Diving for Cookies, Not Truth

It's as predictable as my mood swings this need for my 3:00 p.m. homemade cookie.  I look forward to my decadent treat and make a fresh pot of coffee in anticipation.  I like sugar cookies with lots of pretty crystals the best.  In these days of eschewing carbs that forbidden cookie tastes divine.

I never worry that you won't bring it--you will.  Your devotion I take for granted, I guess.  Perhaps it's payback because I've been taken granted so many times.  I know it's not right, but this is the reasoning for my response.

Our relationship is lopsided; you care so much and I'm so cavalier.  It's not that I don't like you because I do--I just don't want to feel obligated. I have so many other obligations that adding another to my list is just too burdensome.  Like when I leave and don't say anything to you and you get upset--I don't always think of you before I leave, so I don't actively seek you out.  I try to remember, but some days I'm so happy to be done that I just leave.

Sometimes when you discuss your research paper on suicide I find you to be too clinical, too factual in your summarization of the problem.  I comment on your thesis statement and question your range of research, but I won't engage in debate on the topic with you. The curiosity you have about my knowledge of the subject is easy to explain away--I mention that I took psych classes in graduate school.  You're not one to question if the knowledge has another more intimate source.  You don't know me that well; you can't read me yet--and I give you nothing to read.  I doubt I will ever allow our connection to be that strong.  I am tired of revealing myself only to be rejected, so I hide myself from you and others.

I often wonder how you would feel about me if you knew about my past; you'd disapprove, I'm sure.  The pain is part of who I am though, and I'm not comfortable revealing that to many people.  I don't want medication--I would rather feel pain than feel nothing.  I chalk it up to an artist's melancholia.  I worry most about myself when I'm uncomfortably numb.  Instinctively I know how you would react to my story--horror in your blue eyes as I recount dragging a straight edge across pain-numbed flesh hoping to feel something or how I ingested too many pills because I wanted to fall asleep permanently.  You might even speak to my problem from a religious standpoint which would really irk me. I prefer the confidants who trace the scars and just hold me.  I don't like to be judged.  I will never be able to explain to you that it did indeed make perfect sense during the episodes to hurt myself because I was tired of being here; to be frank, I still am tired of being here, but Emily needs me.  She keeps me grounded.

As for you, just  observe faithfully  the ritual of our afternoon cookie, and I’ll proofread your paper.  We’ll keep us tidy—we’ll skate the veneers and leave the soul-diving for another time.