Still Waiting.

Four years ago today I journaled on this day because the day before had been too traumatic for me to think of jotting down even a single a trivial thought. I'm writing again on this day because that held true for yesterday as well. I think of him all the time, but when that specific day comes my mind races with what could have been if only I'd called him or been with him, or perhaps if I'd more strongly voiced my discontent when he told me of his plans to purchase the motorcycle. Yesterday I used work as a distraction, yet played our favorite songs over and over in my car until my eyes stung with yearning. We loved Bone Thugs and one another.

Four years. Who would have thought I'd be waiting this long. Four years ago I was a different person. A person I couldn't imagine being again. I can't help but fantasize of the person I'd be today if he were still "around". I imagine "lonely" would not be in my vocabulary. It is a sad yet honest realization, but surely his constant presence would be taken for granted as losing him would never cross my mind. I'd not have this desperate desire to hear his voice say my name because I would never have known the insurmountable pain surrounding the inability to do so. As for the others in my life, each day that I see them face-to-face further solidifies a most irrational sense of invinsibility and an untouchableness that I've somehow attached to them in a pitiful attempt at shielding what is left of my heart from the idea that I might one day grieve in their absences as well.

As much as I've heard the chliches; "You never miss your water til your well runs dry," or "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone,"; as much as I've been told to live each day as if it were my last, as much as I've learned of the fragility and brevity of life, I still don't think that in a hundred years I could have loved or appreciated him enough to make his not being here any less painful.

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Simply tofu. Simply.

Today I lapped the supermarket too many times looking for tofu. I wasn't thankful for the exercise because I had just gotten off work and the blisters forming on the tips of each of my big toes were sending signals to my face to appear sour. The third associate I asked for direction probably picked up on my attitude and there were no obligatory smiles exchanged. I didn't even look thankful, let alone say thank you. I was an angry lady.

All day I'd been tip-toeing around my notoriously unpredictable mood swings like a mother afraid of waking her demon child. My rage roused from its slumber but was craftily quelled by a chocolate soy pudding cup eaten in the car on the way home without a spoon. Memories of fourth grade cafeteria food and after-school snacks swirled around my tongue as I drove across town in a vehicle reminiscent of an adulthood I was forced into by time coupled with my mother's constant insisting I get a job with good benefits. The beast within drifted off again like a half-sleeping, whimpering infant grasping and suckling an invisible breast in his dream.

At my front door I juggled my groceries and keys and chuckled at the simplicity of the situation that frazzled my nerves past rationality and the simplicity with which they were calmed again.

I love soy pudding cups and tofu just the same.