i am not a clean girl

its raining and im depressed forgive me

i am grieving a breakup. sort of. at least it feels like it.

but its a break up with my therapist again. another thank you to my shitty insurance, it feels like a break up because i am having to say goodbye to someone who knows my odd habits and ugly behaviors and knows all the characters in my life that i can refer to by name without having to give the whole long back story. and just like a break up, the idea of starting all over again with someone new feels much too daunting and time consuming and saying “fuck it, ill just be alone” feels a lot easier and more fun, more chaotic, more self destructive.

i cry on the floor in front of my space heater, i slept in too late and it is a gray ugly day. the cat comforts me. i am never going to get better, why doesn’t anyone else i know regularly go to therapy, is therapy even helping me, have i even gotten better in the last four years (i know i have somewhat but i hear my mothers voice in the back of my head saying that maybe my therapist isn’t helping). i get into the hot shower, scrape off my skin, my emotions scatter from fear and sadness and shame to courage and independence and I Don’t Need Anyone but Myself. i get out of the shower. i notice it isn’t draining very well. i reach down to pull out masses, wads, wet heavy handfuls of hair. mostly mine.

maybe i can’t get better on my own. i have a flashback to coming home a year or two ago to my parents in the kitchen, looking sad and nervous, almost like a intervention. i was getting thinner and thinner and they were worried. but my dad had cleaned out the shower we shared and was holding a very similar disgusting shocking handful of hair. my hair that was falling out.

i am tired and i get dressed back into the same pajamas. it is all i can muster for now and i sit back on the bedroom rug. there is sticky residue on my desk from the previous night’s gluttonous desserts that i save up my whole day’s calories for and there is cat fur and dust in the corners and crumbs on the floor from the snacks that i eat instead of meals and more handfuls of dried hair in the trash can where i brush it in front of the mirror and in the mirror are photos of me from photo booths with friends where i overlook how exhausted and ill and sad i felt during that time and instead notice my prominent shoulder blades and collar bones and thin cheeks and think wow i used to be beautiful.

i think about how women hold on to their wedding dresses for too long, never touched but preserved in their closets to only be gently brought out and petted and shown off. to be cooed over, to say “i used to be so small and fit into this size”. i think about how i do the same with all my previous body weights, like skeletons in my closet, taken out to either be reminisced and romanticized or to reflect on all the shame and guilt and self hatred. i am tired of looking at old photos, blowing off dust like a woman does to her ancient wedding dress and only thinking of her body weight then.

i still sit on the floor. i notice my tarot cards stacked next to me on the neglected pile of my old journals. i pull a wheel of fortune card, i say thank you, i prop it up on my dying fittonia plant to create my altar for the day. ill take any hope i can. always say thank you.

i get dressed to go to the bookstore. books are so expensive now but my mother sent me a valentines day card in the mail reminding me that i am loved and gave me a gift card. i spend too long roaming the shelves and after an hour or so i look down at the options in my hands and realize i just love writers that are gross, depressive, realistic and somewhat insatiable girls. no wonder i write the way that i do. i drive home in the rain feeling a glimmer of somewhat excitement for the first time today. i get out of the car and realize i bled through on my favorite pair of levi jeans. i sigh, stick them in the sink, and get back into the same pair of dirty sweatpants. i guess i am just a girl that can’t have nice things.

as i write this, alex g is singing “sometimes i just want to be happy” over and over again. i swallow down two advils, i wait an hour to swallow down a glass of wine. happy wednesday.