Journal Entry 2

Dear Diary,

Today in the garden...

No, never mind.

My therapist told me I should keep a diary, but my memories of the word “diary” are littered with imagery of heart-dotted-i’s and glitter pens. And secrets I couldn’t tell anyone. This thing is all suave black leather, so maybe journal is more appropriate? I don’t know, I think I’m just binarily gendering stationary at this point. But honestly, “Dear Diary” sounds a little too young and nostalgic, and “Dear Journal” doesn’t have the same warm ring to it, so let me just get on with it:

Dear Suspicious-Looking-Bookie-Ledger,

...

No, never mind.

After writing that in all the good humor I can manage right now, I realize I don’t know what else to say. What else is there? I already said it all in my last entry. Or… my first one? The one before this. Pages and pages of shaky chicken-scratch and pen bleeding of all the things I wanted to say but never got the chance to. Now I would just be repeating myself. And I hate repeating myself— oh, well I kind of just did.

Maybe it’s not true that I never had the chance, though at the time I already had my mouth full with all the things I thought I had to say. Even if I had managed to articulate it with all the perfect words, I still wouldn’t be satisfied. There would always be more I wish I had said and more I wish I could have done and more I wish I had done and—

And I hate this too. Yapping on and on about the same thing. I suppose I’m meant to use this as a private means to work through my feelings, but I don’t want to. Forgetting is easier. I function better when all the thoughts are nicely arranged, packed away, and promptly forgotten in some dusty corner of my brain where the neurons have already fizzled out and died. Couldn’t this be a healthy way of moving on too? The compartmentalizing? The numbness. The long, empty spaces…

I asked this to Aushi one day: “If you come into some money and you buy a new house, do you let all your old, ugly things clutter up the space?” I said, too self-assuredly, as if I was casually setting down a winning hand.

I had been asking too many off-track questions that day. She gave me a look that said she knew what I was trying to do, but she answered anyway. “Do you buy all new things when you move, or when your situation suddenly becomes a little bit better? Most of us carry our old lives to our new places, otherwise you would always be living in an empty house.”

I had to sink back and mutter, “Never mind, that wasn’t a good analogy for what I mean.”

Also, Liza said—and she said this more gently, but basically, “If you have to ignore your problems to live your life then you’re just being fake and not doing yourself any favors.”

Again, she didn’t say it quite like that, but I was offended when she said it and I’m still petty about it now so that’s how it’s being documented. Anyway, Liza’s not my therapist so I don’t listen to her.

Aushi is my therapist. I listen to her a little more, but my track record is not exactly stellar. Her office is drab. All worn, warm orange upholstery and deep brown pressed woods. The small window only lets in a bit of light before sunset. I think she meant for it to be a soothing autumn motif, but honestly it just feels like I’m sitting inside a rotting pumpkin. And when I sit in Aushi’s rotting pumpkin I lie a lot. Like, a lot.

Every day I pretend to try. I listen intently to her suggestions on breaking away from my unhealthy coping mechanisms, smiling and nodding and hoping she never notices that I am dotting the t’s and crossing the i’s.

If Aushi tells me to get on the metaphorical escalator to my success, then I make sure I get on the escalator going in the opposite direction. I climb the steps just as she asks but I make sure I’m going nowhere. That’s what it feels like, at least.

Self-sabotage creeps up next to you so quietly. Sweetly, comfortingly. How could you distrust the women in the mirror, after all? They wouldn’t hurt you.

But if you looked more closely? If you paid more attention? You would see it; her scoffing out of sync with you, just a fraction of a second before.

Last session, Aushi explicitly told me to write it all down, get it all out. So, I made my regular play at heeding her advice and bought this little black notebook. An important looking and tasteful one too; leather, permanent. I wanted to make sure I used it like I promised Aushi I would.

No, not Aushi. Me. Me. The third me down from me. I promised I would write in this thing and here I am. Writing my little heart out, writing till my wrist aches, writing…

…nothing really. What am I even doing?

Sorry Aushi. Sorry Me. But I just don’t see how this is supposed to help. Reading the entry before this just made me feel… ugly. I had spent an hour in a frenzy, pressing so hard into the page that I can still feel the shape of the words I was so sure were important denting into the page I’m writing on now.

I read over it again today and all I saw was frantic, selfish drivel. I scoff at the woman I was yesterday, and tomorrow I will scoff at the woman I am today. The truth, though? I am a woman trapped between two mirrors facing each other, and even as I see the infinite iterations of me scoffing, I scoff.

That’s all this is: scoffing at myself and coming here to be pathetic and dramatic and whiny and—oh god, here I go again.

I’m waiting for one of the women in the mirrors to walk away. Imagine that, standing there knowing that all those people are you, and thinking, “Third me from me—yeah I’m talking to you—can you get your life together, please?”

You just stare back at yourself, as angry and tired at you as you are at you, from behind all the rest of you.

What am I even saying?

I came here to sort out my feelings (to be pathetic and whiny, actually) about the twenty thousand dollars he left to me, not to get lost in some ill-contrived paradox.

The money was unexpected. We hadn’t seen or heard from each other in some time, cutting all ties, even on paper. So not insurance, but inheritance. That was even more unexpected. I didn’t know he had any money to give, let alone to me. I was digging in the garden when the lawyer called me this morning and told me he was—

No, I hate repeating myself.

I had to take a moment to set my voice, push the lump in my throat down and wet my lips. “What happened to him?”

The woman on the other end paused. She had introduced herself not even a minute earlier, but I couldn’t remember her name. “I’m sorry you have to hear this from me, but there’s an ongoing investigation. He was shot in his home a few weeks ago.”

A chill ran over me. I ended the call as quickly as I could. Frustrated tears welled up, but I blinked them away.

Before I could think too hard on it, I agreed to an appointment with the lawyer just this afternoon. She had told me about the money over a cup of coffee from a bougie café (that insisted on calling itself a patisserie) downtown. I didn’t like it in there. In fact, I preferred Aushi’s rotting pumpkin.

I sat awkwardly perched on a pastel velvet cushion, sliding around on a backless gold stool. My back already hurt from all the digging, and now this. The rest of the little café was much the same, soft colors on hard angular surfaces. All very pretty, all very uncomfortable.

The lawyer lady was like that too. Prim hair, fresh nails and vacant eyes. We sat there for some time sorting out the details. I had tried to keep my shaking hands clenched together under the table, but it was hard to do when the tabletop was just a dainty glass slab. Sometimes the lawyer lady’s eyes drifted down through it when my leg shook, but she didn’t bother to comment.

Talk of the money was stagnant in my ears. I was hearing her, but that was as far as the words went. Dead neurons and whatnot. Instead, I looked out the café windows and at the floor as she spoke. I wouldn't refute whatever possessed him to name me in his Last Will. I was most definitely in need of it, as life without him had seen me less than thrive. Still, it was too somber a way to receive money. He was young, so a will meant he somehow knew it was coming.

All the iterations of me sat together on that uncomfortable stool in that rigid place, and they weighed me down. My back ached whether I slumped or sat up straight, and when the meeting ended it was hard to get back up.

I finally caught the lawyer’s name when she handed me her card as we were leaving. “Call me if you have any questions,” Donna Gingrich of G & G Associates said.

They're a big firm, and the jingle from their lame tv commercial has been stuck in my head since then. Call us at G & G! Get the good guys on your side! I scoff at that. I guess it doesn't matter which side you're on.

Well, I don’t have any questions for Donna, and I have nothing else to say...

See how much I lie?

The truth is that I wish I had him with me, so that when the perfect words bubbled to the surface I could mutter to him whatever I pleased. If I could mail the first few pages of this journal to him, I would. He should have heard all of what I had to say before he went. He deserved it.

I wanted to crumple him up, then pull him in every direction until he was thin and limp, so I could sneer and scoff and laugh. I wanted to know what he still had pride in, and I wanted to spit on it, stomp it underfoot. To wring him out by his vulnerabilities and watch everything left in him eke out until he was nothing but dust before me. I wanted for him to feel what it was like for me back then, just for a moment, before I—

No, never mind. I already blabbed on and on about this in Journal Entry 1.

I keep repeating that I hate repeating myself. But I guess that’s just what happens when you hate so much. You become the things you hate, and you do the things you hate.

And you know what? He was a liar too, so maybe now I should start telling the truth: My back hurts from digging in the garden, my hand hurts from writing in this journal, and life is a little bit better with him gone (thanks for the money, but I still loath you).

Oh, and I should find a new place to bury the gun.