Appalachia Year

My mom was the nurse at my high school, and I used to occasionally grab lunch with her at school when I was home on breaks. Walking those familiar cinderblock halls, smelling that unchanging cafeteria smell, I felt I was treading on verboten soil. Surely, narcissistically, I thought, everyone there could sense that I didn't belong. As I got older and the recognizable faces in that building dwindled, it became less uncomfortable, but I still avoided eye contact with the more forgettable teachers.

I usually find comfort in clear divisions to guide me through transitional periods. You don't sleep with your exes, you don't move back in with your parents, you work one job at a time, lest your delicate liminality get all muddled and confounded.

Today, I drove through the drizzly, suffocating gray to the restaurant where I worked for two years to get my shitty job back. It didn't feel like I was throwing everything in reverse.

It's nice to have guidelines for things, but I'm being a little too linear about my life. Like when you give a child specific rules to follow because you can't just say, "do the right thing". Sometimes it's not about evolving personally. Sometimes you are just in Columbus and broke.

I filled up for less than $20 today. That hasn't happened since I was smelling those cafeteria smells as a legitimate high school student.