Every morning now I wake up at five or five-thirty, untangle myself from an embrace that makes me feel feverish but safe, and hop in the shower. Sometimes I wash my hair and then comb it out with a wide-tooth comb, squishing up the ends so it will twist up and curl like Lochlan's, though it is almost too long for that now. Sometimes I pretend I am bald and fail to address it at all. Then I hop into a vat of cocoa butter because you've never met someone with skin as dry and hideously sensitive as me. I've swapped out to cocoa butter for my tattoos as well which is part of my own personal aftercare routine a week after the latest round. It just works better for me, might not for you.
Then I come downstairs, make coffee (currently swapping between Tully's and a no-name grocery store brand Mexican dark roast that I really freaking like) and read some stuff, mostly things like CORONA VIRUS WILL KILL US ALL, TRUMP SOMETHING SOMETHING IDIOT and HOW TO MAKE NONFATSMALLBATCHORGANICNONDAIRYYOGURTINYOURINSTANTPOT.
Yes, those are all real headlines on my black mirror today and I'm sorry I looked, frankly.
Instead, I peruse the new Vesey's seed catalogues, the latest of which they've sent me is one all about bulbs, and I wonder if I should plant some or if I should maintain the illusion that I am helpless and unable to be that pulled together.
Oh, but I am pulled together. Look at my nails. I tap them against the side of my coffee mug. So pretty. I'm so pulled-together I orchestrated a fun day out with my sugar daddy footing the bill so I would be pretty and fed and that's something, isn't it? It's how I was taught.
(That isn't how it went at all though. Caleb touched my hand, compared it to 80-grit sandpaper and looked at my short ragged nails and eight-year-old's hands and suggested I doll up for Valentine's Day and maybe we should get some lunch, as my stomach growled right then, blocking out his words briefly. I hedged my bets that this was his Valentine date so I agreed.)
(Apparently it was not.)
Caleb and Lochlan went another round last evening concerning their age-old war between the finer things in life and the plebian things in life. Caleb would like to fly us to multi-Michelin-starred restaurants for dinners, Lochlan's idea of a balanced meal is a corn dog AND a candy apple, though I never ever had room for both. And sometimes if we were very hungry, completely poor and he was feeling extra guilty, Lochlan would eat the candy layer off the apple and give me the rest, something we both hated but he didn't want me to die from a lack of fruit and vegetables but also couldn't afford to feed us both without stealing but he could jack up his blood sugar until we could get a meal so it was good enough.
Good enough became a battle cry for us, something that has built character and kept us ridiculously grounded all the while it's been a level Caleb will not stoop to, no matter what. He is rigid and resistant and jealous beyond reason.
Lochlan on the other hand is also jealous but simultaneously angry at me for feeding the beast, as it were, and also for having 'stupid looking nails' (ouch) and even for wasting an Olive Garden trip on Caleb when Lochlan would have liked to go and I will only go once every ten years or so because it's awful, honestly.
But the breadsticks-
The ones from Little Caesars are the same thing only not as salty, thank God.
They're smaller though.
Boy, Lochlan gets hangry now. He's probably making up for years of forcing his metabolism to run at the pace of newly-poured concrete so I wouldn't be hungry.
Want me to make you some non-dairy yogurt?
What?
Nothing.
You taught me this, Locket. All of it.
You weren't supposed to bring any of them home, you were just to take what you needed.
This is different.
Then I come downstairs, make coffee (currently swapping between Tully's and a no-name grocery store brand Mexican dark roast that I really freaking like) and read some stuff, mostly things like CORONA VIRUS WILL KILL US ALL, TRUMP SOMETHING SOMETHING IDIOT and HOW TO MAKE NONFATSMALLBATCHORGANICNONDAIRYYOGURTINYOURINSTANTPOT.
Yes, those are all real headlines on my black mirror today and I'm sorry I looked, frankly.
Instead, I peruse the new Vesey's seed catalogues, the latest of which they've sent me is one all about bulbs, and I wonder if I should plant some or if I should maintain the illusion that I am helpless and unable to be that pulled together.
Oh, but I am pulled together. Look at my nails. I tap them against the side of my coffee mug. So pretty. I'm so pulled-together I orchestrated a fun day out with my sugar daddy footing the bill so I would be pretty and fed and that's something, isn't it? It's how I was taught.
(That isn't how it went at all though. Caleb touched my hand, compared it to 80-grit sandpaper and looked at my short ragged nails and eight-year-old's hands and suggested I doll up for Valentine's Day and maybe we should get some lunch, as my stomach growled right then, blocking out his words briefly. I hedged my bets that this was his Valentine date so I agreed.)
(Apparently it was not.)
Caleb and Lochlan went another round last evening concerning their age-old war between the finer things in life and the plebian things in life. Caleb would like to fly us to multi-Michelin-starred restaurants for dinners, Lochlan's idea of a balanced meal is a corn dog AND a candy apple, though I never ever had room for both. And sometimes if we were very hungry, completely poor and he was feeling extra guilty, Lochlan would eat the candy layer off the apple and give me the rest, something we both hated but he didn't want me to die from a lack of fruit and vegetables but also couldn't afford to feed us both without stealing but he could jack up his blood sugar until we could get a meal so it was good enough.
Good enough became a battle cry for us, something that has built character and kept us ridiculously grounded all the while it's been a level Caleb will not stoop to, no matter what. He is rigid and resistant and jealous beyond reason.
Lochlan on the other hand is also jealous but simultaneously angry at me for feeding the beast, as it were, and also for having 'stupid looking nails' (ouch) and even for wasting an Olive Garden trip on Caleb when Lochlan would have liked to go and I will only go once every ten years or so because it's awful, honestly.
But the breadsticks-
The ones from Little Caesars are the same thing only not as salty, thank God.
They're smaller though.
Boy, Lochlan gets hangry now. He's probably making up for years of forcing his metabolism to run at the pace of newly-poured concrete so I wouldn't be hungry.
Want me to make you some non-dairy yogurt?
What?
Nothing.
You taught me this, Locket. All of it.
You weren't supposed to bring any of them home, you were just to take what you needed.
This is different.