Assupmtions

Every day, I live my life nothing but one assumption to another. When I get home at night, I assume the apartment is empty of human life. I assume an oncoming car won't swerve its way into my lane. I assumed my husband was going to be faithful. I assume my heart will continue to beat and my lungs will continue to filter air in and out. I assume my flesh will react to touch and heat and cold. I assume I will continue to be. I assume fabric softner will make my clothes smell good.

So why do we become assholes when we assume something and we are wrong? Would someone call me an asshole if someone was driving and decided they liked my lane better and blasted the side of Fyona? No. I would be in an "accident". If I came home and someone was there? I would be a "victim", not an asshole. Even if I left the front door unlocked. My assumptions about what was going to happen would be wrong, but I wouldn't be held responsible for it. Yet when dealing with others, we can so easily become an asshole if we assume something different than what they are thinking. Why this double standard? Do we live in such a constant state of assumptions that, when we notice one being wrong, we feel the need to attach severe punishment on to it?

Case in point.....I assume this 3:30 am rant was the direct product of reading Stephen King for the last three hours straight. Maybe not. Maybe this is a touch of brilliance and I needed to write it down to later form my thesis from it. Or maybe I am living in the dream world of thinking I could write something brilliant in that way. Maybe I am really, I mean really, tired and am relying on spell check to make me not look like a complete idiot. Yet the whole time, I am assuming my eyes will focus, my fingers will find the appropriate keys, my mind will be able to communicate the motion needed to make my fingers find the keys. And let's not forget the ever so constant breathing and heart beating and all the other minute muscles spasms that are making my existance possible. If I was wrong about one of those last assumptions, I wouldn't be an asshole...I would be dead.

Maybe this shit is only deep because it's now 3:34 in the am on Wednesday night/Thursday morning and I have a belly full of damn good writing. Maybe I am one Cosmopolitan away from feeling like Carrie Bradshaw.

Or maybe, just maybe, these things that pop into my head as I lie in bed- one arm tucked comfortably under the pillow, right leg bent at the knee, assuming a stance of a sprinter about to leave the start line, Kitten to my right, soft glow of the alarm clock to my left making a light blue halo against the wall-maybe these thoughts have a purpose, a reason.

About a week ago, I was seeing the world floating through my closed eyes as I was about to enter the land o' the sleep, when this thought popped into my head. I had to get up and write it down in the living room on an envelope reserved for paying Com Ed their monthly ransom. It may or may not have any usefulness, but since dreaming a poem years ago, I have made it a practice to write down things I feel may at some point in time be of use.

This particular thing may be good, may not be. I don't know that I can judge that accurately for at least a few more years. Those things need to be tucked away in desk drawers and exhumed at a later date, when any and all emotion can be removed from it and it can be seen as something apart from me and my human-ness. But sometimes.....sometimes this need to write takes over and I can't do anything but listen to it, give in to the drilling in my head....feel the keys giving way to the pressure coming from my fingers or the pen digging into my middle fingernail on my right hand. Those moments are the ones in which I describe things, I mean, really describe things. Those are the moments when I feel I actually get what it is to be an observer of life. Or something like it, anyway.

Maybe it's just that the mundane looks very glossy and glittery at 3:42 in the am. When my leg falls asleep and feels achy and full of needles underneath my laptop. And it hurts to curl the toes. Maybe it's the need to write because there are moments when I feel the accute reality of living by myself in a large city with friends a phone call away. I wonder if we as a race chose to sleep in the night because we wanted to avoid that 'real' feeling. When everyday, normal sounds take on a different meaning and severity. When normal trees cast wary shadows on walls. When we feel the most naked, despite the layers of clothing and sheets and blankets piled on us to protect us from the somehow dangerous night.

The biggest kicker of all? I may read this in the morning and laugh my ass off, like I laugh off some really creepy dreams or scary night visions. Or maybe I won't. Maybe this will be the dream that, no matter how many times it is told and retold at parties and in circles of captive audiences, still makes my stomach ache in some distant way, as if it was all reality and I am just waiting for the ship to come in and shuttle me to that alternate reality where the shit really did happen and that other me really did exist.

I just can't believe it's almost 4 in the morning.