Day 11

I drive up the parkway like I have something to prove to every other car around me. To them, I am a little station wagon, presumably falling apart, but I tear up the left lane like it's my job.

It's not really my job, because I work in a craft store.

I work behind a cash register, consuming mass amounts of shit from the ignorant consumers that supply the revenue for my paychecks.

The useless products they buy pay for my meals and my mobility, and this is what would be considered an "honest living."

When I squeeze my body into a helplessly uncomfortable work uniform, I am automatically forced into conformity and an inexplicable sadness.

The sadness follows me from the space in front of my mirror, into the car, onto the parkway and stays with me behind a cash register.

On the parkway, I see two options approaching, the exit that I must take in order to get to work on time, or a toll plaza.

The toll plaza seems to be the only thing standing in between me and a world of unknown wonder. The fifty cents that separates me from freedom.

On the parkway, there is a single moment of emotion that takes over my body when I pass under the sign displaying these two opposite options.

On the radio, there is a line about the difference between living and truly being alive.

I think that I could be truly alive if I just take the toll plaza instead of the exit.

There is a burning.
There is the urge.
There is the desperation.

There is the exit.

And there is disappointment. There is depression.
There is the right turn, and the jug handle, the left turn and the all too familiar parking lot.

Behind the cash register, there is just me, and the crushing weight of all the shit that I must put up with for the sake of an "honest living."