Fist

Just got to the library and went straight to the “holds” section. There were three books waiting for me and I began reading them all at once. One of them, the small one with the good cover, reminds me too much of him and I haven’t been able to look past the first page.

Right before this I ate some lentils with citrus yogurt and mint. And before that I took a short nap. How come short naps feel so long when under the perfect conditions? My room was airy and cool, and the screaming children at the elementary school across the street were still locked up in their classrooms. My body felt completely relaxed except for one prissy little finger that kept landing on unwanted wrinkles in my bed sheets and reacting to them like shards of glass.

Besides the finger, I had other thoughts. Some of them were about him. About whether or not he was my soulmate. After thinking the word “soulmate,” I made a fist to tell myself to stop it. I learned this trick from my therapist in yesterday’s session. She didn’t mean for the first to become my little trick, but it did anyway. She was using her fist for emphasis, to tell me to stop thinking about whether or not he was my soulmate. It’s not helpful to think about, she said with her fist, you must treat the soulmate question as a closed question because despite its answer, she said, opening her first back into a hand and putting it into orbit, we all know he is not fit for a relationship. Something about we all know struck me as incredibly hilarious and I began laughing hysterically, despite having been crying and punching the wall only second earlier. Ok, I take it back, I wasn’t quite punching the wall as much as I was miming a punch to the wall, showing it what I wanted to do but couldn’t because of the gentle person I am.

After therapy and all that crying and laughing, I felt incredible. Too incredible, perhaps. I was on the precipice between incredible and awful. The point where the extremes meet. Tiptoeing on the side of incredible, looking over to the edge to awful, just waiting to fall in. In order to not fall in, I followed my instincts on what to do next. The only rule I have in these precarious situations is that, like a shark, I must keep moving.

After therapy, my instincts told me to go to the park by my house with my notebook and pen, and write about that very moment. On the way there I danced with my shoulders and recited a little mantra I made up as I said it:

Don't think about feeling, feel about feeling, you feline!

At the park, the lake was so blue and so many magical thoughts came to me and I wrote down all the ones I could catch. Here they are:..

… … … …

… … … …

Oh reader, I couldn’t do it! How very superstitious I am about this sort of thing! I thought I would be able to just open up my little green notebook and transcribe all those magical words I wrote yesterday onto this computer, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t even get myself to open the little notebook! Why? Well, out of fear of contamination. Out of fear that everything that felt so good and true yesterday will sound purely delusional today. It is cursed to read those words now; today being so close to yesterday. I doubt they have had a chance to settle yet. I have always been superstitious about good things. They are more sensitive than other things, the way prissy little fingers are during naptime. Maybe something about today will puncture the certainty and magic I felt while I was writing yesterday and the unwanted truth will be revealed: I don’t feel incredible about the breakup, in fact, I feel quite sad and awful.

But I must stop with this line of thinking *fist fist fist* because that unwanted truth has not been revealed, and today, as I sit here at the library with my three new books, I suspect, knock on wood *fist fist*, that I feel quite alright about the breakup. See the words I used there? “Quite alright”, not “incredible”, not “awful”, but quite alright. This phrase,“quite alright,” reminds me of a thought I had last night before bed, after the incredible feeling had settled into a neutral good: I would rather feel peaceful than happy. And I would say that is what I feel today, quite peaceful and alright, except for my one finger, of course, which was restless the whole nap, not liking what it felt.

The three books are sitting right here in front of me: the red one, the yellow one and the troublesome thin one with the good cover, which I don’t quite know what to do with. I don’t think I will be able to read it given it starts with a quote by Samuel Becket and the first time I thought he might be my soulmate *fist fist*, he was reading a Samuel Beckett play right across from me at the library, looking up once in a while with those curious dark eyes of his. *fist fist fist fist fist*

After I wrote that last sentence just now I very courageously looked at a different page from the troublesome little book and was relieved to find nothing I read reminded me of him, except for one line about a dark river. Maybe I will try reading this book after I finish writing this thing here. I do in fact love how it feels in my hands, with its shiny plastic cover and thick pages.

I think this breakup will be easier than one’s past because I don’t enjoy causing myself pain the way I used to back when I didn’t love myself as much. If I enjoyed causing myself pain and didn’t love myself, I would probably send this to him. I would attach this document to an email and say “Look here! Look here, you fool! Read this thing I wrote. It says I feel quite alright about our breakup! Sure, I cried about it in therapy, but then I wrote about it at the park and now here at the library without a problem. And yeah, I feel quite alright about everything!” And the very act of sending anything at all to him would show that I, in fact, feel quite sad and awful. But I don’t, so I won’t send him anything at all.

Hey, I just thought of another piece of evidence that proves I love myself and am quite alright: I have been giving myself kisses on the arm and shoulder! I never used to do this! I would try to but I couldn’t get myself to do it. My lips would pucker because I knew the kisses were rotten and void of true love. But last night, as I was biking home from work feeling in need of a kiss, I gave myself two quick kisses on the shoulder, nothing too dramatic, and I must say it felt just right!

But I am not quite done telling you about today’s nap. I had one other thought, besides the finger and the soulmate question *fist!* I thought about what I read in the book I finished before my nap, which I kissed on the cover in the same casual way I kissed myself last night. The narrator of the book said to herself: “There is a hole in your head for certain things, and not for certain other things. Find the things that don’t leak out and fill your head with those ones.”* Half-asleep, I began thinking about the shape and texture and filling of my own head. I share the feeling that so much of what I try to put in my head just falls right out. And, also, that so much of what I try to get out of my head just stays right in there. I began dreaming about head holes and all this excess consciousness I have and the following sentence came to me: “I am a rag and I must be wrung out.” Yes! Yes! It rang so true! And in my half-sleep logic, I committed to properly wringing myself out each and every day, by writing my pages and crying my tears and running my legs. And, in doing so, day after day, I would find my peace.

*Quote from Sheila Heti’s book Pure Colour