Update on my mom’s jesse pinkman obsession: she now calls breaking bad “Jesse” and will ask me “hey do you want to watch another episode of jesse and see what jesse does” i feel like he’s my fucking sibling im competing with for attention
My handwriting is the same style as the teacher’s who I had when I was nine. I’m now twenty one and he’s been dead eight years but my i’s still curve the same way as his.
I watched the last season of a TV show recently but I started it with my friend in high school. We haven’t spoken in four years.
I make lentil soup through the recipe my gran gave me.
I curl my hair the way my best friend showed me.
I learned to love books because my father loved them first.
How terrifying, how excruciatingly painful to acknowledge this. That I am a jigsaw puzzle of everyone I have briefly known and loved. I carry them on with me even if I don’t know it. How beautiful.
Sometimes I think about how many people I met in food service who smoke. I think about growing up in an upper-middle class neighborhood, and how it was drilled into me that smoking is addictive and bad for your health. I think most people, in America at least, are well aware of that. Whenever I would decline a cigarette, on the rare occasion it was offered, saying I dont smoke the reply is always "good, don't start."
I think about the long shifts, working on your feet all day, with breaks scheduled down to the minute. Every second of your day controlled by the clock, regardless of how tired you might be. However, in food service, there is one exception. The smoke break. Most managers respect the smoke break. The old school ones do, at least. The newer crop less so. Food service is fast paced, highly stressful work, and nicotine, in addition to all of its addictive and damaging properties, is a relaxant. If a burger flipper or barista says they need to step outside for a smoke, you let them do it, and you dont begrudge them for it.
It's such a strange bit of kindness. One that we know is terribly harmful in many respects, but performed anyway. I think about all of the interconnected systems, of health, of education, of exploitation, that leads a person to knowingly trade in years of their life for five minutes of peace. I wonder how many people in my upper middle class neighborhood would propose simply banning the smoke breaks. I wonder how many people I know would just break.