written by a friend of mine

Languishing in Repitition
April 2010

Rewind. And it comes to your attention at the same time the entire rest of the world does, a few years and a few (more than a few) mistakes late. The guilt sets in and it’s hindsight bias. Thank you life. Congratulations on your inadequacy. Cheers to your failures! Would of, should of, could of. If only. You can’t blame yourself for what you don’t perceive until later. It’s not your fault if you never looked, never knew. It’s okay that you didn’t want to, really, it is. It will be fine...

...You know what they say about bliss.

Oh, I keep telling myself this. Making excuses. It’s perfectly understandable. People do this all the time, I say, over and over again, in my head. Its repetition is comforting; echoing the consistency of a place I find some semblance of safety in. A mantra, a prayer, the excuses become the very things that anchor me to the ground. Except I’m actually stuck knee deep in quicksand, too busy daydreaming and wallowing in guilt to watch where I was walking. Now I’m left to struggle.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, my dad would say this. Repeatedly. In one ear and out the other, he would say. His advice was lost on my stubbornness masked as indifference. Fear masked as stubbornness, weakness masked as fear. Whatever you would like to call it. Whatever you would like to say. Go ahead, say it. I know that you do when you think I’m not listening. I need to hear you mock me while I’m drowning in my own mess. I wish I could say that I didn’t ask for this.


Pause. It’s the beginning of Spring, in a city I can’t stand, and every dead plant is blossoming. The roads are colored pink with cherry blossoms. This I enjoy. Yet, the smell of skunk and mulch linger in the street like the warm smell of cigarettes in my car. It’s souring.

The sky is blue again, for longer, and when it rains I don’t mind getting my hair wet. I walk with no umbrella and carry a hair dryer in my purse. Ready for anything, you would have said. Except when I pull it out to use it its covered in a mixture of lotion, loose tobacco, and faded portions of old receipts. You’re not surprised, and nor am I.

I start to wear skirts and sandals, long before the weather gives me the go ahead, but the goosebumps on my thighs are worth it, I tell myself this, repeatedly. It’s not cold. It’s not cold. It’s not cold. But I’m still shivering, and you’re still wearing your winter coat with as much pride as you wear your condemning I told you so.

I lighten my hair, paint my nails pink instead of red and smoke cigarettes on my porch by candlelight. I feel rebirth all around me, and I want to join it, but I just light one cigarette after the other, watching the hours fade into morning. Again.
I feel like a raccoon, some creature of habit, coming out at night and lurking in the garbage, just to assuage the hunger that growls from the pit of my empty chest. It all seems too dramatic.

But wait, I start picking apart the dead skin of my life. Exfoliate. Shave. Repeat. I look in the mirror and smile, but I can’t look at my lips while the white spots of pimple cream make a mocking “a” shape, cascading down my face. Small, graceful, steps. I guess.

I try to save. Send more than the minimum payment to the credit card company. They stop calling every day at 8am. Try not to overdraft this month.

Call my grandmother. Drive with the windows down. Order a glass of wine. Pick up a book. It all seems like what I should be doing. I walk around with friends outside. I stare at the landscape in awe. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. There is peace of mind. I am falling asleep at night.

Hurry and pause this right here. Watch it stagnate into the illusion that it is. Watch it try, try, try.


Play. And this all seems like I found it on VHS in the attic of an old house. The attic in an old house I could have grown up in, that has burnt to the ground.

I’m alone when I play this and there you are, walking across the screen. Waving. Smiling. Remember me, you say. And I do, but you’ve changed, so I fast forward a little but the tape cuts out and the screen starts to snow. There’s no audio. How quickly I lost you trying to find you. Again. In a potential future of the timeless past.

There’s no pause. No stagnating illusion but the one I’m creating as we speak. It’s not an albums new release, it’s that old tattered book on the shelf just out of arms reach. It’s smells like mold and it will repeat. And repeat.

Light a match and all that’s left amongst the ash is the empty frame of a home, and the melting videotape of the stillborn child I have become.

I wrap myself up and become the paradox of the present that I leave at the foot of my bed to open later, but end up shoving into some closet while I clean up, preparing for your arrival in a useless (and endless) anticipation that I have come to know and hate.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat.

This is not a soap opera. This is not a sitcom. This is not reality television. This is a riptide, pulling a child farther away towards the mouth of a shark while he was only looking for seashells. This is the downpour. The rain, the waterfalls.

This is not a cry for help. Or for pity. This is the song.

I’m dancing with tap shoes on, on a wooden floor while you’re sleeping below me. Wake up. Look at what you’ve created, this dance. Listen to it in all the glory of it’s annoyance. Find the rhythm of it’s consistent beats as it repeats. Repeats. Repeats.

By: Lindsay Gulics