Once upon a time, there was a sad young thing who sat at her desk with her fancy second computer monitor and her adorable little tchotchkes and piles of things she needed to deal with that displayed to the rest of the world just how important she was and just how ludicrous her existential malcontent appeared.

She rolled that phrase, existential malcontent, around in her mouth, as she managed to savor an entire container of sad little strawberry hamentashen she’d planned to share with others.

She furrowed her freshly waxed brow (home job, not awful) as she pondered why her laptop had decided to dictate fonts for her. Presuming ass. But decided that didn’t really matter, since her beloved computer geek could fix it later.

She chewed on an especially gummy festive cookie and sat down to write.

She stared at her fingers on keys. At the letters that, in someone else’s eyes, might look like crude stick drawings. The approximation of the letter u signifies water, perhaps? Collecting of rain?

They should really start doing that. Collecting rain. Composting. Surely there’s a middle ground between wanton consumption and conspiracy theories.

Wanton. Waaaaahn-tuhhhhhn. She loves that word.

She really should’ve stopped eating those cookies well before they were gone. Shit.

*          *          *

It was troubling, really, self-discovery. Everything had turned a proverbial shade of blue, with all their differences and irregularities and the very things that make them human and wonderful and why the fuck did this seem so new?

She’s not an idiot. She’s many things, but an abject idiot she isn’t. “Everyone is different and beautiful and complex and experiences the same shit you do in their own way.” This has been her intellectual concept of the world for years. So why did it seem so revelatory now?

She does love ridiculous vocabulary. Why use “amazing” when “revelatory” will fit?

(He’s finally stopped giving her shit for “detritus.” It really is the most useful word around.)

Still. She can’t seem to write it.