I held a peanut in my hand. \u00a0I cracked it in half. \u00a0The fibers in the shell split from the checkerboard pattern leaving frayed edges. \u00a0I slid one half into two halves once again and I felt something break between my finger and thumb. \u00a0I removed the no longer held together shell from the meat that was within. \u00a0As I did so, it became clear that I had crushed that half of the peanut. \u00a0I poured it from one half shell into the palm of my hand where it sat in a little pile like a pile of gravel. \u00a0I put it in my mouth, lightly chewed, and swallowed. \u00a0I then used both hands to pry open the other half of the shell. \u00a0When I did so, the nut within was not damaged at all. \u00a0I held the perfect nut between my finger and thumb. \u00a0Not even the two halves of itself were separated. \u00a0I put it in my mouth and made it more like the first. \u00a0It tasted the same. \u00a0It was still nutty and slightly oily. \u00a0It tasted just like you’d expect a peanut to taste like, but so had the damaged peanut. \u00a0Why then, would I bother attempting to preserve shape of all things? \u00a0What effect has that on the overall experience or at least on the part that one partakes in the experience for? \u00a0Why do I bother questioning peanuts? \u00a0What do I think I’ll find? \u00a0What am I looking for? \u00a0Is there something I’m missing? \u00a0Is there something that someone isn’t telling me? \u00a0Is there something that I just don’t understand, but nobody realizes because it’s just such an obvious thing that everyone assumes that everyone else already knows it? \u00a0Do they see me and know that I don’t know? \u00a0Do they laugh at me? \u00a0Should I care? \u00a0Why? \u00a0Why not? \u00a0Why am I asking a peanut? \u00a0This is absurd. \u00a0I’d laugh at myself if I wasn’t myself. \u00a0I know I would because then I’d know that at least that person has one more person laughing at them behind their back than I do. \u00a0I’d be just a little bit more removed from the critical, burning eye of others that I never see but can feel glaring down on me like a white, spotlight. \u00a0Do I only pretend to not care so that I won’t feel, or is it because I think they won’t judge me if they think I don’t care? \u00a0All I know is that it is not because I do not truly care because I know that I do. \u00a0I care so undeniably much regardless of what I tell myself. \u00a0I can hate myself for it, but that doesn’t change just how much I care about how others see me. \u00a0I take a breath. \u00a0I eat another peanut. \u00a0Am I just a peanut? \u00a0Is life me? \u00a0Did life uncaringly rip me from my shell and into the world turning me into a pile of peanut gravel? \u00a0Did life carefully remove my shell leaving me whole to enter the\u00a0world? \u00a0Both wound up the same way at the end of the day. \u00a0Would he? \u00a0Was there any meaning in the peanut at all, or was I wasting my time looking?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I held a peanut in my hand. \u00a0I cracked it in half. \u00a0The fibers in the shell split from the checkerboard pattern leaving frayed edges. \u00a0I slid one half into two halves once again and I felt something break between my finger and thumb. \u00a0I removed the no longer held together shell from the meat … Continue reading “Peanuts”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":697,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689\/revisions\/697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}