Sometimes something resembling guilt quietly persists beneath my surface. It comes at funny times like when I'm watching shitty on demand movies back to back on a chilly Friday night. The breeze coming through the windows smells vaguely of the lake that lies four blocks east, it feels like autumn but it is most definitely not. I'm alone, plus my faithful furry companion, but not in the least bit desiring the company of any other. But I feel like I should be navigating the pot hole ridden streets of Milwaukee perched high atop a pair of teetering shoes, fake laughing at someone's joke, clutching the sweaty hand of a boy trying to convince me to come home with him, stumbling over words in a gin soaked haze. This seems to be an expectation, a scenario I feel obligated to act out repeatedly and I don't know why.

I sometimes felt the same way when I found myself sitting beside the Governor and his wife at some quickly forgotten charitable function. When the Governor stood to speak, my eyes would wander about the sea of black cocktail dress clad women who sat dutifully besides their sometimes unfaithful, unethical, secret keeping husbands, the average age and bank account would usually be three times that of mine. I would always feel it then, at the end of the night as the ladies and their men would stream out into their awaiting town cars, I felt not so much that I didn't belong but that I should be elsewhere, doing something more than accessorizing someone else's life. I am so thankful to have escaped. Now my days are filled with baking cinnamon rolls from scratch, then eating them all, and purposely walking past the fire house seven times a day to flirt with the brave heroes of my tiny little village. I don't think I'd have it any other way.