The Layover

by Lacie Waldon

This is not the moment for a trip through the thorns that line memory lane.

When you’re trapped on a jump seat like we are, it’s too easy to find yourself giving parts of yourself away to someone you might not run into again for another several years, if ever. Before you know it, too much of you is floating out in the world, carried by people who don’t care about you. It’s better to keep the personal details to myself.

I wonder if it’s possible to be allergic to people. Like, proximity to them can make your personality begin to sneeze and hack.

It’s so strange how sometimes a conversation can make you feel lonelier than silence ever did.

not be skilled at saying no, but I have a lifetime of experience at being noncommittal.

“As a woman, I’ve been uniquely blessed with the ability to dunk a bag into a hot cup of water.”

All my life, I’ve made myself smaller around the people I love. Somehow I even managed to stop growing at a mere five feet. Tiny enough to be portable. Quiet enough to blend into the furniture. Agreeable. Easy. Whatever it takes to keep them from leaving me behind. Anything to keep them from wondering why I’m still there.

“It’s just because I’m scared. I worry, if I’m not easy enough to be around, I’ll get left behind.”

Today. That’s what it always comes down to, isn’t it? The choice to live life for today or the future. But what is the future, really? Does it even exist? I keep trying to reach it, but every time I wake up, it’s today again.

“We weren’t made to share food, Jack. Eve gave Adam a bite of her apple, and God punished them both.” “I’m not sure you read that story right.”

“Staring at the same wall as you keep clocking your progress, even though you know you’re just going to keep running and running?”

Everything I believe in is pressuring me to buy my condo. I took this stable, boring, increasingly life-sucking job with its good salary for this very reason. But everything else I’ve been told to do—the gym memberships, the skin creams, the organic almond milks and coconut waters, the overall maintenance required to play this role of the advancing career woman—eats up all the money the job brings in.