One of THOSE Days

When I woke up this morning I didn't look any different. In fact, I walked in the bathroom and looked in the mirror just to see. Nope, still the same remnants of mascara and small team of pimples scattered randomly on my cheeks, as if someone spread them out as if to take over my face, slowly and stealthily. What I felt was different than what I saw. I felt a crash of the waves in my stomach against a distant shore.

I picked up the phone and dialed a business, in search of summer employment. Happily distracted with good news, I shimmied into clothes that created confidence and carefully drew on gold eyeliner that sounds scarier than it looks. I marched out the door in Jessica Simpson red suede heels that would later draw an "I like her shoes," from a passerby in a parking lot. I arrived at my destination and later left the building with my shoulders slightly slumped; I just filled out an application. No impromptu interview.

With the ominous start to my day, yet perhaps I dramatize, I should not be surprised that many things I saw that day upset me. Why could I not be like so and so? When would it be my turn to do such and such? Whatever I saw became a cause for bouts of anxiety and a lowering of my self-esteem. Had I forgotten my ability to light up a room, at least my rooms at both my house and my parents' house, with my loud laughter? What about the girl who throws words across a computer screen with the quick action of her finger tips along the keyboard? qwerty squared. My skills were long past my recollection. All I cared for was an ugly sort of sulkage.

Yes, I suppose I still sit sulking, slumped over in bed, typing this little account. I suppose my spirits are only slightly lifted. But my chin lifts when I think of the papers to grade and the pictures I will soon take. I am an educator. I am a photographer. I am talented, though the world has yet to see my full value.

I am a snail on a highway.