My Average Day

Driving down the road I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d be there tonight. He had been gone for a couple weeks now and I started to miss him, I guess. At least, I didn’t get that feeling that I wanted to punch him or mock him for being stupid. I know he’s not dumb, just low common sense, and he comes on too strong. But at the same time, he’s warm and loving, and gives incredible massages. My mind was racing and I stopped to take a couple of deep breathes, glancing at the scenery.

This part of town was an endless string of strip malls and under construction commercial sites. It gave me a melancholy that I could only escape with my CD player. I pulled on my headphones, ignoring the awkward glances of pedestrians and other drivers. Do people ever feel like they are always being invaded? Or was I the only one? It wasn’t necessarily a bad feeling. I mean, it was fine around most women and children and some good cheered men. But, for the most part, it was like everyone’s negative thoughts were being pulled into my body, like the way a leaf absorbs water through osmosis. It was a constant struggle to exert my own mind and emotions, to balance myself with both the obvious and subtle feelings of others. It always makes me think of hearing a juicy conversation that you know you shouldn’t be listening to, but you can’t help because they just talk so loud. That was the difference between him and most others. He always made me feel equalized, as if there was a perfect give and take of all the essential nutrients.

He had taken another job and didn’t work with me that often. At first I thought it was a blessing, but then I realized that he was what made the job fun, and made me comfortable. Now I usually work with Sheryl, a forty-something spinster with the disposition of a hurricane always raging under the surface. I’m pretty sure she drinks a lot and that she was arrested for drunk driving before she came back to work. She is the opposite of the way he made me feel. When I’m with Sheryl, alone on the bus, driving to pick up the children, I feel as though I’m hearing things she doesn’t want me or anyone else to know. I’m starting to learn that she’s not directing the emotions at me but at the world in general and I suppose that somehow makes it better.

In fact the past few months have shown marked improvement. I took up meditation about six months ago. When I started I couldn’t spend more than twenty minutes with myself, and now, sometimes, I prefer to be alone because it’s hard to live with other people’s issues. That’s the problem with understanding yourself; you understand others.