Please Don’t Ask Me

I much prefer if people ask me how my day was then what I’m doing when I graduate. You would think they asked to borrow my wrist as a handkerchief. How dare you? I’m not sure, Mary, hopefully not descent into homelessness. My therapist, in the most gentle and comforting tone, said to me: “Maybe you’ll never get a job, that’s okay.” How dare you? This comment immediately lifted the anxiety off my slumped shoulders and it floated off into the heavens, never to interrupt my peace again. I mean, that would’ve been nice. But her words, which I can only describe as painfully pointed, the slimmest, coldest sewing pin piercing my heart at a glacial pace. Maybe I should take up sewing while the rejection letters role in. I could open an Etsy shop, of hand-stitched “Thank you for applying” emails and maybe I could even sew up some experience so the unpaid internships will want me. Let me highlight that word: unpaid. As in, my free labor is being refused left and right. How dare you? I’m so so so sorry I had to pay my bills in college; that I had electric bills, and gas bills, and grocery bills, and oh lord do not forget the rent. The rent. I had to balance french toast and eggs benedict on my arms, carry trays of martinis, refill the ketchups. I didn’t realize my temporary financial survival would lead to the death of my half-dreams. A financial survival reliant on the ten quarters one table left, and the 2% tip the Russian assholes just chuckled about leaving me. How dare you? What sick time loop has made it possible for undergraduate, unpaid internships to demand experience from students. Can’t say that anymore. Can’t say undergraduate. Can’t say student. So what can I even identify as? Oh God, I know: unemployed. I’ll milk some vague titles for a bit, like “recent graduate”. I can’t even think of any others. “Depressed female” feels more accurate. “Drowning woman” feels even more accurate. 

Maybe if I hadn’t gone to so many parties. Maybe if I hadn't smoked so much weed. Or maybe this is just life, and it’s really hard. Or maybe we decide how hard or soft life is. I wonder if the people who grab life by the job openings are smarter than me? Or maybe they don’t have this paper-thin skin covering the horrid blue veins that run along my wrist. The stupid blue blood, mocking me, daring me, to challenge it, to turn it red. 

But I’ll let it course through my body one more day, one more application, one more rejection. One more path falling away from my feet into an oblivion, probably someone else is in that oblivion, doing things right. But everything I do feels wrong and I hear the blue blood taunting my stupidity. It sees me yell at my mom, whom I love, and push my boyfriend away, whom I love, and speak poorly about myself, whom I love. And hate. 

Please don’t ask me what I'm doing when I graduate, I might be dead.