How To Fail Better
By Jessica Pierotti
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History really does just endlessly repeat itself, huh? Like Groundhog’s Day, but I’m on a 3-year cycle.
People over thirty really love to claim they’re getting smarter as they age - that they know themselves better, or that they would never make that mistake again. This is the mind grasping for a silver-lining to aging.
Blurrier vision and aching knees…but it’s ok, “I’m so much wiser now!”
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I stopped to buy a lemon and ended up being late. Just enough heat from the September sun to make me wonder if the sweat on my back would show through my shirt.
I consider the origin of the lemon while I walk through the park entrance.
What's the closest place to Chicago that lemons grow? Florida? Georgia? But they’re probably cheaper from Mexico.
Anxiety sweat is the worst. It's because of the apocrine gland, says Wikipedia - we’re trying to signal to those around us that danger is afoot.
Is that her over there?
Fuck. What am I even doing here.
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How do you keep from becoming a life preserver, or trying to cling to one, considering everything we’re going through. I’m good at treading water - spin my legs like an egg beater - but I fall short when it comes to endurance.
“So…what then? What can we do for each other?” I said.
“We haven’t talked in months, there’s no reason to start now.”
My ceiling is a good lumpy white stucco. Other people probably forgive more quickly.
I like pretending it’s the surface of the moon, or another planet. The water stains like lakes in the terrain - the room almost big enough that it can fill my vision.
Maybe some things are unforgivable.
She said, “It’s ok. Two things can be true at the same time."
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Sitting alone in the Wendy’s parking lot eating my fried chicken and feeling numb. Not so numb to not be annoyed by the person with the leaf blower circling my car, and violating my undeserved privacy -- while I also appreciated their determination to remove every single leaf from the precious 2-foot patch of grass circling the drive-thru.
I wasn’t even hungry, I only wanted to stretch out that in-between time of day. The car. The commute. It’s a pocket of time, a space with specific and finite responsibility, where you don’t have to hold two things at once.
Sometimes in the car you can pretend the pandemic doesn’t exist. Just enjoy the pettiness of road rage, or the pleasure of shifting into 4th on Grand Ave with the windows down.
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“I’m really trying to change my patterns at this point.” I said.
Doing work on yourself amid societal collapse is hilarious. But watching the world burn is just the current trauma framing the process of living. If it’s not this, it will be something else. So we do planks in the ashes, because we really do want to work on our core.
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The two of us ate mushrooms on Christmas Day. A minor but satisfying transgression. My sixteen year old self would be proud.
I become a planet for once and pull him into my orbit.
“Kingdoms have fallen for a woman like you.” They half-whispered, while we lay sprawled and tangled on the teal sea of my couch.
Of course that’s too good to be true. Too delicious of a moment. Too grandiose of a compliment.
But I want to be in the film version of my life, especially when I’m hiiiiigh - and this is the scene. The scene, where I finally recognize my worth? The one where we realize we’re in love? The one where we realize we’re not in love?
Doesn’t matter. But it’s an excellent fucking climax.
Something certainly happens after this.
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“There’s a certain amount of ‘running into a burning building’ involved in dating.” I said. “I mean, we know we’ll just get our hearts broken again, but sex is fun - love is crazy - so we just keep going like amnesiac idiots.”
I tried to soften the melodrama and vulnerability of this statement by joking about how tired I was getting.
He said quietly, “I don’t mind.”
I can’t tell if I’m advocating for heartbreak or complaining about it. Not that it really matters, I’ll keep making stupid mistakes anyway.
Just promise you’ll check out my ass when I walk away.