Relationships

I just bought a dining table for my apartment. It is two months into the school year and almost half a year since my lease started. Why the delay?

It takes you three days to fall out of love with her.

I am not interested in being scared this Halloween. And yet, it appears that I am unable to escape the witching hour. As I turn the corner, I am greeted by a familiar haunting.

I find cemeteries to be awkward places. I feel incredibly self-conscious in grocery stores, but a cemetery that living people are visiting is a thousand times worse, especially when you can’t find the grave you are looking for.

I am quite fond of living on a stage. Curating my thoughts for consumption, I love seeing myself in the reactions of others.

But now the awkward interaction with a barista, the stress of an upcoming exam, the slow-motion neon lights in a crowded bar are mine alone, no longer processed and packaged stories to liven someone else’s day.

“When You Were Young” streams quietly on the radio as I find a table. No one knows how this song makes me nostalgic for Texas heat.

If you’re gone, who do I tell? How do I live with just myself?

July 25th, 2021

I feel like I am floating after this untethering. Like a balloon headed for the clouds, in that dually melancholy and pleasing way. After this life change, I was expecting my reality to crash around me. This not-quite painful floating sensation has taken me off guard. Losing love is a funny thing.

Losing love is a funny thing.

As the Pinterest app opens on my phone, I appreciate the ease with which I can search and browse a seemingly infinite supply of thumbprint cookie recipes. 

“You intimidate them, Chloe.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

I would love to start this pondering off with a rhetorical question, but there’s really no point, is there? Did that make you feel weird? Good.

Apparently I have an innate ability to make people, specifically men, feel as though their masculinity is dwindling as I stare them down, and their ankles have suddenly realized the Achilles heels had been hit. They would be next.

Except, I’m not staring, I’m smiling, and I’m asking how their day was.