It Was a Close One

A woman sits on the floor of her flat, surrounded by dusty unopened, moving cartons packed seventeen months ago. Moonbeams, the only light, spill in the window.

I’m glad I took the drapes down, so I can see the full moon clearly. It seems closer than usual, and I sort of reach out to touch it. I close my left eye and allow my right hand to hold the moon in my fingertips, and then I open both of them again allowing my droopy eyes to take in the whole thing. It is bright, but I don’t have to stop staring like I would if it were the sun.

I like sitting here in the darkness. I like it better than in the daytime. It’s the days that make me feel miserable and lonely and worthless. Things really do look better in the dark.

I like the darkness because it doesn’t show me what my life looks like. I can’t see all of my mistakes staring me in the face, or the boxes filled with expired possibilities and false hope. I like the darkness because it makes me feel better to be able to stare at something that doesn’t stare back. The moon isn’t nearly as judgmental as the sun. It can’t see me, and it can’t reveal who I am so there is nothing to compare me to. I am just a person and I don’t have to provide an explanation for that.

I packed the boxes over a year too early. I got excited for something that wasn’t ever going to be a reality. Not for me. I don’t get things like that. I’m not the one people remember, and I’m definitely not the one people choose. Why not though? Why didn’t they pick me?

It’s probably because I had a plan. A really good plan. But my plans never work. I should have known that. I should have known I would be disappointed by them. It’s happened to me enough to know it wouldn’t work from the start. It seemed so real though. I was closer than I had ever been to a success so sweet. I was so close to the top that I was taller than everyone, even at 5’1”.

It’s not that I don’t like this apartment, because I do. It’s that this is the apartment where that dream started, where that plan formed. I had every single ingredient I needed to make it work. In an innocent, ignorant, hopeful way I thought I could rule the world.

When I say ‘rule the world’ I mean I could be the spark that starts the fire, the key word that no one else could think of, the one that all the hard work paid off for. But my hard work is just my hard work, and it is obviously good enough. It is good enough, just like this apartment and this city.

My mattress is leaning upright against a wall and I could easily take it down to sleep on, but I’ll just lie on the floor. Just like I did the first night I ever spent in this apartment, the night that I could do anything and be anything, because that’s what everyone told me.

The hardwood floor is less comfortable five years later. I stand up to get the mattress, but instead I walk over to the boxes. I open a couple of them, so I can start unpacking tomorrow. I forget about the mattress and lie back down on the floor. I don’t need to be comfortable, I just need to go to sleep, and however uncomfortable, it will be good enough.