“The happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things.”

Ernest Dimnet

The opportunity of a lifetime fell into my lap, and I did not take it. When I received the email from a former professor inviting me to apply to graduate school, to teach and get my Master’s and leave behind the pile of sticks and weeds I’ve cobbled together as my own in this city I do not belong to, I stood in the lobby of my job and let tears rush down my cheeks. My heart was racing, I could feel sweat slicking my palms. I hid my screen close to my body as if I’d had winning lottery ticket numbers on my phone that someone would steal if they caught a glance.

I created this gorgeous image in my head. The job I had spent two years of my life getting better at because I had nothing else to do had been sucking the beauty out of everything. I did not care about the brattish clients, or the training modules I was meant to prepare, or the sickeningly polite conversation everyone wanted to make with me. I got good because I got bored. This email, sitting in my inbox unanswered, felt like fruit in my mouth. It was summer and bright, bursting peaches dripping down my chin while I laughed; it was sun pushing against the limits of my skin, soaking into my shirt and kissing my shoulders. I could not feel the hospital white lights of the office anymore. Who could I be, back in that school? My old mentors and professors and library seats and essays and books piled high against my dresser. I could feel life waking up in me before I even set up the meeting to discuss the program.

It was June, and I needed to apply before the end of the month. I thought about all of the ways in which I was not good enough to have it, namely that I have no transportation or license in which to get it. That was really the singular thought that revolved around my head, kicking that summer feeling into a pulp. The closer the deadline got, the bigger the sinking pit grew in my stomach with the knowledge that I could not go. There was a stipend, but it was not nearly enough, and I would need to find a new job and a new apartment and take my driver’s test and buy a car and I have one month and I can’t make it. I let that fear well up in my throat and stomp out the excitement I had not felt for I do not know how long, and I did not apply and I could not feel more disgusted.

A friend I met in college came to visit. She told me about this program an old professor had contacted her about, and how excited she was to apply, and I could see my summer and ripe fruit and laughter in everything she said. Hers now, I guess. I watched her apply and get accepted and move back to that town and she has been there for a week now. Everything in me wants to feel good for her, but all I can muster is how bitter I feel that it is not me. If I had help, if I had someone to guide me, to work with me, maybe I could have done it. So, really, this must circle back to how utterly alone I feel all of the time.

I do have people. I have people who care and who are sweet and who are my dearest friends. But I am not looking for a friend – I am looking for a protector, an ambassador, someone who can give me something. I do not want to have to fend for it all. I feel an exhaustion so deep inside of myself that digging its roots out now would be impossible. So I am grossly jealous of the friend who has parents to help her, and a professor to write her a recommendation, and her own car and life and future. I just want it. A child reaching for someone else’s toy.

So now I am in a new apartment; cheaper, dirtier, in the hopes of saving some more money for that first fucking car that feels miles from me still. I have been promoted and I do not care. I will apply next year because I am determined to have it all sorted. I do not have another choice – to stay where I am now is death. But until then, I will have to wallow in my mediocrity and think of what could have been mine had I felt able to take it.

I have been gone for a while. It is simply because nothing that matters happens these days. I am mundane, here.

Until later,

G.D.