it’s hard taking care of a two–year–old.

sometimes i don’t want to deal with it.  i want to leave it there and go out drinking or go shopping or see friends or ride bikes in the cemetery.  i want to sit on the couch and read or watch tv and not think at all about this thing that needs me to keep it alive.

sometimes i don’t know what to do with it next.  it’s frustrating when i’ve done everything i could think of to keep it going, to keep it happy, and then i can’t think of anything else.  i feel like i’m not good enough for it.

sometimes i think that it’s not good enough for me.

sometimes it bores me.

sometimes it breaks and i don’t know how to fix it.

sometimes it upsets people i love, even though i don’t mean for it to.  i don’t know what to do when that happens, when something i’ve created has hurt someone important to me.  it hurts me, too.

this two-year-old, however, has outlasted hair colors and friendships, jobs and boyfriends.  i no longer date the guy who made me watch the boxing match.  i don’t know what happened to the marble.  my hair isn’t blue anymore.  you and i are no longer close.  i stopped going to the poetry slams.  guess the dictator and/or sitcom character now thinks i’m luann from king of the hill instead of kate from the drew carey show.  i don’t go out with you anymore, but the ticket stub from unbreakable still sits in the butter compartment of my refrigerator.  i miss phil.

i still rearrange the furniture.  i still hate the sun.  i am no longer a rock or an island, but i’m not sure i ever was.

happy birthday, bluishorange.