Does This Seem Right To You?

As the day begins, she is at her best.  A morning person.  French roast.  In the driver's seat by 6:30 a.m.  The last person on Earth who still listens to broadcast radio.  They do play good music sometimes, music she hasn't heard for a long time.  Music she has never heard before.    She listens to the traffic report.  Every ten minutes on the eight.  It is a big production.  Sky Three.  Mobile Two. She loves the traffic report because as rough as her commute is thought to be, there are others that are generally much worse.  She wouldn't live in the East Bay for any amount of money.  Well, no.  That's an exaggeration.  Piedmont is nice.

As Faye Dunaway looks on.

Exaggeration is her medium.  Hyperbole is her argot. A big tough talker. She mentally pounds her fist on the desk.  Says "goddamnit" to just about everything.  "Seriously?  Really?  Fuck me dead." Phrases that pepper her interior monologue.  She stomps her foot on the gas, changes lanes without signaling, without looking.  Things that would enrage her if someone else did them.  Fuck that noise.  She pounds her hand on the steering wheel (oops, that was the horn, huh).  Mad as hell.  Not going to take it any more. Cue Peter Finch.

Because it's not fair.  None of it.  Being blamed for the current clusterfuck is particularly outrageous.  She owns the things she did do wrong, a long time ago when she was sick and no one would help her.  She rakes herself over the coals, she analyzes and examines and has insights and revelations and tears upon tears upon tears until she laughingly gets up to rehydrate.

Because how they got here happened in the last ten months.   The wrongdoing is so recent that it is still raw.   He won't even acknowledge, let alone apologize and atone.  All he can do is fold his arms, grit his teeth.  And deny, deny, deny.

By day, she gathers up her righteous indignation and drapes it like a shawl around her brave, squared shoulders.  Pounds her fists and swears her swears.  Goddamnit.  Motherfucker.  Yes.  All the injustice.

"Does this seem right to you?"  As the day progresses, she grows tired.  And uncertain.  Doubtful of herself, her judgment, her ability to assess situations.  When she was little, she learned not to trust her version of things.  What she thought and felt couldn't possibly be right.  Then she grew up and was told the same thing.  You have a mood disorder.  Everything you do is suspect.  Every thing you feel.  None of it is real or right.

"Does this seem right to you?"  She is embarrassed to admit she doesn't know and so she refrains from asking other people.   If they said (which they did), "No, not even a little bit, not even close," the next thing she heard (even if they didn't say it) was "How come you don't know?"  And the next thing she heard after that (even if they didn't say it) was "Why haven't you changed it yet?"

They are fair questions.  Why indeed?  Goddamnit.

She takes off her wedding ring, with many tears, and little fanfare.  And rubs her finger where that ring used to be.