Sad Girl Autumn
by Kayla Kavanagh
Just when you think you’ve hit rock bottom you find yourself Googling how many calories are in Zoloft. Google informs you you have an eating disorder and you wonder what dose of which rescue medication will blunt the shame brought forth by this discovery. You opt against pills and in favour of online shopping, a coping mechanism that has fewer calories and produces the same dull affect. If you could be one thing in this world, it’s a Shein model.
Your cat is also underfed, a circumstance that sparks considerably less joy than your own malnourished frame. You consider him a roommate more than a dependent to explain why he never sits on your lap or sleeps in your bed: he’s arrogant, and he knows that getting involved with you is below him.
What you want is what everyone wants: a Daily Harvest subscription and a man to take up space in the kitchen portion of your studio apartment blending dragon fruit and lychee smoothies for two (tastes like: fresh strawberry sorbet). Instead you have only the cat, who turns his nose up at Temptations: Tasty Chicken Flavor and any other bagged treat that falls below the six-dollar shelf. Which is unfortunate, because you’re a nail technician in a college town and your clientele can somehow pass calculus and pay sorority fees but can’t, for the life of them, remember how to tip twenty percent.
You listen to “All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version) (From The Vault)” and “All Too Well (Sad Girl Autumn Version) [Recorded at Long Pond Studios]” to get through your commute but sometimes the cloud cover hangs too low for even Taylor’s bright voice to transcend and you’re left to consider whether Cindy the finance major will want Gel Pen Blue or Purplexed for today’s pedicure. You want to ask who in the state of Michigan will be seeing her toes between November and April but you’re afraid the answer will depress you, so you drum up lighter topics of conversation, like that mutual acquaintance of yours who got trampled at Astroworld.
After work you do not eat dinner, nor are you greeted by your cat at the door. You scroll through a few articles about eliminating the fatty tissue between your jaw and neck—see: skin—and deliberate whether your future partner will hail from Bumble, Tinder, or Hinge. The man from your most recent situationship is in medical school and you know he won’t answer on a Monday, but you FaceTime him just to hear it ring, just to let that ellipsis drill three holes of hope within you: FaceTiming michael from wonderbar :)…
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Kayla Kavanagh is an MFA student at the University of South Florida, where she teaches composition and creative writing. Her work has appeared in the Roanoke Review, West Trade Review, LandLocked, Typishly, Oxford University Press Blog, and elsewhere. @kaylakavanagh21 on Twitter.