Reminder

I take my daily dose each morning, with a little bit extra to keep from screaming in the middle of work.

I love driving. It makes me feel more relaxed each morning. The road is almost always clear in Oklahoma, and everything ahead belongs to me. Isolation has always been the greatest comfort of the day.

It takes a lot of effort to pull into the driveway, and it's most certainly not because of the horror of parallel parking. I've never quite understood the portrayal of parallel parking in media, with the constant jokes about how difficult it is.

Painting isn't difficult, but before every job I have to have that horrifying interaction with the client. They're always so repetitive. There are the kinds of people who say "surprise me" and are always dissatisfied with what they get but won't build up the guts to say it. Then there are the people who have some sort of idea they want to convey. This morning it was "when my dreams try to tell me something that I know is wrong." So I drew a picture of a dark haired girl drowning in the water at sunset, and another girl that looked nearly the same standing on a wave with bare feet and a long white dress, pointing one way, but her reflection pointing the other. The client was the only one disgusted, and of course he grumbled a little, but everyone else was amazed. People tend to be strange like that.

While I was driving home I saw a small spot on a fence where stuffed animals were being left. I stopped by and saw the "in memory of Kate" note that lay on the ground in the shape of a heart, the note I had seen so many times before. I didn't know her, and I don't know why I knelt down and prayed again. I'm agnostic so it doesn't really make sense. I guess the habit was built into me from Christian parents, or maybe it's because I went to Catholic school. I've never believed there was an afterlife, because if there was it would make this life completely worthless. Keep everyone dead and they can end their lives knowing that they completely enjoyed it. Make everyone immortal and they fade into boredom, until they wish death was possible, until they go insane. So what am I praying to? I know that after someone dies, there's no reason to feel remorse. Regret has never made sense. Everything is guaranteed to happen from the moment the universe was created, and there was nothing we could do about it.

And yet why am I praying? I keep asking myself that as I get back into the car and drive home.