Paved with Salt:

-Photo by me of me.

Foreward: This will come in unpredictable sections, stay tuned.

***

Driving into the city, Nora Jones on my iPod I wonder if it’s the smartest idea to purposefully put myself in a more melancholy mood than I’ve already been in all day.

It’s the weekend, Saturday, and Becca isn’t here but in the city that we would love to both call home someday, New York, and while I’m happy that she is there because she deserves it, I’m, selfishly, lonely and empty. I’m dwelling on how pathetic I feel for staying in last night, roasting brussels sprouts and sweet corn and portabellas for no one but myself. My apartment now will smell like balsamic for days unless I leave the patio door cracked. I drank half a bottle of Prisoner and fell asleep to The Wackness while the rest of the 20 somethings were probably out having a typical Friday evening…but I so wanted to be there too. Now I’m feeling equally pathetic for feeling sorry for myself.

Saturday morning and I wake up with a headache above my eyes and a crack in my heart like old porcelain. My MacBook comes to life and I’m pissed off that I’m behind on blogging about the amazing Greening of Detroit event that I will eventually have to get to later because to not write about it would be like throwing away a pound of perfectly sautéed black truffles, unheard of. But I want to get every detail down perfectly to do it justice. Ideas are flowing too quickly to get out on paper at this point and are escaping from my brain into the atmosphere probably never to be seen again.

I pull up his journal on LiveJournal because that is what I do now, every day, since he has sent me the link. And I’m not sure if I read it because I miss him so much that it’s hard to breathe or because his writing is so beautiful in a way that is devastating and surreal. I’ve heard authors describe women this way “devastatingly beautiful”, but I’m claiming this for his journal he gave up years ago. Somehow it inspires my writing but today all I can do is sit here and let lukewarm tears soak my cheeks with leftover mascara from the night before.

And now that I have this job, this job that requires me to check all baggage at the swinging kitchen door, there is a test of my emotions, of my personality. I not only have always worn my heart on my sleeve but my sadness in patches on my jeans and my jubilation in the crinkles at the corners of my eyes when I smile. But here, now, I have to cut and paste a smile on my face, glue my eyes forward, relax my jaw when I have too much on my mind, because my customers, though maybe not directly but in some sense like a sweat about to break on the surface of their skin, will sense a disturbance in the atmosphere, perhaps not when they walk in, or even through their bacon lardon salads and lamb sausages, but when the open their car doors to drive home, will know that their meal wasn’t the best it could be.

And that is not acceptable to me.

I know I just started here but I already feel I’ll never be cut out for this or be as talented as the people I work with. They can handle multiple tables and my heart races, breath shortens, speech becomes stuttered and tripped up at just 2 tables. Their fingers skitter across the expo. screen like deft machines, automatic and I bet they could close their eyes and still push all the right buttons. But it takes me 5 minutes to ring in one order.

All I want is their approval; I want them to know I can do this, that I can do it well, and I want nothing but to be here.

I wake up every morning in the anticipation of going into the city, waiting for the time to put on my ChefWare Apron, check the seating chart and grab a yellow polishing rag.

I love this life.