“Zilpha Murrell and the Third Harpe’s Head”

It’s out! You can read it here.

Poor Dog

Both the Butcher and I slept in, so the dog didn’t get his walk. I’ve been sleeping like shit for a long time, but I’m finally sleeping better, so I guess I’m trying to catch up on it.

I was hoping my medical bills would all come in at once, but you’d be amazed at how they can drag out. I mean, I have a deductible. Certainly, at this point, I’ve met it. Can’t I just pay someone that whole lump sum and get on with my life?

I had a long email exchange with the Professor yesterday, because I miss the fuck out of her and rely on her to explain my life back to me.

But I admitted to her that I’m not doing fine. I’m not not doing fine. I don’t need sympathy or understanding (yet, though who knows?). I just am not doing fine. I feel fine, but it’s a fine with no foundation. I don’t feel like I’m standing on solid ground. And yet, I feel like not being fine is inconvenient. Like how can I not be fine? Everything turned out fine. I should be grateful or relieved. And I will be, but I’m just not there yet.

I’m also deeply suspicious that some people think that, if they give me lots of tasks and things to do, that they’re helping because they’re giving me a purpose or a reason to live or something. I don’t know. I know they mean well. I experience it as overwhelming and patronizing. And since I haven’t worked through how I feel about all this, it makes me feel like I’m being lead away from important, if unpleasant, work I need to do in order to make sense of all of this and assigned tasks that make their lives easier. “For my own good.”

I keep looking at the incision and waffling back and forth between whether it’s large or not. Sometimes, I look at it and I’m like “Oh, good, it’s not that big.” and then sometimes I put my finger next to it to measure it and I think, isn’t a slit along the side of your boob that stretches over half the length of your boob large?

I don’t yet know how I feel about things. I want time to just be alone with myself and figure it out.

I mean, at the least, I used to have a curve that fit into the natural resting shape my hand makes and now I have a long, flat stretch.

My landscape has shifted. I need to get used to the new view.