michael king

In no particular order, an incomplete list of the bad habits I’ve discovered:

• lugging warm laundry back to my apartment, setting the hamper to the floor boards, and never quite getting around to putting the clothes away
• during temporary stays, identifying a ‘space’ for my things, usually in the living room, and casually expanding it throughout my stay
• buying produce –– peppers, strawberries, potatoes –– and failing to eat it before it withers
• balking at the idea of spending thirty dollars on something useful while casually dropping thirty-five on dinner and drinks
• telling every story that pops into my mind, neurons firing as I’m listening, and feeling certain, each time, it’s right to do
• granting myself permission to disappear on rainy days
• revisiting the scars in my story, wresting that tissue apart, mining old wounds for meaning
• remembering the people who left, in vibrant detail
• bargaining with my body through healing processes –– dancing on sore ankles, running with a scratchy throat and feverish forehead
• practicing the same impatience when it’s my spirit that needs healing
• getting so swept up in passion for my perspective that I forget to listen
• building a case against the people who’ve hurt me, evidence with razor-sharp edges
• building a case for myself, keeping tally sheets of the times my love has borne fruit, as though this will undo the other tally sheet I can’t stop keeping, the scars I’ve inflicted in my recklessness
• believing I will keep myself safe from pain by negotiating myself down from the things I really want
• putting the dishes off until the sink is full and daunting
• insisting on pushing the conversation into territory that interests me –– what’s heavy, what’s hurting, burning hope, hollow grief, searing pain
• falling in love with the idea of somebody and pitting their reality against their potential
• deciding almost any setback is cause to order Chinese food, wrap up in blankets, and watch a movie
• convincing myself I am impossible to know
• running my hardest for people who demand the chase
• leaving cabinets and closet doors wide open, their contents peering out blankly
• watering plants only once they’ve begun to droop
• tabling hard decisions until the last possible moment
• spending the first thirty minutes of my day in bed, scrolling through my phone, watching minutes dissolve