Dark Place

When does it feel better?




Today was the first in my two days off.
I woke up to pouring rain.
It has rained relentlessly all day.
It's the kind of rain that soaks you as soon as you walk out the door. Your jacket can be watertight, your boots can be knee high, but you're still soaked within in 90 seconds of stepping out from under the front porch.
My back is still fucked up.
I can't do yoga.
The rain is so thick and awful that I couldn't go for a walk or a run or anyplace.
I managed to get to the store. It's a 1.4 mile trip round trip.
I bought kale and pears and oranges.
I bought molasses cookie mix and apple cinnamon rice cakes and plain yoghurt.

I drank an entire pot of coffee by myself, and I tried to christmas shop online.
I bought a few trinkets.
I'd had these great plans to take the train into boston and go shopping around the pru. I was going to get coffee at a place I'd never been before and buy marzipan at cardulo's.
The weather was too disgusting to even think of that.

I wished it was snowing instead. Then at least I'd be able to walk about in the quiet beauty of slow motion snow flakes falling by the ocean instead of water sluicing through my eyes and my nose and my mouth.

I came home from the store and unpacked my groceries.
I turned on christmas music and baked the cookies.
I texted a friend to come visit, and she stopped in.
We drank a beer, and she tested some of the cookies. She asked me how I was doing, and I honestly told her, pretty bad.
She asked if she could help, which is all anyone can do when faced with that response, and I shrugged.
'There's nothing for you to do other than to ask,' I said because it's true.

I tried to boil my christmas puddings.
One leaked into the water.
The other one boiled dry and then overflowed into the water and burned.

I got more sad.

I ate the whole package of rice cakes.
2 pears.
4 cookies.
a cup of yoghurt.
some mincemeat from a jar.

My stomach doubled me over in cramps immediately after.
It's been an hour now, and the cramps haven't gone away.
My back still hurts too much for me to do anything.

I feel like the most pathetic, ugly, non-contributing member of society.
I feel worthless and parasitic.
I feel like my body hates me, and wants me to fail.
I feel sabotaged by everything I am.

Nobody would miss me. Not really. They say they would but they'd only miss what I did for them. They wouldn't actually miss the person I am.
They'd only miss the conveniences I gave them.

Fuck.