This piece is about being in limbo. It’s a reflection on being in between a young person and an adult. It’s about questioning my own femininity and what it means to be a woman. It’s an observation of myself. It’s a stream-of-consciousness about nothing.
It always takes me a while to leave the house. I like to be relaxed when I rush; to linger in the day’s first thoughts of nothingness; to sit motionless in my most adult-looking chair, eyes fixated on my sleeping cat’s rapid, subconscious ear movements. I wallow in the shiny newness of each morning.
My horoscope dictates that I have a tendency to overindulge. It warns me about gaining weight from gluttony. It assures me that I am stubborn, almost insists that I am lazy. I once looked to my aura for some better, alternative perspective. It was a baritone blue that oozed into a fringe of black. It silently screamed: You are plagued by ambivalence. What gives?
I’m twenty-seven and desperately trying to know myself. But how to know oneself? How to love oneself? I’d crawl down every pulpy cavern of my brain to find out. But I’m always too tired.
On the street I passed a man discussing vegan lasagna with his companion. As he passed I could not help but mutter the words: “Vegan lasagna! Vegan lasagna!”
I mocked a strange man for his vegan lasagna. I wonder if I will always be this cynical.
It occurs to me that I do not possess the “womanly” qualities that my seventeen-year-old self fancied I would. I still am bad at laundry. I still cannot walk in heels. And I still can pass for seventeen if I wear my hair a certain way.
I’m the type of person who will leave a near-empty bottle of Diet Coke in the fridge, not because I’m convinced that I will savor that last drop of flat, caramel-colored liquid, but because, hey, I’ll just throw it out next time. I leave glossy catalogs and oversized envelopes to amass in my narrow, cramped mailbox. I let my plants die.
But my mother is a myth wrapped in an exquisite layer of flesh. She exudes femininity with celestial ease. At the beach, she drapes her skin in linen. She has a greaseless stovetop and dons red lipstick to the grocery store and she always smells sweet. The scent of my perfume never lasts past three o’clock. My lips are always chapped. I often feel unsexy.
Will I ever be like my mother? Will I be a mother? Will I get cancer? Am I going crazy?
I’ll find out, I’m told, when Saturn returns.