#journaling session

I used to wear a fake engagement ring to work until my boss told me to stop.

“Stop,” he said with his eyes open wide like a hug.

“Why?” I asked because I am always asking things. Questions are my favorite. If a conversation is a meal— questions are the dessert. I wonder what that makes answers? The cherry on top? I hate clichés.

“Because you’ll make more money without it.”

“That’s not true. Men like a challenge.”

“Not that kind of challenge.”

We were in a strip club and I was pretty sure I knew what men liked. “It’s a good conversation starter,” I said, holding my hand out in front of me the way you see women do in diamond commercials. And it was so ironic because there I was wearing a fake engagement ring when I’d decided I would probably never get married. I remember one time a guy I dated tried to give me a promise ring and I refused to take it. “Promise? What’s a promise? A word? You can’t give me a promise. A promise isn’t a thing and there’s no way to guarantee it so why make a promise? You can’t even promise to love me tomorrow.” My brother always says there are only two guarantees in this world; death and taxes. And as far as I’m concerned a silly ring isn’t either one of them.

“It isn’t a good conversation starter because they don’t even want to talk to you if they see you have that thing on. You’re all supposed to be single and wild and outgoing. It’s better for business that way.”

I thought about how many men had told me, “I’d treat you better.” Or “I bet he don’t treat you the way you want.” Or “You’re selling yourself short.” And I continued to wear the ring because I thought it was fascinating.

“Why do you think that?” I’d ask these men who right now all look the same.

“I can tell.”

I can tell. What a funny thing to say to someone you don’t know. What an untrue thing. And the best part was they believed it.

“You couldn’t even handle me for a week,” I’d sneer. And that’d be true. That’d be honest. They couldn’t.

Sometimes they’d ask if I was happy and I’d always say yes. I was thrilled. I was ecstatic. Everything was perfect. Sometimes I’d pretend to be sad because certain men liked that in a woman, ya know? A sad, lonely woman filled with more regrets than she is organs. I could play the part. I could play whatever part any strange man who came through those doors wanted. I became so good at pretending. So, so good.

And then one day a man sat down and asked me about love and romance and things that last forever or are supposed to last forever and he asked me about soul mates and ‘meant to be’ and love at first sight and we talked and I thought about you and the things you noticed about me but then I thought about you and the things you don’t notice about me like how I like my coffee with two small spoonfuls of sugar and a three second pour of vanilla creamer or how my toes are double jointed and if you touch my left shoulder bone with the tip of your fingers they curl in an unnatural way or how sometimes I reread a good sentence a million times just to give myself the type of goose bumps a blind person could read or how I have a huge bag and within that huge bag I have other little bags because I hate losing things but I always always do lose things but I’m trying so hard to keep everything together. Do you notice how hard I try to keep everything together?