The time my words dig a hole out of which my best friend must climb.

If you pay special attention at 1:21, you can see John’s face when he subtly shakes his head as if to communicate to me, “YOU ARE MAKING IT WORSE”.

Knowing the consistency with which I go, she asked me if I ever felt like not going to my Tai Chi classes on Tuesday and Thursday nights.

I thought about it, and came to the realization that I didn’t. There have been winter nights where the combination of snowstorm and ailing transit system have suddenly left me with a welcome free night, but other than that, I always enjoy going to class.

Before Tai Chi was table tennis ((Unfortunately, they’re both on the same nights during the week, which means I have to choose one over the other), and some days, I’d have to force myself to go. But when I was there, in the middle of a good rally, then panting, sweating, exhausted afterward, I’d always remind myself that I was glad I went.

Tai Chi offers me something else though, a way for me to lose myself for an hour or two. Maybe because it takes so much focus, or so much focus to not focus on anything, that I’m able to forget everything else. Even when I’m practicing the form on my own it’s not the same. Being at the studio with the other students — learning from and teaching each other, applying the principles we can’t practice by ourselves — lets me get away. On top of that, I know that I’m improving, even if I may not notice it in myself.

And that’s enough to make me look forward to my next class as soon as I step out of the studio into the cool night air.

I’m the au pair with the jazz tapes, telling him to use Davis and Coltrane on the first date. The hero’s childhood buddy, who dies in mortar fire during their service in the Second World War. The awkward friend who isn’t attractive enough to play the lead. The sibling confidante, who contradicts the protagonist with cynicism, only to be proven wrong in a satisfying fit of glory.

All my life, I dreamed of greatness, of being the main character in some quixotic story.

But I’m slowly realizing that I’m only a deuteragonist.

I wrote this entry about four or five months ago, but never published it. I held off because I wasn’t sure if it would be true a week after I wrote it. Weeks turned into months, until the sudden realization that I don’t feel this way now.

I regret not publishing it at the time. Even though it holds no relevance anymore, at the very least, it would have been a time stamp of how I felt in the moment. There are so many fleeting memories and emotions that change here, part of my ephemeral nature. But part of me thinks that it took this realization to give me the strength to say it.

Maybe I’m starting to believe in myself.

The checkout clerks (girls mostly) at my grocery store have a strange habit of not acknowledging the next customer until the current one has paid. So there’s often a point where the current customer has passed the cash register to put their groceries in a cart, and they’re just waiting for their credit card to go through.

I end up standing right in front of the clerk, who won’t say anything, even though you know they see you out of their peripheral vision. They only say hello as soon as the previous customer has been rung through. Like they’re computers who can’t handle more than one task per person at a time.

It’s quite awkward.

I tell her she’s beautiful. Over and over again. As often as I can.

But she shakes her head, and says I only think so because I love her.

It’s true. But would I love her any less if she didn’t have those soft, innocent eyes? If she didn’t wear her hair up, or down, or curly, or straight, or different every time I saw her? If her body didn’t curve so distractingly when she lets herself fall into me?

It makes me wonder if anyone sees the same thing that I do.

To me, her beauty is obvious, not subtle in any way.

So I tell her, over and over again.

Sometimes I think she’ll start to believe me if I say it enough.