so i am wandering the maze that is the Scandinavian furniture shopping mall that is more or less 5 miles long looking for storage shit, wasting time and trying not to think about how my life has gone to shit (because it has, its pretty bad right now) and my shopping cart runs into this guy, and he looks like you, god, he looks so much like you, and our eyes meet and i wanted to run up and hug him, tell him how much i have missed him & tell him how fucking shitty everything is right now & how the week before everything seemed so damn great & then i fell off the cliff... my eyes look down.
he's not you, of course. but, god, he looks so much like you & his cart is all full of the same sort of things i have picked out, and then, i hear him speak, and he has an accent like yours, i am not even joking, and the hairs on my arm stand on end, and i just stand there in a time warp, because it's like,
all of these parallel moments, quantum physics and what have you and if choice a had led to d instead of c & could that have ever been you & i shopping for furniture or am i just being all stupid in my head and wishing for things i just know i can never have. i am paused, thinking about this and trying to not cry, because it's been an emotional week for me & i am holding this fucking candle holder, staring at it, when his asian girlfriend comes up to him all dressed like me, and i think to myself;
god, life has a way of torturing me.
i take my cart, and i move around the maze, because ikea is just this rat maze of cheap furniture, you know, cheap furniture for all of these women who are pregnant, i am one of the few who is not, who is single, bitterly single & angry & wondering what the fuck i am doing in the middle of suburban Illinois on a sunday with only fifty bucks at this place.... trying to ignore my fate, i guess. i was invited by a guy who is a photographer, a recent friend of mine, who didn't want to go alone, who i am going to, at some point, do a photoshoot with, but he is of course, on his own ikea mission for his furniture for his apartment. i am still living at home in my parents house. not a lot has changed, but everything has changed. i am so different as a person. very much ready to move on.
i find myself in the children's department, my original goal for being there to get my brother a nightlight for his birthday, like one of the little toys you and i both like. it lights up and changes colors and mood & it reminded me of his house which i have finally visited & my brother is angry and not doing well either so i figured a goofy toy that lights up would make a good birthday present because i always give him useless toys that i don't think he quite understands. i look at the stuffed animals, and as i am staring at them, i find, of all things, a stuffed rat.
ratty rat rat. the rat race. aren't we all living in it? i think. ironic that its a children's toy. i pick up a medium sized black one for $2.99. it is sitting on my bed right now as i type this. he doesn't have a name. i move my cart and who do i run into, but doppleganger you. our eyes meet again. shift down. pretend we don't see one another. keep on going with the maze. he with his girlfriend, and me with my haunted thoughts of you.
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