my vices.

Sitting at a table in a diner in the middle of the night, the dead of December, and it's still too cold inside to take my coat off... which makes me look like I'm in a hurry, always in a hurry to get nowhere in particular. There's never time in these hours for the coffee to grow cold before I need a gentleman's service, a tip-rendering service, and his attention is somewhere else tonight. My fingers wrapped around the thick ceramic case for heated relief, and there was a stoicism in my company's face... like she was trying not to think of something. Focusing on what she didn't want to think of, her face carved itself into a frown over time. And after noticing, I realized I'd never told her how pretty she looked when she was angry at herself.
     If I had to redefine success from the beginning, I'd start with losing my virginity. I lost my virginity at the most tender, impressionable age... Why? Because my then-boyfriend told me he'd kill himself if I didn't have sex with him. He also told me he'd kill himself if I broke up with him. In reality, I think I was just bored. It starts with doing things for all the wrong reasons, then not being able to do things the wrong way for the right reasons later. I was sexually scarred for years after that and stayed sexually awkward until I buckled and learned how to kiss open-mouthed when I was eighteen. I've always been shy of things I can't be certain I'm doing well, and I worked backwards in learning.
      With no self confidence during high school years, I'd redefine success by looking at myself in the mirror without make up on and thinking that I probably would let myself get away with a warning if I'd pulled myself over for speeding looking like such. Real-word applications are so satisfying, yet the real world never seems to be as much. So I think about these things while drowning myself in coffee, wondering what had happened to my journaling years, trying to figure out how the hell I would up being the awkward shell of a person I wake up as every single morning. When I meet new people, it's all I can do to remember to keep my voice clear and introduce myself. When I meet new concepts, it's all I can do to remember the person I was before I understood something new. I kept seeing the reflection of her face in the darkened window, the image of headlights streaming past on the highway as it stretched beyond our locations to pass our future respective locations. And that sadness spread on the surface of her face would carry her there.
      I wish I could have explained how I'd redefined success in my head just twice before, but we didn't want to talk. We never want to talk about it. I never want to be shaken, but I shook in the cold facing my car door as the key continued to deceive me under the burnt out light above. And the cold reflects chillingly - all the things I might have kept to myself if only I'd never learned how to read or write. If Only I'd continued to dream during those lessons long-taught and forever gone. And why my voice never carries such sentiments so solidly.
     I redefine friendship and I redefine luck, they're two in one. If you're lucky at all, you'll have some strength to your friendships that will carry through when you need it the most. You absorb every day from your focus, you focus everything on your day. When I wake to a ringing phone, if I find my voice I answer... as I lie and say I was hardly sleeping, it occurs to me that this person knows we're lucky. At least I hope they know we're lucky as hell. I redefine language as a way to pass time, I redefine time as a way to pass life. I redefine life as an opportunity to sculpt every aching moment and it lingers to pass.
     In my car, on the way home, the cold from the leather seats wraps my thighs in a tight reminder of all the uncomfortable elements I have to understand and lapse in memory; everything that once burdened me must be reshaped to fit the weight requirements. My mouth was dry, and all I really wanted was a hot coffee to wash away the remaining particles of carbon residing in my mouth. All I really want are my vices.