Talking to Myself

Don’t listen to Ryan Adams songs because he always makes you sad.  Don’t drink so much that you miss things you know better than to miss.  Don’t be jealous of people who aren’t homesick.  Why are you homesick?  Don’t cry.  God, please just cry—maybe it would make you feel better.  Why can’t you cry anymore?  Are you happy?  Aren’t you happy?  What does happy enough mean?  Is it good enough?  You aren’t good enough, just look at your mindless job.  Look at how easily people leave you.  Stop reliving all the ways you’ve been left.  Be careful going down the path of good enough.  Don’t drink so much that you almost ask him if it was because she’s thinner than you.  And don’t ever think it would be a good idea to write a list of questions that are so awful that you can’t even bare to ask them aloud.  Eat something, if you’re going to drink like that. it will help you to not get so drunk that you confuse bad ideas for good ones.  Eat something even though someone told you you’re prettier now that you’ve lost weight.  Accept that this is real--every smile, every word, every inch of the body on the bed next to yours, every day.  Accept that this doesn’t haven’t to be it---your job, the way you have trouble convincing yourself to get out bed, to get through it.  Cry, god damn it.  It would feel better.  And write about the way you crushed those berries in the cocktail glasses and how it made you think of the scene in The Year of Magical Thinking that first gave you an idea of what you wanted out of love.  Stop trying to imagine their sex.  You never liked fiction writing.  Let it be a fiction that you don’t write into your story.  And if you can’t stop trying to imagine it, don’t drink.   Look at your life.  Look at that memory snapshot you took while dancing in that bar near Astor Place.  Look how god damn lucky you are, all things considered.  Stop worrying about what it means if the truth is that you’ve never been happier.