To begin with...
I found a shoe box while digging around in the bottom of my closet the other day. I didn’t mean to – I surely wasn’t looking for it – but I figured I might as well put it to use since I found it.
I was unloading my dishwasher this afternoon, while putting up the silverware I accidentally put a salad fork with the regular forks. My dad is right, I do a half-assed job of everything.
The box is from a pair of boots I bought for work – that is to say, it is a large box. I put it on top of my dresser and stared at it for several nights while trying to fall asleep.
I think I have stomach cancer. My stomach hurts sometimes, lately.
I have been waking up in the middle of the night lately, my tongue aching as if I have been biting on it while sleeping. It takes me a few minutes, in my slumbering cognizance, to realize that I have been biting on it, that I am still biting on it. I have to remind myself to stop.
It seems to me that these are the kinds of thoughts you should tell a therapist. But I don’t. I don’t know why, but we just never seem to get around to the darker side of me.
There are days, like yesterday, when it seems physically impossible to think of doing something other than laying in bed all day; as if my mind is a series of gears, and the gear that opens the door to the outside world is rusted in place.
I fold the pieces of paper up and place them in the shoe box. Three small books that cannot close, folded and neatly creased as many times as I possibly could; I don’t want anyone accidentally discovering these. Stretching beyond my reach I raise the box up into a dark corner of my closet for safe keeping. My ribs hurt from leaning over the vacuum, and whatever was holding it in place.
It didn’t work – not that I am terribly surprised. I couldn’t even sleep last night knowing that the salad fork was in the wrong place. It’s not an obsession, though. It is not like everything has to be in its right place. It is perfection which I demand from myself, and which I cannot achieve – for this I must pay the price of eternal shame and sorrow.
I don’t know if I should continue. Maybe I need to give it more than one try. I could write forever, though. I am a bottomless well of shame over all the things I have been, but most of all flawed.
I’ll try it again tomorrow. I'm not going to think about it now. I am going to try, at the very least.
Therapists are always trying to get you to do things you do not want to do.
Every morning when I wake up I feel guilty for all the things I have ever done, especially what I have been.
I just got off the phone with my therapist. It is Thursday, she has reminded me, and she was just calling to make sure I remember the group meeting this evening. Forgetting would be too convenient of an excuse to use for not going.
I told her that I would be there. I didn’t lie; I just told her what she wanted to hear. Honestly, though, I haven't made up my mind. I know all the reasons why I should go; but I can’t imagine what I would do with myself in such a setting. I would be awkward and distant – I never know what to do with my hands.