Rough Morning

Since I've been at college, I have become increasingly more and more thankful for text and picture messaging. It has really become my first method of communication to Best Friend. It makes me a little bit sad because we used to speak face to face every day and I miss that quite a lot. But when I am far away I can be satisfied with hours of text conversation.

Two nights ago I sent him a picture of my newly pierced ear to ask him what he thought. I had pierced the tab where my ear attaches to my head and I thought it was pretty fun. I was actually really excited over it.

He didn't like it.

"Kite," he said, " I like you without them. I don't want you to change."

"I haven't changed." I told him. "I just think they're fun."

He didn't tell me outright that he didn't like them, I suppose. But he has a way of being disappointed that always wrecks havoc on my soul. I promised him that I would only do one more because that's as many as I had planned. Besides, the asymmetry would be completely thrown off if i had left it the way it was.

It's amazing what we will do for a friend. Or at least what I will do. I know better than to do something stupid, but I certainly am influenced by their needs and wants.

Thus, this morning I completed my final act of rebellion involving a needle. I pierced my cartilage. I hadn't done anything to my cartilage before and it immediately began to spew blood all over the place the moment I removed the needle. I realized in the moment of this gorey mess that my phone was vibrating and I had just missed a call from Friend Boy telling me that I was late for a very important meeting involving paperwork.

You must picture this in your mind.

A small touseled girl with short, soaking wet hair standing in a tile bathroom wrapped in a towel. Blood is streaming from the top of her ear ebbing continuously from a practical pinprick and running all the way down the left side of her face and neck. An earring is stuck halfway into the newly created hole to try and keep her from bleeding out through this tiny hole stuck in her ear and she realizes that the paperwork she needs for the meeting she is now twenty minutes late for is in the middle drawer of her desk. The middle drawer is somehow jammed from the inside. She has not been able to open it for a while now.

I dressed in a whirlwind practically running to the meeting to explain the jammed drawer to my advisor and hoping he will sort of be understanding. Friend Boy met me at the door and laughed. Half an hour late, dried blood all over my ear and some still on my neck, an old wife beater worn under a jacket, jeans with holes in the knees, flip flops (it's freezing outside), and my hair still wet, partially frozen, and sticking up in places.

"Rough morning?" he asked me. I laughed.



Life is defined by rough mornings.