When I’m Good

Everyone wants to be my friend. They want to bask in my sunshine. They want to be touched with my enthusiasm and joy. My love.

But when things go awry, and they do I just do not share, and the darkness begins to tap its bony fingers on the door to my soul, people are reluctant to hear. To share. To understand.

And I get it.

I am the cheer maker. I am the one with broad shoulders that all can lay their problems on. They are very very broad and I carry the fears and worries of others with ease. It is how I was made.

I am not always good. I am not always the bright light that shines in everyone’s corners.

Sometimes I am the darkness that consumes my soul. The anguish and fear I can no longer stuff back into the corner. It oozes out and I am face to face with the crazy, the insanity that I keep bound in an iron trunk at the bottom of the sea.

The sea of my emotions. My pain. My fears.

They are vast. They encompass parts of me that languish, starved because only I can see them.

And who really wants to see that ugliness anyways?

Reeling a line, gathering goop and ill wills. Twisting and turning, stuffing it all back in the box from whence it came.

I am not always strong.

I am not always ok.

But no one wants to know, so I shall always remain good.

It Had A Life of Its Own

Last week (?) possibly the week before, I arrived at work, went to the back to unlock my door and hang up my jacket. As I walked up the back stairs, the alluring scent of coffee drew me upwards ever faster.

The tantalizing scent was being emitted from the breakroom. I was agog with delight and wonder. This smell is not one that has been smelled for ages. The coffee pot in the breakroom has not been cleaned since we got it. Some say that was only a year or so ago, I say that it is like 10 years or so but apparently I am wrong.

This coffee that this coffee maker makes is atrocious. To drink it I must add something like 4 heaping spoons of sugar plus cream. And they use coffee creamer, 18%, which tastes ick but free coffee is free coffee. Unless of course ones taste buds are coffee snobs.

And of course mine are.

This smell though, it was a love letter to my Olifactory system. The aroma danced through my nose, delighting me, exciting me that someone had cleaned the coffee maker. This coffee was the nectar of the Gods. I was sure, ambrosia awaited me.

Prior to making myself a cup, I popped into the admin office to ask what he had done to the coffee maker. Was told nothing. Asked if he could smell the coffee I could and was given a weird look. Again, he could not smell it either.

I went into the breakroom. The delectable smell just a mere memory. I checked the coffee pot. It was full. I smelled the pot, and it still smelled burned but I was tricked by the smell. I poured in some cream and sugar and walked back to the admin office.

I stirred my cup. Smelled the brew and shook my head.

I took a sip.

And instantly regretted it.

The coffee came alive in my mouth. A bitter, cloying burnt flavor that coated my tongue and wrapped itself tightly along my taste buds, unwilling to let go.

I swallowed, and that was it. I ran to the breakroom and tossed the rest of the coffee down the drain.

How people can drink that swill is beyond me.