The Waiting Girl

It’s 2:32 in the morning. I know this because I have a smallish watch on my smallish wrist, that ticks a little too loud and keeps me awake on quiet nights. The only reason I keep it on because I keep forgetting to take it off.

The breeze that should be sweeping through the streets is hanging still in space. It’s taking up too much room, and makes me feel stifled and claustrophobic. As if I should be waiting for something, as if the universe is holding it’s breath.

I walk, with my footsteps plocking on the pavement with each step I take. Each plock causes a rift, a crack in the fragile air that presses in on me. There’s not a soul, besides myself, on these cold, lonely city streets.

I think...that I am waiting for something.

Not waiting in the traditional sense, I suppose. When one thinks of “waiting”, an image of waiting for a bus, or waiting with your thumb stuck into traffic, trying to get a taxi to pull over. You are doing nothing but standing, sticking a limb into the endless flow of automobiles and praying that your fragile appendage has the power to pull one towards you.

My kind of waiting feels much different than this.

My waiting is not something one can see with the naked eye. It doesn’t take time.

Now that I think about it, I’ve not been waiting for minutes, or hours, or days. I’ve always been waiting. I was waiting when I was born and I will continue to wait when I die. Perhaps even when I’m dead, my ghost will step out of my body and wait by my grave.

I don’t know why I’m waiting. I just always feel like I am. I don’t know what I’m waiting for. Maybe there’s something important I should be doing, like God was making baby me out of clay (or whatever babies are made out of) and said, “This girl has something important to do. Oh yeah, she’s definitely destined for greatness.” But he didn’t really know how to tell me. So, after much beard stroking and deliberation, he shrugged his shoulders, which are probably made of mountains or something really cool and godly like that, and said, “Eh, she’ll figure it out.”

Maybe I’m going against God’s will by not doing anything with my life.

I mean, I don’t believe in God, really. I did when I was younger, but when I told my mother I wanted to go to church, she told me she “thought I was smarter than that.” Yeah, she really did.

Is God what I’m waiting for? Am I waiting to be plucked from this disgusting, colorless sidewalk in this disgusting, colorless world, by a giant, colorful, glowing hand, and be told, “You’re not crazy! You’re Jesus 2.0!”

That would explain so much. You’re not crazy, you’re the next prophet! Now go spread the word of God, and write a book about how unmarried women should be pelted with stones, or something like that.

Oh God, I really am crazy.

I catch myself smiling. I snap back to reality, out of my ridiculous thoughts, and I am aware once again of the plocking of my feet and the ticking of my watch. Who am I kidding, I’m a sad excuse for a woman with a watch that’s too loud and feet too plocky and pants too saggy. I don’t wake up until 3 P.M. sometimes and I can’t keep a job and I don’t call my parents enough and all the other people my age are getting married and having kids while I still play Club Penguin every once in awhile. I have a tooth that’s too crooked and I’m too fat for all of my jeans and I have more pimples than friends. And I think too much and about too many things.

I start saying these things aloud. I say them over and over again. These things are holding me down. If these things weren’t true, I’d be happy.

Or...would I? Would I be happy with a zitless face and a bikini-ready body and a solid job?

I’ve said the things I hate about myself so much, they start to lose their meaning. Just words now, just feelings.

Who cares?

I yell that now, instead of the meaningless feelings. “WHO CARES?”

Nobody seems to hear me, so I yell it louder.

A few lights a few run down apartment buildings, I hear some far away yelling, perhaps a married couple with almost as many problems as me.

I catch myself smiling again. But this time, I keep smiling, and don’t stop myself. “WHO CARES???” I screech again, my voice still too low. But I don’t care anymore. Why did I ever care, anyway?

I hear a window screech open across the street from me. A disgruntled man leans out of it, his eyes red with lack of sleep.

“I sure don’t, asshole! Let me sleep, dammit!”

I laugh like a maniac and run down the streets.

I suddenly realize that I’m not waiting for anything anymore.

I run faster, and faster, not caring if I trip and fall and crack my head open, or if I’m hit by a car, or whatever. I don’t care.

Because I’m no longer the Waiting Girl, or the Caring Too Much Girl, or the Wanting But Never Receiving Girl. I’m no longer hung up on every dumb thing that I do or say. I couldn’t care less about the stretch marks that run through my skin like canyons in my flesh, or the miles I haven’t run, or the vegetables I haven’t been eating lately.

I rip the smallish watch of my smallish wrist and toss it to the ground, and I’m finally free of it’s incessant ticking, it’s constant reminder that every second I grow closer to my imminent death. I don’t give a damn about time, or aging, or all the things that I have to do that I haven’t done.

I’m living in the moment, and I’m enjoying every second of it.

THE END