raw

    You know those perfect little images that come out of nowhere...? In an email, a friend referred to me, my state of mind, my current mode, as 'raw.' I wouldn't have put it that way, and I was taken aback by it when I read it. Of course, I was also 3 sheets to the wind (or 3+ bottles in, depending on how you want to look at it), so I'm not sure how clearly I was seeing. As I settled into the day today, that word kept coming back to me. "Raw." Not necessarily bad, just unfinished. Pending. Work in progress.
    There are times when my life, and particularly my work life, seems peculiar and borderline cruel. Bear with me, because this is an extended metaphor. I sometimes feel like an alcoholic working in a bar that also does off-sale. It's bad enough that I can see it all around me, and smell it, and see other people [seemingly] enjoying it. I can practically taste it. But it's also exactly the one thing that I cannot have. Not just "bad for me" but the thing that I cannot have. Prohibited. The thing that could theoretically kill me if I have just a taste.

All I want is just one taste. 

It just looks so good! Just one taste. 

Surely that would satisfy me, wouldn't it? 

I wouldn't need anything else if I could just try that.

    I watch all these other people moving around, drinking happily - and worse, buying their booze and taking it home to be unspeakably happy in ways that I cannot even fathom - while I move fitfully in their world, not really a part of it, unable to function properly. Not even knowing what's lacking to make me capable of functioning properly. Just knowing that something's not right.
    Today the situation was made exponentially worse by the addition of another factor. He usually exists sort of tangentially to but not really as a part of the main problem. Today, though, he was all wound up in it. He was the bacon-wrapped steak with seasoned fries, delivered to the table of the person who was on a medically-ordered fast. Yes, in the middle of the bar that also does off-sale, stuffed to the gills with people drinking and buying good beer and Cruzan blue frogs and Chambord sours. Happy people, any of whom could eat that fucking salty steak and those hot, crispy fries, and wash it all down with delicious intoxicating brew.
    All the while I sat, literally wanting to bang my head on the desk, wondering what the hell I've done to deserve this. Not like I don't know what I've done to deserve this.

Just a couple of bites off that steak - the edge pieces, with the bacon? 

I know I can't have the whole thing. 

And a couple of the thicker fries, the really heavily-seasoned ones? 

'Cause they'll taste really good, and someone else can have the whole plate.

And make that shot a double.