Stardate: 5.20.09

I thought this was supposed to be summer already. The only thing colder than the temperature is the wind that carries it. I hugged my jacket closer as I adjusted in my seat. Their voices were a muffled murmur coming through the cracks in the sliding glass door. The back porch was a safe house from their forced laughter and conversation. I had been in a state of melancholy all day and was trying to get my bearings on just why I had been thrown into such a funk. I retraced the day’s events the way you would stop to think while looking for lost keys.

I thought about the dreaded afternoon, sitting at the DMV for hours, watching them skip over B159 time and time again. If anyone tells you that the DMV has become less painful and more proficient, then they never had ticket B159, the scarlet letter of motor vehicle wait tickets. They may as well have handed me a piece of paper saying 666 on it, although I might have just misconstrued that as their address. Despite the two and a half hour wait time and the hundred and twenty dollars I spent in fees it really wasn’t anything too out of the ordinary for me. Seeing as I spend most of my days sitting around for hours waiting for a ten minute meeting. I guess being a lobbyist is sort of like being at the DMV all day. Sitting on the hill all day you do two things, make numerous phone calls (in which you sit on hold most of the call) and wait in offices, trying to look professional as you sift through their reading materials.

This is exactly what I did at the DMV. Made phone calls and let my mind wander as I pretended to read the paper. So what was it that threw me for such a loop today? The other day I had been running around the house looking for my phone when I heard it ring, I looked down in my hand to find it had been there the entire time. Here it is again on the back porch, in my hand, glowing the time and low battery sign. I scanned through my list of missed and received calls and there she was. The nickname I had given years ago spelled out in rigid font placed next to date, time and green upwards arrow.

I’ll never be certain what’s more frustrating, losing something or finding it in the most obvious place. This time it wasn’t a set of keys or a phone, this time it was a spark, one that had been the cause for my days descent into unrest. She had called to say “hello”, but hellos always seem to last so much longer than five simple characters strung together, as do their more complicated and drawn out bedmate, goodbye.

I am well acquainted with them both. And while her hello took root and began to grow I made no protest to the seed that had been planted. We moved passed pleasantries and started off right where the last goodbye had left us. I forgot how easy our connection was, so incredibly effortless. Isn’t that the kind of thing people look for all their lives? These calls are like a drug to me, such a small taste for such a painful withdrawal. I lay awake most nights with thought, and I stumble around through the day with the aftermath.

It’s odd to me that it took so long to come to this conclusion. I suppose a decrease in mental acuity is a byproduct of insomnia. It’s no matter, I knew now the root cause for today’s symptoms. I missed her. Not more than twenty feet from me, separated by an inch of glass, were my friends all huddled close to their others. My need for seclusion was now understood.

I went to a restaurant yesterday and sat down alone, I was hungry, I knew that. I went over the menu again and again, seeing nothing that I wanted. So when the waiter went into the kitchen I grabbed my coat and ran for the door. I fell asleep last night hungry. Tonight will be no different.