This Corner of The Couch

A short note on anger

It’s not fair to have put someone who loves life this much in a body that cannot tolerate it. I want to swim in every river, feel sand under my feet, walk to the farmers market, dance, run, jump.

Instead, all of my socks are stained from splats of coffee because I cannot go more than five paces without losing my balance. I plan my life around the fact that I wake up exhausted. I try to anticipate which section of my body will stop working next and wonder if I can outpace it. I lift heavy weights, the only reward of which is being able to get off the toilet without falling forward and cracking my skull open on the tile.

The worst part is that I can’t even wallow.

I drink a bottle of wine because I am sorry for myself, and pay for it the next day with nerve pain. I never do this again because I’m too obedient to protecting every watt of energy I’m given. I can’t even be miserable in a normal way. God, just let me be miserable.

I am so captive to what I ought to do, as a result of being my body’s full-time caretaker, that I can’t even drive around the block for an extra minute. I am never able to turn left if I know the way home is right. Can someone grant me permission to turn left? I’d really like to know what the houses look like down there.

I am anchored by resentment to this corner of the couch, wondering what the result of never being able to unravel will be. Implosion, dying angry, disappearing altogether?

I’m so mad.

I’m so mad all of the time and have no idea where to put the anger. I try to scream but no sound comes out. I don’t mean this metaphorically; literally no sound comes out. I am so tightly wound, I’m unable to make any noise. I think about shaving my head, but I’m somehow too vain despite very frequently hating the body I inhabit. Each time I hate the body I inhabit, I research lip filler until my washing machine beeps and there’s something else to do.

I often worry that if I were having a heart attack in public, I’d not be able to say anything. I would sit there and die in silence, hoping my body is not in the way when it falls to the floor. I’m always worried my body is in the way. I’m always worried that my calves are too atrophied and my toes are too bent, so I am hot in the summer and don’t own a full-length mirror.

I am always harboring so much in my chest that I am constantly vibrating, like I could float right through the ceiling and across the parking lot into the trees, where my hair would tangle into the moss.

I am so tired, though, so I won’t.

Hiding, holding back, cautiousness, and detachment are so tightly woven into my veins that I can’t tell where to cut, try to loosen the knot, and untangle the chords. I’d really like to know what’s in between all of that.

Tomorrow I will reread this and be embarrassed. But I think part of the untangling might be telling the truth. And sometimes, the truth is that I’m stuck in this corner of the couch.