#deipnophobia

The only problem with this is that sad folk songs make me crave fall, and while this post-Labor-Day-school-is-starting world is in theory a kind of fall, the heat has come back with a vengeance and I'm hiding in the air-conditioning wearing my summer uniform of tank top and boxer shorts. I just want to wear tights and sweaters. Is that so much to ask? The heat makes me cranky and lethargic and encourages the migraine fingers to make their evil way from my stiff shoulders and neck to my aching skull and temples. I could go downstairs and take some ibuprofen, drink some water, and hope that I will be miraculously cured, but I don't want to move from my island of a bed. For one thing, I'm so surrounded by my belongings that I'm not actually sure how to get out at this point.

I won't get any more done tonight anyway, since my mother will be home soon to pick me up and then we will run errands (bread, library, etc) and meet my father and sister for farewell Mexican food downtown. I'm already daydreaming about burritos and quesadillas, focusing on the simple choices in life rather than the fact that I have to decide what books and sweaters and posters I want to have with me for the next year. I am frustrated by my belongings, feeling trapped in the aesthetic of eighteen year old me, who thought a purple paisley comforter was going to be a great choice for all four years of college. Eighteen year old me thought in bright colors and twenty one year old me thinks in faded neutrals. Why is my laptop case orange? Why do I only own turquoise pillowcases? But this is life, and I am way too goddamn cheap to replace them now. It's one more year, I can certainly cope with some color choices that now seem overly bright and strangely naive.

This is the kind of pointless shit that is cluttering my brain, making me headachy and exhausted. Not to mention, of course, that I got up at 7:20 this morning for the last day of my summer nannying job. Three hours with a two year old is actually usually my idea of a good time, but today I was running on not even close to enough sleep and Finn was cranky and argumentative and the time seemed to drag. I love this kid, I truly do, and he's been a delight to spend the summer with, but today he answered every question or suggestion with "I don't like to do that" until I thought my brain was going to implode.

So while I wait for the emails to roll in, I’m attempting to fritter my time away by deciding whether to spend all my money and buy a new school bag from ModCloth and distracting myself from the colony of acne that has formed on the left side of my nose by taking instagram selfies of myself looking bored at the office. I’m so wildly useless, and yet I got such a good mid-summer progress report. The joys of being able to bullshit your way through any and all situations. I knew my English major would come in handy some day soon. This Beckettesque exercise in waiting for the little red [1] to appear next to my inbox unfortunately has not distracted me from the useless merry-go-round of thoughts that are my current lack-of-love life. My last relationship was an ultimately pointless one, with a boy who had enough attributes that made me raise my eyebrows in approval that I let myself be sucked into the myth of my forefathers: that I will, like the rest, meet my one true future spouse at a small liberal arts college in a cheerful Midwestern setting. It didn’t help that my roommate was in love at the time. Anyway. It turned out that he was not particular invested in me at all and also a little on the completely emotionally unavailable side, and broke up with me on Valentine’s Day to go deal with his internal turmoil. He is the third math major with whom I’ve been in someway involved since entering college and I have finally learned my lesson. Math majors are a surprisingly impossible group of people. I have spent much of this summer occupied with dragging myself out of the mire that is still having feelings for someone who dumped you on Valentine’s Day, and am now in the achingly lonely and restless stage that for me always immediately follows getting over someone and lifting your head to realize that everyone you know is still madly in love with their significant others. I have three roommates once school starts who all have permanent fixture boyfriends and unless I get laid in the next couple of months, I may have to either run away or shoot myself. There is a boy who I would gladly elect to keep me from the less pleasant options, but he is a) wildly not interested in me and b) the ex-boyfriend of two of my closest friends which has made him c) vow to never date within our alarmingly incestuous circle.  So that’s not remotely an option. Which leaves me whining my way through the final weeks of summer, contemplating the moral questionable possibility of sleeping with a reasonably cute friend who I turned down several months ago when he sweetly, awkwardly, drunkenly propositioned me after a middle school themed house party on the grounds that a) I was still deep in the throws of post-Valentine’s angst and b) another member of the increasingly problematic circle of friends had expressed to me that intense feelings still lingered after her sexual escapades with him the previous year. It was a situation I did not feel the need to get in the middle of, as she is a truly difficult person who would have very few qualms about passive aggressively badgering me about the situation for many years to come. The girl’s a possessive bitch, when it comes down to it. We’ll see what happens in the fall. There’s really no telling what might happen. It’s senior year, after all.