I’m lying in bed, I just got back from this coffee plan with a good friend I haven’t seen in a long time.
We sat down in the little little café, she had an iced tea, I had a hot chocolate (so much for “coffee”). As we talked the missing months peeled away and the bridges of differing experiences and living worlds apart narrowed, and the hours whirred away and sleep curled my toes deliciously. I dropped her home, and I changed into my pajama’s, the hot milk still sitting happily warming my belly in the chill of the ac.
I lay in bed, and I thought, if I could blink thrice and get any wish I wanted, this is what I would wish for: that I would open my eyes after the third blink, and wake up next to my soulmate, the man of my hopelessly romantic trashy book seduced dreams.
And what if it came true?
He walks in, exhausted after a days work, and I’ve cooked him the perfect meal in our perfect home. I sit and eat with him, like my parents still do everyday after thirty one years of beautiful concoctions. Then there is beautiful dessert, and after that he tosses off his work shirt to beautiful abs and picks me up and throws me on our beautiful four poster bed and we make mad passionate love.
And then come the thankless hours of a housewife, the chafing of unfulfilled ambition, the resentment of untapped potential, the hatred of ungrateful teenage rebellion.
I lie in bed with my husband, our children grown, our rituals old, our passion long spent. And I think, if I could blink thrice and get any wish I wanted, when I opened my eyes on the third blink, this is what I would wish for: that I was young again, starting out in my career, and getting the neat little electronic paychecks and promotion letters, and sitting long hours with my boss and making presentations to accolades.
And what if it came true?
I’m walking into work, I’m late for my breakfast meeting, but that’s ok. I was up at five to my pilates, and then spent the morning reading the reports and doing the groundwork for the presentations. The breakfast meeting was only PR for my firm, and they’re used to my frantic schedule. I get back and before I know it its lunch, and before I know it, its time for the tele-conferencing. But somewhere around nine at night, after six coffees and a pack of cigarettes and eight missed calls from home, I’m nowhere near ready for the presentation I have to make at the regional HQ day after, and my flight is in eight hours and I have no time for the six other things on the agenda.
And as I sit in my private conference room waiting for it to become nine am in Europe, I think to myself, if I could blink thrice and get any wish I wanted, when I opened my eyes on the third blink, this is what I would wish for: that the years wouldn’t have slipped away from one deadline to the next, that the hours would have stretched longer so I could have done all I have to do and slept as well, that I could go by a day doing things only I wanted to do.
And I open my eyes, and I’m getting ready for a party. I’m laughing, we’re giggling, I’m dressed in this fabulous top and I’ve managed to pilate my ass till its perky and my stomach is flat. I walk into the dark and the lights and the shimmering sequins bouncing light, and my heart rises in happiness with the beat of the music.
And then its morning, days later, I think its been three nights since I slept, and I avoid looking in the mirror because I know I’ll look as ashen as I feel. I’ve tried to keep myself hydrated, but the energy drinks viciously sap my strength in a never ending cycle. I have a lunch to go to, and then a get together and then a preparty. I’ve tried telling them I need to stop, I need to sleep, but they don’t seem to listen, and I’m scared of the gaping emptiness when my phone doesn’t ring and the empty conversation isn’t around to block out the meaninglessness of it all. If I piss them off, who else will I party with then?
I remove the two day old makeup, I look at the baggy lids, the empty eyes, the exhausted circles, the raging physical need for a drink to stop the madness.
And I close my eyes, and I wonder, if I blink three times and my wish were to come true, this is what I would wish for:
That I would be lying bed after a quiet evening with a good friend, with a belly full of warm comforting chocolate milk, and be drifting off to sleep.