Repeat

She stood in front of the mirror; the purple towel wrapped around her body, which was still a little wet from the shower. There was something sad about the whole picture. Everyday the same routine. Get up. Shower. Coffee. Eat. Drive. Teach. Repeat. You could see the weariness in her eyes and in the way her shoulders slumped. The permanent indents from her bra straps making little, deep V’s; a constant reminder of the burden of a large chest. Sighing, she went about the business of the day. Dry. Flat Iron. Hair goop. Make-up. Walking down to the basement bedroom, still in her towel, she hoped her roommate would not wake up and see her barely dressed. She had seen him naked once, having had to get up in the middle of night to pee, and it was mortifying for both of them. For some reason, he was standing in his doorway, bare-assed, at 3:00 am. Julie did not want anything like that to happen again. She hurried a little bit to get downstairs.

            Trying to decide what to wear always came down to what she felt the least fat in – or what she could wear over any number of smoothing devices she owned. The best one, a black tank-top that was long enough to tuck in and made her belly rolls all but disappear was lying on the floor, surrounded by four or five days worth of dirty laundry. “Have I worn this too many times this week?” She put the shirt on anyway, deciding it didn’t really matter.  The middle school students she taught smelled worse than her anyway – and then covered that smell with way too much Axe body spray. No one would be able to tell that she was wearing the same shirt three days in a row.

            The drive to work was uneventful. Only three times did she have to honk her horn in dismay at the turtle-like and non-purposeful Colorado drivers. She didn’t even spill her green tea. There was a moment when the news anchor on the local NPR station did not ask a further probing question of the republican senator she was interviewing when Julie could be seen from the cars around her to be yelling at the radio. However, since it was wintertime, no one could hear what she was saying. It was probably something like “You idiot, he isn’t even answering the question! Don’t let him get away with that!” More likely than not, it was just mumbled gurgling; incoherent to anyone but her. Green tea still un-spilled, she pulled into the parking lot at school, marveling for the umpteenth time how there could only be two entrances into a middle and high school campus that housed over 3,000 students. She tried not to be annoyed, because this was fruitless. Today she was failing.

            The day trundled on – questions answered, lessons taught, homework collected. Same. Same. Same. The drive home was even less eventful (two honks, no stupid senator, forgotten tea.) When she pulled into the driveway of her brand new house, she finally felt at peace. Opening the door to the front room, she walked into the kitchen. Ready to sand and paint in solitude for a few hours, she was escaping from her former life. This house was where she would start fresh. Like the new paint covering the old tired wood of the kitchen cabinets, the house was giving her a new life, and she it. No more Repeat.