The Most Beautiful Day
She woke up one bright and sunny morning to a stack of cardboard boxes with her name on them. She snickered at herself; she must have been on a roll last night if she was packing up to move. After procrastinating as long as possible, she heaved herself out of bed and headed to the kitchen. After poking around at a few things and realizing she wasn’t really hungry- and her kitchen was an epic disarray- she wandered back into her bedroom and put on some out-in-public clothes for the day. She grabbed her bag, her keys and her cell phone; briefly switching it on to see if she had any messages. That’s weird- no service huh? Well whatever, it will probably just fix itself in a while… if not she’d just turn it off and turn it on again- that would surely do the trick. As she leisurely strolled through the bustling late morning foot traffic, she looked around her. Everything was so bright and cheerful, she actually felt herself start to smile. Before coffee, after 0 cigarettes (smoking while you walk down the street was out and she was smoking sooooo much more less than she wanted to!) and she was smiling. Whiskey tango…. She wasn’t hungover! That’s what it was. “Well, hello morning! Good to see you!” she thought… genuinely… for the first time ever. Whatever she did last night after the self-induced watery gin blackness had descended must have been a rootin tootin healthy choice! Hell, maybe she gotten herself a new job, learned how to work out, cooked herself a vegan meal with a green smoothie and adopted a cat. Maybe that’s why she was moving; to jet off luxuriously into the sunset of Something Easier.
Or maybe she did something stupid enough to puke enough to be actually free of chemical intoxication. That had happened a few times. Well… sweet enough.
So she wandered and she walked. She checked out trees and listened to birds and wondered for a bit at the magic of the sun and how it changes everything. Everything really. Every single thing depended on that one thing…
She shuffled on the sand and teased the waves with her feet. They felt so much different today. Maybe she had just taken something really good that hadn’t worn off at all…
She turned her head and shouted to the older Korean man sunbathing peacefully a short bit down the beach, “Isn’t this just the most beautiful day?!?” She couldn’t help herself to disturb his quiet- she had to share this joy with someone!
The man didn’t turn, or respond to her- did not acknowledge her. Well, she could understand that. You see, some people really are assholes… the lore be true. So she told him where to put it in as sweet of a way as she was feeling as she made her way along the shore. As the sun began to dip, she set her eyes on home, and what she saw when she got there had her stopping to blink before rushing inside.
Her mom and dad, and her stupid older brother (who actually wore polo shirts and tucked them in when he was not working) were shoveling all her stuff out the door! “What??” She shouted as she burst into the living room. “What the fuck are you doing? What’s this…. another intervention? Those lovely little games you like to play that always work out so well???”
After a stunned silence on her part and a complete lack of interest on the part of her family members she let out a tirade so repulsive, so demeaning, so utterly horrible and unholy that no one- certainly no one at whom it was directed could simply stroll by without a glance. But they did. Each and every one of them. She spun around, appealing to the other end of the street. No one, not neighbor, not child, not mother nor dog batted an eye at the venom erupted from her filthy talk hole. It was then, standing in the middle of the street on a waning sunny autumn day that the world seemed to tilt.
And she remembered. She remembered in flashes, the way you do. The colors, the light. The darkness. The drink. The many delicious drugs of candy colors and the ski jumps atop flashing mirrors. It was a glorious night, really very fun… she thought, but the she remembered coming home- it was morning… already. Not full baked morning where the sun has brought warmth to the earth. But the cold kind of morning, with its special colors. The surreal deep blue doing its backwards dance from night. Colors that play chords in your soul and make you remember who you truly are for a moment as they sing no matter how you try as might to forget the rest of your day through. She went inside after that long, long moment spent standing just before her front stoop soaking in; feeling the time and space of life move through her and around her and knowing her place in time for the now. She felt the cool ocean breeze on her skin, the occasional brush of sand as it was carried past her shoulder. The feeling of beginningness. Birds waking up, encountering the day- the earliest bakers sipping their coffee on their way to their dough, the dew on the bits of grass and the many potted plants. It was all new again, the way it was every day.
She had turned and stepped upon her stoop, grasping and turning her door handle after unlocking her deadbolt. Stepping into the dark of her home she had tossed her purse on the entry bench and her keys in their little bowl. Shutting the door, she had reached down and rustled a bit for her phone. Switching it on she had seen a screen with no messages and set it down on the table next her keys. No messages, everyone made it home ok, safe and sound. She had grabbed the bottle of gin off the table, her magic bag of yummy treats out of the stash corner, and sat down to start the forgetting.