Thursday, June 08, 2006

Finish it

Her boss paused in front of her desk at 6:33 PM. She sat there amidst piles of paper, post-its and pens and looked at him. "Is something wrong?" he asked her.

For a moment, she considered telling him everything that was wrong in her life, her hangover, her embarrassing drunken behavior the night before, her self-induced romantic problems. But that would be unprofessional, she concluded and instead perked up, smiled and replied, "No, nothing's wrong."

She turned back to the screen and stared at the words and the unfinished sentence. The cursor blinked at her. She was in control, wasn't she? Why did she feel like she wasn't?

Mr. Wrong was wrong, wrong wrong wrong. He interfered with her thinking, her self-respect, her work, even her colleagues. She tried to stop wanting him. Then she didn't want to stop. They had talked, analyzed, rationalized, moralized, fantasized, and chastised. It all became a blur in their minds and they weren't thinking clearly in the haze. Something inside each of them was telling them do something, while everything else was telling them not to. It was so exhausting. It would be easier to stop fighting it, stop thinking, and just relent to what they could not deny.

Wrong wrong wrong, she thought to herself.

The cursor continued to blink at her. If she made a mistake, she could erase it easily. An incorrect keystroke would only exist in her mind then. It would be nothing more than a memory of something insignificant. But she would know it had happened, even if it was erased.

I don't know, she thought. She ran her fingers through her hair and looked at the clock. 6:37. She turned back to the screen and watched the cursor flicker curiously against the white backdrop of her screen. She knew how to finish the sentence. She just had to do it. And so she placed her fingers over the keyboard and began to type.

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