Some Light Bathroom Reading

I am a book.  A fast paced trashy bodice ripper you find next to the Raisinettes at CVS. Not quite Jackie Collins, but not National Enquirer trash either.  I am not ashamed.  You mind find the enjoyment of reading me on the toilet or tub, but I am too shameful to pick to be seen in a restaurant or work.  Yet I know you wouldn’t resist me in an airport because of the anonymity it provides; you could always leave me for the next one to read. 

            I start out real slow, difficult to get caught up in, a slow page turner, almost grating the way I had this perfect Norman Rockwell childhood complete with puppies and kitties and damn homemade birthday cakes.  Then I turn eleven and you start realize from extreme foreshadowing there will be much to be had from this one; not quiet a waste of $5.99.  Was it the near death experience of becoming borderline hemophiliac or the therapy inducing trauma of catching my father schlepping my mother’s best friend in our house.

Fast-forward through years of passive aggressive typical teenage antics complete with heroin use and cocaine addiction right up to that moment of clarity. A term AA and NA members are familiar with and one of many euphemisms I “borrow” from the steps although I refuse to believe in any of the steps.  Something about eating stale donuts or crappy bagels with even cheaper staler coffee, listening to the wailings and tragedies of degenerate losers is not enlightening.  It makes me humiliated for them. Like sitting in a room with stranger and admitting you were drunk enough to sleep with your brother and cousin is not redeeming. Yeah tell a therapist and your OBGYN so we know if Jr. has a flipper, but don’t sit there thinking you are forgiven for all that.  Shit happens. And we deal with it. But we can never forget and those we did it to won’t either. 

Fast-forward a little more and I get busy. It more ways then one. I start out by cleaning house and getting my act together. Then I guess one of those many proverbial “breaks” from “housecleaning” I get busy.  And end up busy with a newborn, and then a toddler. Busy playing failed housewife, and then bitter divorcee. Busy reinventing myself into eager college student.  Busy working as an eager beaver in corporate America. Only to be knocked down at every turn. And not because I am a minority, but because I am not enough of one.   Busy losing interest and grips on time management and suffering from senioritis when I am only a junior. 

Busy. The book because even faster paced when I rediscover love, and what it means to want sex again.  To live my life sometimes for me, selfish or not, and realize that while I am no saint, it does not make me a horrible person. That my daughter will turn out stubborn and free spirited as me no matter how hard I try.  I realize that while I have had a sad life, a pitiful life, a joyful life, a weird life, it is MY LIFE. And it is this that makes you finish me with a smirk on your face. And what makes you return to CVS to buy another copy to leave next to the toilet at work.