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Recently, when I’m walking up the stairs or folding laundry, a Joan Didion quote plays through my mind. My head is a jumble of words, and for periods of times, certain ones get stuck.
I’ve heard it said that we get songs stuck in our head not because they’re catchy, but because we can’t finish them. Known as an ear worm, our brain tries to “complete” the tune by replaying it…or the parts of it that it knows, to figure out the pattern. For most people, it’s music. For me, it’s quotes.
For the past few weeks, it’s been this one:
“That was the year, my twenty-eighth, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and every procrastination, every mistake, every word, all of it.”
“That was the year, my twenty-eighth…” That’s the part that has been stuck in my head. I never get to the rest of it because I always stop myself and think- but I’m not twenty-eight. I’m thirty-four.
My birthday was Sunday. I completely forgot about it until Friday. I was driving to the daycare, thinking how it was already January 31st and then realizing, oh shit, my birthday is soon. Then I remember thinking: If thirty-three was my year of crying, then thirty-four is my year of talking.
I have turned thirty-four and found two therapists. One for myself, one for my marriage. There’s also talk about a psychoanalyst but that’s if I want to be indulgent. It feels indulgent already. Two therapists a week. Two hours to indulge, to spill out all the thoughts I hold onto because they’re silly, and stupid and trivial. Yet sharing them, makes me feel better. Has helped me start breathing again.
There’s a woman at my daughter’s daycare, I recently told my therapist, I’ve decided I do not like. She’s the director of the school. For a while, I used to like her. But over the past two years, things have changed. I’ve changed. And now, I don’t want to talk to her. Because I know what she’s like. I know what she does.
“What does she do?” asks my therapist.
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