86

$86,000.  Eighty-Six Thousand Dollars.

"Mickey said that Don made eighty-six thousand dollars last month," Shawn said. 
Why are you telling me this?  Do you think it will make me feel better?
"I really don't give a fuck what Don did!" I exclaimed.  "And why is Mickey going around telling other people's business?  It's none of our fucking business!!"

We brought in around thirty dollars the day before.  I don't understand why everything--EVERYTHING-- always has to so fucking difficult for us.  Don is a liar; he sells junk at outrageous prices; he screws people every chance he gets.  We get fucked because we're decent people.  Don is simply a bad person.  He's not a good person.

"We can't compare ourselves to what others are doing," Shawn said.
"Of course we can!  Isn't that why we started all this?  Because we saw what everyone else was doing?"

I never wanted to open a store.  I told him that.  He always talks about having a kid.  I've told him I may never want to have a child.  I've told him that.  Will he talk me into that too?

Out of the blue today, as though a switch were flipped, I became suddenly, severely depressed.  I am not in the place where I want to be.  I am nothing that I want to be.  I have never followed my "passion" as Shawn has spoken about his metal works many, many, many times.  I always do what he wants to do.  He repeats himself often.  Ninety percent of what he is saying is repeat conversation.  After the third time, it's hard to feign interest.  He gets mad when I finish the sentence for him.  It's the fourth time I'd heard it.  I could tell your story back to you as though it were my own.  I will not allow myself to have a baby because I was talked into it.  And I don't necessarily want to be alive just so I can work 15 hours per day.  I want to live.

Don't tell me these things take time.  It didn't take time for Don the Liar, or for Chuck & Melanie, or for Gerald & Angie.  Fucking hyprocrites.  Thirty fucking dollars....


My mom asked me to make copies of Bob's slideshow.  I'd put it off for so long.  I don't have to watch it or anything, just move files and click the mouse.  It's hard to believe he's really gone.  Still.  The CD drive whirs as I type this.  It's still so difficult.  I still don't understand why Bob had to die.  It's been six weeks and it still doesn't make any damn sense to me.  I feel as if as long as I've been alive, nothing has gone the way that it should.  I told Shawn I was a jinx because when I watch the store a single customer never enters.  I compare that to the day of the first memory I can remember.  Maybe I am jinx.  Look at what has followed me.  Look at what I have followed.  Fucking jinx.