today I am doing the laundry. I haven't been particularly motivated to do it, but the need for it to get done is pressing, and my parents present pressure, and now it is late and the laundry is not done.
I want to go to bed earlier, as I haven't been particularly punctual these past nights and I need more sleep than air to breathe, but it's 2am and I'm lying in bed and I hear the mechanical song of the dryer's cycle coming to an end, and I get out of bed and sneak down the hall past the room of my parents and take out the load, replacing it with the clothes from the washer, but not replenishing that load, as I don't plan to be awake when it finishes and the clothes might sour.
the laundry is still not done, but earlier today, when it was still light outside and I hadn't yet had the idea of staying up late to stare into the dark and think about nothing while looking at nothing and attempting to reach a place where I can feel nothing, I would have rather sat in a bathtub and bled than do the laundry.
and not the concerning bleeding in a bathtub, either. just the inconvenient sort of period blood that no one really has any use for but constantly has, all the same. I did neither of those things. instead of bleeding in the bath or doing the laundry, I laid on my bed and listened to the same song on repeat and read a book.
two books, actually, but no one's counting.
they were books in a series, and I enjoyed them, if you wondered, but I'm done with them now. so they'll sit in a pile somewhere in my room until I return them to the library, return them home, for someone else to gaze upon and wonder what could be inside. I wonder that about myself, sometimes. how many people gaze upon me and wonder what could be inside.
how many people have set out to open me up, but never liked what they found or never got that far. I wonder how people see me, sometimes. what little things I may not even be aware I'm doing could ward people off with a glance, invite them in with a tug.
I never imagine that I'm a particularly inviting person, but I don't believe that no one has noticed me before. they notice the me that I present, and who can blame them? I'm not sure there's anything inside of me to read.
perhaps many have skimmed me and read me and it only took a glance to see all there was to see, so they moved on because I wasn't what they wanted. maybe I'm an unfinished book sitting dusty on a desk somewhere.
maybe I'd get more attention if I was a movie, a glorified, compacted version of myself.
maybe I'm just not that interesting, a lost book on the nonfiction shelf, where hardly anyone ventures. maybe I'm a book on the most boring, mundane subject and even those looking for some truth to read have no interest.
the fact is, I don't have much to offer.
maybe the dust lining my pages can tell me stories of the places they've been, and I can listen and dream as I sit stock still in my habitual life and don't venture outside of my lines. and maybe, someday I'll catch the interest of an especially bored someone, and they'll pick me up and dust me off and read me, and they'll fall in love with the order of my words and the flow of my sentences and want to read me again and again everyday.
and maybe, someday, the librarians will notice that no one wants to read me, and they'll pick me up and dust me off and throw me away, and the order of my words and the flow of my sentences will be forgotten, again and again, everyday.
and that's okay.
because you can't read every book, and you won't enjoy every book you read, and you have to learn to accept that. the mentality of loving everyone and everything can never be upheld, so I won't try. I'll read the books I want to read and suggest them to other people and accept a few suggestions myself, and lay on my bed at 2am and stare at the blades on my ceiling fan and the popcorn finish surrounding it and take a moment to appreciate the books I've read, the books that have changed me, the books that I'll never forget, and maybe I'll even think about them while I'm doing the laundry.
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