a thought at all. The idea of decisiveness was too confining. She had thought she wanted to minor in cognitive neuroscience, an interest to her since she was 8…oddly enough. And had over Thanksgiving break decided to not only minor in theater instead, but also to dye her hair back to blonde. The way, she thought, God had intended it.
“I hope you don’t mind me putting you out here like this,” X said to God as she typed. God had a way of appearing in writings as some other earthly being, divine and threatening. X knew better than that however, God was pretty chill. She knew what was up and never made her feel too guilty about anything in particular. She was hard enough on herself, she knew, to have the Almighty giving her shit as well.
After a blah, half assed attempt at starting a daunting fifteen page paper at the tech center, X returned home to her house in the bum-hole of North Phily where she lived with seven other beauts. They had all started the year in a direction that she forecasted would leave them all incredibly close by the end of the year, but life and responsibility pried its way in between them all, putting them on different schedules and giving everyone the priority of handling their own shit above being a communal roomie.
X seemed to be the only one who wanted to suck something more from life. Her friends talked about careers and families like it was the end all be all. Like finally, once you paid your mortgage on a home and had a three figure salary you would meet your maker and be given angel wings. X had this insatiable desire to live a life that would be fascinating and beautiful in slow motion. Filing taxing…not beautiful in slow motion.
Her day to day was becoming more mundane than she could handle. She needed something, a license for one so she could just get up and go whenever the hell she wanted. Secondly, a fake id, which her 21 year old sister was making seem like pulling teeth to get her. She also needed way more clothes and to get her hair back to its natural color so she could feel like herself again. Although that had also been the reason she dyed in the first place…not feeling like herself.
As I said before, X’s decisions were fleeting. She would in a moment want something with her whole being, then the next day decide it just wasn’t right for her. A couple of her guy friends were going to a concert tomorrow. She had no idea who the artist was but was invited none the less. None of her girlie pals could go so she had been debating what the best call would be. She also had a fifteen page paper due and was spending the weekend in New York with the roommates, Friday night seeing her boyfriend rock a sold out show in Times Square, Saturday hopefully getting too drunk to care what counter she was dancing on.
Concert…paper…concert…paper. Decisions of a 20-year old college girl.