Tell Me What to Do

please

I’ve typed about six different sentences here, trying to determine what to write about. None of it has worked. Nothing feels compelling enough to commit to paper or pixels or whatever this is.

I wonder what people want to know about. About what’s compelling.

Would they want to read about how I shared a bedroom with my grandmother from the ages of fourteen to nineteen?

Would they want to read about my Fundamentalist childhood? The time I pretended to throw a demon out of a man at a tent revival when I was eight years old?

Would they want to read about how, for years, I was so terrified of going to hell that even a thought I construed as sinful could reduce me to tears and random forms of manic atonement like cleaning every inch of a toilet with a toothbrush or gnawing at my cuticles until they bled and hoping God would accept that as penance?

Would they want to read about how on my first trip to the gynecologist, the nurse pointed at my cross necklace and said “Hope you take that thing off when you do it.”

I am too close to all these things. Know them too well. Have talked through them too many times. In therapy sessions and with those closest to me and sometimes even those not very close to me at all because I have a tendency to overshare. Because if I offer you my trauma, maybe you won’t immediately dismiss me. Maybe you’ll, if not like me, at least pity me enough to listen and pretend to care.

I have been googling crazy things because I think it will ease my worry, but then I go down the rabbit hole of anxiety spirals and end up on some blog post from 2017, and this is it, everything I’ve done is worth nothing, and in fact, shit’s just gonna get worse, so buckle up, buttercup and put on some lipstick while you’re at it.

I have to make dinner. I have to find a summer camp for my kid. I have to figure out how to fix this book again. None of these things are compelling.

I haven’t worked out regularly since October. This is also not compelling. I am a writer. I should be compelling.

I check my email constantly, but then usually take a full day to respond just to make sure I’ve read everything correctly and don’t sound stupid in my response. This is also not compelling.

Other people are compelling. They look nice in their photos. Good things are happening for them.

I am at least fifty pounds overweight, and every time I go to the doctor, someone tells me my blood pressure is high. I know this but haven’t really done much about it yet.

I’ll be forty-one this year and feel I’m starting to look old and hate how I let my youth slip by without really enjoying it. Then I feel so Prufrockian I could vomit. I’m a cliche. This is not compelling.

I want a glass of Prosecco, but I’m trying to cut back on drinking because it isn’t good for me. I’m still thinking about it, and even the want of it makes me dislike myself a little more.

I’m writing angsty bullshit on a blog. This is high school level fuckery. It is not compelling. I should be compelling. I’m supposed to be a writer.