The One Sentence

April twenty-third. I looked it up.

That's the sentence. I wrote it in my notebook first, which felt absurd, and then I typed it here, which felt more honest. The tab is still open. I haven't closed it and I haven't done anything about it and both of those things are true at the same time, which is, apparently, where I am. The posting is for a part-time position at a catering kitchen. Simone mentioned it in passing at a Tuesday session in late March, not as a suggestion, more as a weather report, and I opened the browser tab that same evening and read the whole thing and then left it there. Three weeks. That's how long the truest record of where you actually are with a decision can just sit in your browser and collect no action whatsoever.

Simone came over this morning, which was not planned, which is how most of the useful things happen. She came in, poured herself coffee like she lives here, and sat down across from me at the table, and I told her the tab was still open. She looked at me for a second and said, 'yeah, that sounds right.' Just that. No follow-up question. Not 'so what are you going to do' or 'have you thought about', just a flat acknowledgment that landed somewhere between absolution and diagnosis.

The tab, still open.

I told her I'd written one sentence about it on the blog. She said, 'just the one?' I said yes. She nodded like that was the correct number of sentences.

She named it before I did. Again.

I don't know what I want. I know that sounds like a thing people say when they actually know but aren't ready, and maybe that's true, but I'm trying to be honest about the difference between not ready and genuinely not knowing, and right now I think it's the second one. The tab is still open. That's the whole post. That's what I have.