Tag: short stories

The Breakdown

Written on Sept 1, 2023

"You're just not a good writer," she told me one fine September morning. I was on my laptop and had just gotten a polite little rejection email from W. Mayberry and Sons, a publishing company in New York City, my dream city.
The email read:
Dear Ms. Barker, 

Thank you for submitting your inquiry. Unfortunately, it is not a project I would like to take on right now.

Sincerely,

Richard Mays
Mayberry and Sons 
1300 East 15th Street
New York, NY 34216

I worked so hard on that manuscript. So. fucking.hard. And now I felt defeated because now my manuscript was a piece of crap in someone's eyes. 
My inner critic sat next to me, looking over my shoulder.

"Yeah, you bombed that. You are not a good writer," she shrugged.
 
I nodded. Maybe she was right. I probably was a terrible writer and should just stop even trying to write. It didn't matter how much work I put into my writing. I was getting rejection letter after rejection letter. I looked at the clock app on my phone. 7:20 AM. I need to get in my car and get to work.

I fished for my black suit jacket, navy blue slacks and blue sleeveless top. I took my night clothes off and undressed. My inner critic watched me, unashamed to see me naked. She was probably examining every roll of cellulite on my thighs, every stretch mark on my belly, and how long my toenails had grown. Troll's feet, she calls them. 

"You really should give up on this career, Emily," she said. Her doe brown eyes burned with hatred and spite, boring through and searing my flesh. "No one cares about your writing. Just admit it."

I looked in the mirror at myself. Not only was I a bad writer who would never be successful, but I was also ugly and frumpy looking. No matter how much makeup I put on for work, no matter how much my gold hoop earrings scintillated and shimmered as I walked down the halls at work and no matter how many compliments I received for my fashion taste, I still didn't believe I was beautiful. It didn't matter if the pizza guy on 43rd Street checked me out or asked me for my own number. It didn't matter how much approval I received on my dating profile. At the end of the day, I still felt unlovable and unattractive. 

She rolled her eyes. "Ugh, you look disgusting." She went up to me. "Say it."

She was leaning over my shoulder and her hot breath, smelling of cabernet sauvignon from last night's dinner, tickled my neck. 

"I...." I hesitated.

"Look."

"Look..."

"Disgusting."

"Disgust..."

"Ing." 

"ing." 

"Now say it louder."

"I look disgusting."

"I can't hear you."

Tears were forming in my eyes. How could I be so cruel to myself? 

I wiped away a tear. She slapped me across the face, leaving a sting and a red mark across my pale skin. 

"I'm....disgusting," I said softly. 

She grabbed me by a fistful of hair, then shoved me across the room. I spun and she pummeled me, blow after blow. The wind was knocked out of me. I kept crying because her blows hurt. I was too scared to tell her to stop. 

Finally she stood up, a vicious twisted expression on her face. She snorted.

"You pathetic little shit."

My ears rang with each burning slap, each knuckle that hit me and rattled my body and mind.

"I'll say it one more time because you're too much of a coward to say it yourself. You look disgusting, Emily. You ARE disgusting. You are so disgusting that no one will want to look at you when you walk into work." 

I finally got the courage to walk away. I shook with every insult she hurled at me.

"Don't worry," I heard her say as I made my way down the stairs. I looked up. She mocked me with her sadistic grin. 

"I'll be back here until you get back, ready to talk about how much you failed at work today."

I tried to ignore her as she continued to hurl insults at my retreating back. Each insult was a knife that lodged itself in my shoulder blades and back, and I was determined not to wince under the pain as each insult sliced into me. 

"You fat ass."

"You're incompetent. No wonder people hate you so much."

"You are WORTHLESS." 

I slammed the door. 

---

I am sitting in the board meeting. It is my day to give a presentation. I really tried, I really did. But when remembering what bullet points to talk about, I draw a blank. I think I might vomit. I can't write a decent manuscript, so how can I even put together a decent presentation? Maybe she was right; I'm worthless. 

"Ms. Barker?"

I snap out of the cloud of negative self-talk that hovered over me. My coworkers and boss are all staring at me. And I suddenly feel faint. My skin gets even paler. I feel them all laughing at me. I see them now throwing tomatoes at me, jeering at me, "You are a terrible employee!" "You are bad at doing presentations!" "You should go back to waitressing instead of corporate!" 

My throat closes and I try to block out the noises, but I am overwhelmed. I feel myself getting out of my chair and hear voices of concern, not mockery, but I'm too embarrassed and ashamed of myself to even hear what people are saying. I try to swallow and gasp for air. The girl I pass by gives me a menacing glare and I continue to stumble as I run in my black patent leather heels to the restroom. When I slam the restroom stall, I crumple in a heap on the toilet seat. Who cares if it's full of microbes and germs and has had loads of dirty asses on it (my fat ass being one of them)? I gasp through tears and my body erupts into spasms as I break down, until a blood curdling scream of agony threatens to escape from my mouth.

I hear a gentle knock.

"Emily?" a soft voice whispers. 

I don't reply.

"Emily?" Another knock. 

The door swings open. Damn it. In my stupid little fit I didn't even bother locking the damn door. Proves how stupid I am.

Through the blur of my tears, I see Maria, a quiet woman from the human resources department I would always see sitting alone at lunch. She leans down and is sitting criss-crossed on the cold linoleum floor with me. My lips tremble and I cry even harder. I bury my head in my knees as I curl up in fetal position. I am literally a big fucking crybaby right now. Wait until I get home; she is going to have a field day. 

Grow up! What are you, five? You land a corporate job and you act like this?!? 

She will shake her head and laugh and say, I knew you were weak and incapable. From the minute you were born, your parents never loved you. They didn't want anything having to do with you. Raising you was what killed your mother, not breast cancer. Seriously, you---

"How are you feeling?" Maria interrupts the cascade of thoughts in my mind.

I can't reply. How do I feel? No one's asked me that, right? I mean, sure they've asked me. In the lunch line, at the office cafe, in the breakroom, when passing by my desk. But I've always responded with, "Fine" or "I'm good, how are you?" 

This time I can't even answer Maria. I close my eyes and lean against the toilet bowl. I take a shuddering breath.

I hear gentle breathing next to me. Maria has also closed her eyes. She is sitting with me in silence. I jolt when I hear that adjacent stall close. I wrinkle my nose when I smell the bathroomgoer's funky farts. Did they really have to eat tuna salad for lunch? 

But I also start giggling. And I open my eyes and cup my hand to my mouth to stop the giggles. Maria at first continues breathing quietly, but then she loses it as well. 

I hear a flush and we see our boss, Rachel, leave the stall to wash her hands. 

The water runs, then she comes over to our stall.

"What is so funny?" 

Maria and I look at each other and shake our heads. 

"It's nothing." 

Rachel looks at her watch, tugs on her red suit jacket, then walks away.

"You two missed the rest of the meeting, I'm afraid. And Ms. Barker, I will need to have a word with you about your behavior today." 

"She is fine," Maria tries to intervene. "She just had a rough moment."

"Thank you, Ms. Gonzalez, but I am afraid this is between me and Ms. Barker." 

I feel a lump in my stomach. Yep, I clearly failed. Now I am going to get fired. I don't think I can stand a year of job searching with her by my bedside, telling me I'm not good enough to get an interview.

"Anyway, ladies, please get cleaned up and get back to your desks." Rachel leaves and the door gives a hard cold slam. 

I walk over to the mirror and my eyes are bloodshot and rivers of tears and mascara are caked on my face. My red lipstick is smudged in some places. Basically I look like shit, not The Shit. 

Fuck it. The makeup was going to get messed up anyway. I run the faucet and slap myself with cold water.

I expect Maria to go back to her desk, but she just stands behind me.

"I don't want to make you late or get you in trouble," I sputter through the water.

"It's okay," she says. "I can stay."

I turn the faucet off, then snatch a wad of paper towels from the dispenser and hastily wipe off my face of makeup and tears. I check one more time. OK, eyes still look red and puffy, but no one's going to notice right? 

Maria opens the door for me.

"Thank you," I say quietly. How could this person treat me so kindly? I don't deserve their kindness.

Maria smiles, and we walk down the hall together. She doesn't ask my any personal questions. We just walk together back to our desks.

Wishy Washy Wanda and the LinkedIn Profile

6:00 am. Wanda rubs her eyes of crust and with a grumpy growl turns off her alarm clock on her smartphone, which is blaring Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” and lay in bed for a good ten minutes.

Breathe in, breathe out. She looks up at the ceiling, figuring out what she was going to do for the day. If only she didn’t make a stupid poor decision to leave her corporate job to take a mental health break. What a bullshit excuse.

One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi….

She feels the tightness leave her chest. Her shoulders relax. She picks up her phone and started scrolling.

Crap. There’s civil war in Sudan. COVID is (technically) not over. And anti-Semitism is alive and well. She continued scrolling, and had a thought. Hmmm, what is my crush and his girlfriend up to? Her heart skips a beat, and a voice in her head screams, No! Don’t check social media today! You’ll be heartbroken. They’re vacationing in fucking Bermuda, for crying out loud! Bermuda!

She doesn’t listen to her conscience, and instead logs into Facebook. She searches under his name. “Jasper Friedrich.” He pops up and his girlfriend, Vera, is kissing him on the cheek in front of a palm tree.

Wanda’s heart goes down with a thud. Her conscience tuts-tuts and shakes its head. Girl, see, I told you. But would you listen? Nooooo….

She shakily logs out, and then with a thump her head falls back onto the pillow. Maybe it’s not a great time to do stuff today. It’s early and clearly things aren’t working out with my life.

But she knows that chanting is going to help her stay motivated, so she resists the temptation to go back to sleep. Her body, emotionally worn down, screams, No! Life is pointless. Go back to Dreamland forever, and never wake up! But she needs to. Her hands clumsily fish for her little orange bottle of Zoloft pills. Dr. Greenberg told her to take one at the same time each day. 6:15 am it was. She trudges to the kitchen downstairs, and nearly trips and falls on old Sparky, her fluffy white little dog. Sparky gives a little yelp.

Ah, shit! Sorry. She picks up Sparky and brings him down the stairs with her as she trudges more carefully down the stairs.

She puts Sparky down, and he runs across the stained white carpet. When she was 12, Wanda’s mom held a birthday party and the adults all got tipsy, and Brenda Crawford, their next-door neighbor, accidentally spilled wine on the carpet. Brenda and her family packed up and moved to Montana for Dave’s job, but Wanda’s mom still bears a grudge. If she had her bearings, she would mail that stained rug all the way to Billings so that Brenda would never forget.

Wanda turns the tap on, careful not to wake her mom, who lies and snores on the couch so peacefully. She stayed up late completing an assignment for work, and is knocked out. Wanda shakes out one of the Zoloft pills from the bottle, and knocks it back with a gulp of water. They’re not magic pills, the Doc told her, but they work. She crosses her fingers and hopes for no more staying in bed all day, no more appetite fluctuations, and no more suicidal ideations.

She goes over to her wooden altar, which is framed by two beautiful purple vases of dying flowers. A single navel orange sits on the side as a dear gnat dances giddily around it, intoxicated by the zesty smell of the slowly maturing fruit. She opens the altar and sits back in her chair, and starts chanting the phrase Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo…

She gets in rhythm with the sound of her voice, and it vibrates throughout her body. Sparky scampers over because he loves the sound of Wanda chanting. As Wanda chants, Sparky is calmed down and lies down, looking up at her with a yearning expression, Please pet me. With gentle fingers she strokes Sparky’s silky fur and continues chanting. She finishes reciting the second and sixteenth chapters of the Lotus Sutra and closes the altar. Her mom is still sleeping. Wanda goes back upstairs. Okay, now she feels a tad better. Still heartbroken but feeling okay enough to get through the day without a panic attack.

She opens her laptop and waits as it buffers for a good ten minutes. She got this laptop five years ago, and while it held up pretty well over the years, she didn’t get a laptop cooler for it, so it’s been overheating and it’s exhausted the battery. Too bad they don’t make the kinds of batteries for her laptop anymore, so now she has to save money she doesn’t have to buy a new laptop.

When the screensaver of Homer Simpson eating a doughnut pops up, she double clicks on the Google Chrome shortcut icon on her desktop. She opens the YouTube app on her phone’s home page, and types in the search engine, “Beyonce Love on Top” and clicks on the first search result.

Tired of having erectile dysfunction? Then take Viagra Plus, the only—

She clicks the black box at the bottom, “Skip ads.” Beyonce’s soulful voice jams out, and Wanda gets to work. She types in the search engine, LinkedIn.com. She attended a webinar yesterday for career development and listened to Marissa, the person who connects all the alums together for networking and social events, talk about the value of networking on LinkedIn. The minute Marissa mentioned networking, Wanda’s heart skipped a beat, even more than when she saw Jasper and Veda smooching in Bermuda this morning.

She closes her eyes and just lets Beyonce’s greatness wash over her, and then she feels sad. If only I had a love like Jasper, then I would be complete. If Vera wasn’t in the picture, then him and I would be happy together. She knows she shouldn’t be jealous, but ever since he told her about his girlfriend, all these painful insecurities have emerged from deep within her life, and sometimes they feel too overwhelming and painful to deal with. Jasper keeps my love on top, and as she thinks this she imagines being Beyonce and singing a corny rendition of “Love on Top,” black leotard and fishnet tights. Not that she would fit in a black leotard and fishnet tights, because she is twenty pounds overweight and her flesh would hang out of the fishnet tights. Very unflattering look.

She shakes herself out of her fantasy when Beyonce finishes the song with a #flawless bang, and her eyes open. Yep, her practically nonexistent LinkedIn profile is just sitting there, collecting dust for about two months. She hasn’t posted a thing, but her rich and successful connections sure have. She panicks. She remembers in the webinar, they talked about how to have a complete LinkedIn profile, summary, job titles, everything. How can she wax poetic about her three year part-time stint in college at the Tailfin, a fish joint known for their lobster rolls and snarky staff? Or her one month gig spinning cardboard arrow signs, sweating while dressed as the Statue of Liberty in 100 degree Texas heat?

She hears a knock.

“Come in.”

Layla, her older sister, pops in.

“Mom headed to work an hour ago. I’m going to class.”

“Okay.”

She looks at my computer screen.

“What are you doing?”

I give her a blank look.

“Nothing.”

She snorts.

“Weird.”

And leaves.

I don’t care though because I have all the time in the world to work on this. My About section is short. Maybe I should put some accomplishments? But, like, how do you talk about accomplishments if you haven’t accomplished anything major? I’m not a bestselling author, I’m not even paying paid gigs, so can I even call myself any of these things?

She types a short sentence in the section.

“I am a writer and musician.”

Bam! But oh crap, according to that LinkedIn profile experts page she needs to put more, sound more like she knows what she is talking about and knows her brand. But like, what is my brand? I’m not very self-promotional.

“You need to have a brand to market yourself. Everyone knows that!” Lucy told her as they sat a week ago at Brandy’s Cafe eating shrimp scampi and mimosas for brunch. Because Lucy was working, she paid for Wanda’s meal, even though Wanda told her she wasn’t going to eat because she felt ashamed for Lucy paying for her meal.

Wanda spirals into another almost panic attack. Okay, just breathe. It’s not that deep, kid…

Her mind spirals into another self-critical cycle.

You suck. Your profile sucks. You have no value.

Wanda does a quick Google search, “How to write a linkedin summary if you quit your job.” The first result is a generic post about how to write a linkedin summary. She finds another article with examples of LinkedIn summaries that attracted employers. As she scrolls through the list, instead of making her feel encouraged, she feels less confident that she can pull off a compelling summary with her work history in retail and office administration.

She goes under the experience section. The Tailfin, January 2018- January 2022. She looks at the bullet points. Ugh, so annoying, she has written about it like it’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Really girl, it’s just a fucking resume, not your autobiography.

She looks up the profile of Maggie Bergman, who graduated as valedictorian at her alma mater and has 500 connections. Maggie’s angelic face, framed by curly brown hair, touched up for a professional photo. Maggie Bergman, Executive Director at The Metropolitan Opera.

About

Experienced executive director with five years in the opera music industry….

After reading the 2,000 word summary, Wanda panics. She’s not following the rules of the articles she read about summaries. Hers isn’t long enough, so why not make it longer? Maggie’s summary clearly attracted the likes of recruiters because she has mad connections and is so popular.

She looks up. Two hours have passed and she still hasn’t written a word. So she panics and looks up another article. One of the tips reads, “Sound personable. You’re not just your job title!”

Okay, she relaxes a bit. I’m not my job title, I’m not my job title. Maybe to break the ice I could talk about me.

She is about to type something and her fingers hover over the keyboard in anticipation. But wait, what if some creepy stalker dude, like the guy who groped her that time she went to her friend’s twenty-first birthday party and has stalked her ever since. She feels another attack coming on. He will find you, her mind repeats, he will find you and hurt you. So don’t post anything.

She chants under her breath to calm down. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo….After a few minutes, she calms back down but still hasn’t written anything remotely interesting. Fuck it, she thinks, I’m going to spend ten minutes max on this. Whatever I don’t finish, I don’t finish.

Add a profile picture. That was the advice she heard on the webinar. It gets you more views. But I hate it when people can publicly see my picture. That dude at the party ruined shit for me. Thanks a lot, Bryan (or whatever your name is. It doesn’t matter. You were too drunk and disgusting to care.)

She clacks and clacks away at the keyboard. It’s not perfect but worth a shot, she shrugs. After an hour she has a summary:

Hello. I am a twenty-seven year old writer living in Dallas with my mom, sister and my dog Sparky. I am not sure what I want to do with my life, but I came in undeclared to college and after a lot of soul searching I majored in government and minored in Spanish. I was awarded a prize by the Grant Lewis Department of Political Science and got to represent an ambassador group at former President Barack Obama’s inauguration. I have worked a variety of jobs, mostly in retail and food service. I worked as a…..

It droned on and on. This will be a snorefest.

…I am not sure what career I want but by 2025 I want to write books full-time and release my first album on Spotify. My favorite books are Pride and Prejudice, The Secret Life of Bees, and anything by P.G. Wodehouse. My favorite music artists are Michael Jackson, Tyler the Creator and Johannes Brahms. My favorite movies are X-Men, Love in the Time of Cholera (ditto the book) and The Imitation Game.

Does anyone care if I’ve read P.G. Wodehouse? Do they care about any of this stuff? It’s a professional network, you dum-dum, not Facebook.

Wanda’s inner critic has a field day as she weighs whether to take down the summary or keep it. Five seconds later…

I’m deleting this. It sounds stupid and irrelevant. So for the third time I changed the summary back to “I’m an artist. Connect with me!” Desperate but short.

But you need a FULL SUMMARY. You’ve gotta rack up those views and connections, girl!

Her anger towards herself boils and she find herself feeling acid bubbling in her chest. She knows this happens in my body when she can’t make a decision. She grabs her water bottle and chugs. The cold elixir of life washes down her throat. She feel a little better now.

I have been at this for the past five hours, and haven’t gotten anything done. The only thing I can do… is just shut down my computer.

So Wanda shuts down the computer, angry at herself for going back and forth for an insignificant decision. She gets upset and pushes her pillow up to her face, and then lets out a painful loud blood-curdling scream. She feels the scream unleash itself from her body, releasing the pent up perfectionism, frustration, anxiety and insecurities she has held onto for years.

You’re perfectly imperfect, her old therapist told her. And she needs to hear that more than ever, because she just spent five hours working on something that nobody probably cared about in the first place. Worst of all, she couldn’t decide what to put. She kept going back and forth about her decision. Should I post this, should I not? And her decisions often carried the weight of other people’s expectations, or rather, what she thought other people’s expectations were of her.

Wanda goes to her Buddhist altar and cries, tears running down her face. I made such a stupid decision, wasting five hours working on a small thing like my LinkedIn summary. How could I have wasted so much time?!? I am falling behind in everything…

She continues to chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

She feels better after thirty minutes.

I’m going to do some exercise.

Normally, Wanda can’t make up her mind whether to exercise on a given day. I’m too lazy, it’s too stressful, I don’t have time. But Wanda is running on empty and hasn’t worked out for a good while, so she turns on the pilates YouTube video that her friend sent her last month but that she didn’t open until now because she didn’t think she needed exercise. She does lunges, kicks, and punches, and twists her body in various directions. As she works out, her body releases stress and tension, and she feels in a better mood than she did before.

The Crawfish Boil

It was the summer of 2008 and we were celebrating the campaign of Barack Obama in our Southern town. It was 12 o’ clock and my family and I were visiting a family friend who invited us to her crawfish boil. As a huge fan of seafood I couldn’t wait. My mom put on her pearl necklace and her bright yellow summer dress. I love my mother; she is so pretty, with her strawberry blonde hair in waves and her full lips. Dad was so lucky he married her.

“You ready?” she asked me.

I nodded. Mariana, my sister, wouldn’t be coming because she was at a friend’s house.

We walked down the block. Mrs. Weathers, the family friend, didn’t live too far away, only five minutes down the block. Even from down the block I could smell the Cajun spices and the barbeque. It tantalized my taste-buds and my olfactory senses.

Mrs. Weathers came out and I saw she was heavily pregnant. Her bump swelled under her turquoise maternity summer dress, and she wore these beautiful white-rimmed sunglasses. She put the sunglasses atop her head, and walked over to us.

“Hiiiii!!!!” she squealed as she and my mom hugged.

My mom let go after five minutes and she introduced me.

“This is Kayla,” she said, nodding for me to shake Mrs. Weathers’ hand.

“Nice to meet you,” I nodded, staring at her bump.

“Nice to meet you, Miss Kayla!” she gushed in her Southern drawl. “Please dig in! We’ve just started cooking the burgers.”

A tall tanned gentleman with wavy black hair and a wide toothy grin turned to us as he grilled juicy hamburgers. A table piled high with steaming crawfish, corn on the cob dripping with butter, and a bowl of creamy potato salad called to me.

“Help yourself!” he laughed as he saw my hungry expression, his eyes darting to the table.

“Thank you,” I said shyly, becoming more aware of my manners.

Mom handed me a plate, and I piled it high with food. She leaned over to me, and whispered “Save some for others. You don’t want people to think you are greedy.”

I sighed.

“Yes, Mom.”

I have always been a little overweight and I understand my mom was trying to help me lose some pounds, but I couldn’t help feeling self-conscious. I went over to Mrs. Weathers.

“Excuse me, ma’am, do you know where the drinks are?”

“Oh!” she laughed. “Come on with me, I can show you!” She motioned for me to come into the kitchen. On the linoleum floor sat a cooler full of perspiring cans of soda taking a bath in a melted pool of ice. I kneeled down and picked up a chilly can of Seven-Up.

“So do you work?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am, I work at Chili’s part-time.”

“Please, hon, call me Stacy!” she guffawed. “‘Mrs. Weathers’ or ‘ma’am’ makes me feel so doggone old.”

I tried to force a grin. Calling her anything other than her last name or a polite Southern title felt awkward.

“How is the school year going?”

“It’s ok. Algebra is challenging but my teacher is nice.”

“What’s her name?”

“Mrs. Rizzolo.”

“Oh!” she clapped her hands excitedly. “She and I are good friends. Her and her daughter live across the street from us. She had the flu though, so she couldn’t make it to the barbeque today. Poor thing, bless her heart. I called her to see if she was coming, and she had just finished puking in the toilet..”

I nearly gagged on my 7Up.

“Oh, sorry, that was a bit TMI.”

“It’s ok,” I coughed.

“Oh!” she laughed, putting her hands on her round stomach. “That was an elbow.”

I knew she was talking about the unborn baby.

“May I touch it?” I asked.

“Yes, of course!” she smiled. I placed my hand on her belly, and felt a sharp jab against my hand. It felt weird, like an alien was inside her.

“Does it hurt?”

“It’s rather uncomfortable at times, especially when I am sleeping. She kicks more after I eat ice cream, for some weird reason. That’s one of my cravings, by the way. The other day I had a whole tub of Ben n’ Jerry’s by myself. I felt so bad,” she laughed. “But you get used to it. If you’re wondering it’s a girl,” she winked. “Todd and I just found out this week when I went for my ultrasound.”

“What will you name her?” I asked.

“We haven’t decided yet. Maybe Elizabeth or Caitlyn.”

After a few moments, I didn’t feel anything. I took my hand away from her stomach.

“Sorry, I didn’t know if it was uncomfortable for you to have me touch your stomach.”

“Oh, no, darling! You don’t have to apologize at ALL!” she laughed. She placed a hand gently on my shoulder. “But I appreciate you asking. Your mother clearly brought you up with good manners.”

Good manners or not, I still felt like a perv.

We went back out, Mrs. Weathers cradling her bump as we walked. Mom was sitting with Mr. and Mrs. Rose, who wore Barack Obama “Yes We Can” buttons on their T-shirts. They sat around the table with half-finished plates of potato salad. A few flies danced around the mounds of greasy chicken bones and crawfish skeletons with shredded skin.

Mom turned to me.

“Where were you?”

“Oh…”

“Don’t worry, Sherri! I was just showing Kayla where the drinks were.”

Mom nodded.

Mr. Rose checked his watch.

“I am so sorry, Sherri and Stacy, but we gotta head to pick up our son from baseball practice.” Mr. and Mrs. Rose got up from their chairs, and embraced my mom in huge hugs. Then they went over to Mrs. Weathers and gave her hugs, too.

“Congratulations, Stacy!”

Mrs. Weathers beamed.

“Thank you so much, John! Patricia, thank you both for coming. Tell Little Earnest good luck for me.”

“We will!” they waved and trudged towards their silver minivan parked outside on the side street.

I went over to the table, which was running out of food.

“Oh, I saved your plate,” Mr. Weathers came over to me. “I saw you put it down and didn’t want it to get cold.”

I gently took it from him. That was really sweet of him.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Haha, please, call me Todd.”

I nodded. I went over to a table and sat with Stephanie and Rachel, two of my classmates in Mr. Brian’s English class. They sat and coolly watched a young blonde man standing and talking to 95-year old Mr. Paterson.

“Jesus, he is so fucking hot.” Stephanie licks her lips, and sips her Diet Coke. “I would totally tap that.”

“Is that Jesse? I thought he was dating Erica Brien,” Rachel said, turning to Stephanie.

Stephanie shrugs, then smirks.

“I heard they were breaking up. Apparently, Erica slept with Ricky on the basketball team and everyone found out all over social media…”

She lolls her head over to mine and giggles.

I continued to listen to them as they shared their fantasies about fucking Jesse. I really had nothing else to do and nowhere to be. Clara hadn’t scheduled me for any shifts today. I grabbed one of the crawfish from my plate. It was lukewarm, but I bit into the spicy flesh of that tiny crustacean and my mouth lit on millions of fires. I hurriedly spooned some potato salad in my mouth. I felt embarrassed, but Rachel and Stephanie weren’t really paying attention to me. They were probably too busy checking out Jesse’s Instagram to care.

Sleeping in Class

I admit it: in college I slept during my classes. A lot. Like, pretty much every day. One time it almost cost me a scholarship. It was my sophomore year and I had started drinking tea in the mornings, specifically the Sweet Dreams tea from Bigelow. I was quite anxious and this was of course before I knew that you need to see a counselor for anxiety, but to calm my nerves without medication I decided to drink this tea, not knowing that there was a reason this particular flavor of tea was called Sweet Dreams. Why? Because it was sleep inducing of course! I found myself walking happily into my music history class, saying good morning to the professor and my hips bumping against the desk as I jauntily sat down, ready to learn about some Western composers. I started off giddily taking notes. I am SUCH a good student, I thought, so accomplished and smart. Look at me taking these notes. Now I have something to study when I get home. Midway through I felt my hand get heavy, then the professor’s words started sounding a little more muffled, and before I knew it I was knocked out. The last time I was this knocked out was when I got my wisdom teeth taken out and they gave me anesthetic and I woke up looking like a chipmunk with gauze stuffed in my mouth (that was a good day, though, because I got to miss school and eat soy pudding and read Oliver Twist all day.) When I woke up, I saw the professor walking around, and he had papers in his hand. I saw the paper fly towards me through the air and it landed at my feet. When I blearily opened my eyes, he was handing everyone else their paper. Okaayyyy, I thought. This kept happening though. I would drink the tea for breakfast with my Grape Nuts, then head to class, take notes, fall asleep in the middle, then the professor would throw the worksheet at me. I kept thinking that he hated me because I was Black, but as I chanted about it and reflected, I realized it was because I was sleeping in his class and that was very rude. Sleeping in class sent the message, “I know all this shit. Don’t lecture me, man. Your lecture really isn’t that important to me.” But back then, I felt so justified in sleeping. Like, I can’t help it! Right….. Not surprisingly, when I emailed the professor later on about writing me a recommendation letter for a grant I was applying for, he said that while he was happy to write the recommendation he wasn’t happy I was sleeping in class. He offered some helpful suggestions for staying awake, but I have a hard time listening to people because my huge old 20 year old ego kept rearing its ugly old head and telling me, “It’s not your fault!” However, this was my responsibility. Thankfully I got over it and started paying more attention in class, but that sleeping in class moment kind of scarred me for life. I’m pretty sure I stopped drinking sleepy time tea after that.

This didn’t just happen in this one class though; it happened in a lot of my classes. The main culprit besides the damn tea, however, was just that I got really shit sleep. I would study until the wee hours, and somehow expect myself to magically be a chipper person in the morning. What started with a tank full of gas ended up being a car running on past empty. I would take copious notes and somehow expect to stay awake, but because I was sleep deprived I also started to eat a lot more out of stress. I would pile on these big portions of food (the vegan hot dogs were my favorite) and eat as much as I could, then toss the rest in the compost pails (thankfully they composted all this food waste.) Then I would take notes, and because I was so sleepy from all that food (I looked it up. It is called post-prandial somnolence) I would nod off while my classmates would alternate between listening to the lecture attentively and poking me awake (or giggling, if they were so inclined. It was quite humorous though looking back, because I was the only one who was stupid enough to sleep in class.) Most of my professors didn’t say anything, but one of the professors told me I needed coffee. It was weird though, because I was one big ball of energy in these classes. I always raised my hand to contribute because I felt I just needed to get all my thoughts out, so why not blurt them out while the rest of the students shyly raised their hands to get a word in edge-wise? Then I would furiously take notes, then because I got burned out, I would fall asleep, then the professor started talking louder, probably to wake me up, and then I would sleepily wake up and realize the class was over.

I am glad I stopped sleeping during the classes by junior year because honestly, I missed out on a lot of cool discussions when I slept in class. And when material was going to be covered on an exam, well, guess what? I missed that material and important information because I was asleep. It’s no wonder that I would get so upset in those classes when I would give presentations and people would sleep through them. I think as I chanted, I reflected on my own sleeping in class behavior and later realized I didn’t want to continue this habit come junior year. Also a lot of other crazy shit happened in junior year, like mental illness, so I ended up cutting out the sleeping-in-class nonsense by that time. And thankfully, I enjoyed my class discussions more when I was awake and had started taking better care of myself. That’s the other thing. I was burned out. I wasn’t really taking care of my emotional or mental health at the time, or even really my physical health at the time. Self-care felt like an erratic thing I did when I was on holiday breaks or had long stretches of time when I was doing nothing. My Buddhist practice was my form of self-care at the time thankfully, and it helped me get through a lot of this stressful stuff during my first two years of undergrad. Honestly I think this is partly why I was so fearful about going to graduate school because I was worried I would repeat the same patterns of not taking care of myself, sleeping in class, not getting rest. Honestly, I learned a lot from my first year roommate. She went to bed early, and I wound up staying up until 2 am in the morning reading an essay by Hume and breaking down and crying because of my perfectionistic habit of striving for success and hard work at the very real cost of my mental health. I mean, I can’t complain. I ended up with good grades in my classes, and that was a decade ago, so why worry about the past? But I love to write, and wanted a story to share that was somehow light-hearted and goofy, and this story always makes me laugh because sleeping in class because I was exhausted felt so justified at the time, but looking back it was silly and I can look back on that and laugh about it, while when I was going through the actual sleeping in class I suffered.

Anyway, thank you for reading and have a safe holiday season.