Living inside her body felt like she was trying to balance sandbags on top of her head, which did not help her as she set down people’s coffee. Their eyes would seldom move up to her face, and she liked it that way because then she wouldn’t have to shape her mouth into a fine, polite curve showing the accepted measure of pleasantness and focus. She preferred being a disembodied arm that would place plates of eggs and hot mugs down efficiently without the friendly airiness that was normally encouraged. This place was for people to work, servers stayed in their own heads, everyone was happier for the disconnect. This is the only place she could work with the weight on top of her.
There was a downward pressure on her skull that released only when she was listening to someone else speak tragically or when she got lost in the instrumental music of the grocery store or sleep. She didn’t know if any other human being felt this pressure the way she did and she was certain after trying to describe it that she couldn’t. Doctors said it was a migraine caused by stress. She felt no stress of her own though, only the worlds. Only what she picked up in faces and repeated opinions.
During the silent bits though, between the talking parts, thats when she felt the invisible alliance her body had with others, an absorption, a knowing that whats inside of them is allowed to enter her. During this exchange, the heaviness on her brain lifted. But the burden returned once she was alone. “The mind only knows how to think backwards”, she thought. “Everything we believe about the world is the truth upside down and on a tilt, and inside out. Our feelings and judgements are all barely real besides a theoretical agreement place that we’re all complying to meet at.” She is washing her hands in the bathroom and thinking about this. She has nothing else to think about besides that she does not believe in reality, but believes in the realness of it.
She blames the head pressure for the masturbation on consciousness. She’s only thinking these things because the weight wont let her think about anything else. She has worn out her clogs. Her heels ache. She is tethered between her foot pain and the pushing on her head. Is it bullying her or holding her?
A lady with a book and snotty nose orders another hard boiled egg. The woman has had six eggs total including the three in her omelet. This woman isn’t working or busy, but she is brisk and wants more eggs. Damn it. She appreciated this about her. She enjoyed the submissive robotic quality to her work because it added a sort of ballet to the thoughts she was thinking and the pressure in her head seemed pleased to be there.
Was it a bad thing? Did she really want it gone. She wondered if it was just more of her lost above her. It didn’t seem menacing, just heavy like a boulder stuck between two sheets of rock. She knew if it fell off completely something would be changed. Maybe she would begin to believe reality again. Maybe she would be completely forced out of it. Sometimes she wondered if it was the only force keeping her from sliding on her stomach.
This was the world she really wanted, a writhing one where people seldom walked, but crawled and rolled and slept with their bodies draped over things. She wanted people to eat on their sides with their legs open in a post coital, indulgent way. She wanted to see the world in a trance that would keep them off their feet and keep them looking at the sky and sideways and upside down with their pelvis up. She wanted people to look into her eyes and out the other side the way she could. A slow, vibrating freak out where everyone is sharing a womb. But not here. This is where she worked and this is where the pressure could rest on her comfortably.
.