Sin of the Week, 3/16/08

You might want to leave if you are a good person. Definitely leave if you are Catholic.

Yesterday, I was determined NOT to do two things:

1) work
2) be stressed

That was going ok up until about noon, when I got an email message from someone. The person who sent the email wants something from me that I don’t especially think he or she needs, and in any case I think is absurd to ask for, especially since I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT on a pretty grand scale. Let me be less clear: I don’t want to give it for all the above reasons and one more: the person asked me for the wrong thing. Go to all the trouble to ask, and you ask me for a carrot instead of an apple and ruin my entire day – oh wait – weekend, by forcing me to reflect on everything that has happened. Nice going.

So yesterday I was trying really energetically not to be upset and it was not working. I found myself running the monologue in my head – all the things I would like very much to say and can never say because why hurt people if it won’t change anything? Especially since I know it won't make me feel better anyway?

I got into the shower in an attempt to wash off the badness. While scrubbing, I had the following extraordinary, even for me, thought:

Stop expecting me to pretend everything is ok. It is not ok. When you decided to heap a whole lot of withering misery on me, you, who are supposed to know everything, misunderstood how much I could take. In case you have not noticed, it was too much. I can’t recover. I can’t sleep at night without a gross of drugs and sometimes alcohol because you trashed everything that meant anything to me, including any hope I ever had of having a family of my own – at the same time as you destroyed the family I had. I don’t even like my dad anymore because of the way he’s treated me in his undeadness. As you know, fuckhead, you've heaped some additional losses on us for no real reason except that you suck, and today, apparently, I am forced to engage in a whole real lot more drama - and I don't have a choice, since refusing to play this game will negatively effect my dad. UNTHANKS FOR THAT. So, officially, heading into Holy Week, I’d just like to say fuck off with your yearly commemoration of what went really wrong for you. I don’t want to hear it.

And then I got out of the shower, dried my hair and reflected that I meant every word of that and much worse,* too.

I have been trying hard to act like I am not angry, like I am confused or sad or something less ugly. It’s just not true. I am furious. I am not grateful that I am a fat, privileged American woman with clean water and diamonds and climbing gear. The only things that really matter in life are things I don’t have and never will, and I am sick to death of acting like it’s ok, of acting like I am not mad, of acting like I can bear up and take it. I can’t, which is why I am awake at 4 in the morning after having taken a full complement of supposedly sleep inducing drugs, writing this.

Have a better Palm Sunday than this, please. I'll see you tomorrow (unless a crane falls on me for no apparent reason and the whole thing thusly ends).

*This version has been cleaned up by about 800%. Don't even try to imagine what I really said unless you want permanent brain damage.