I met with my therapist today. He said I should start to see the benefits of my journaling soon, but it’s been three years. Four notebooks and a hard drive of Word documents later, and I’m no closer to figuring out why I suck so bad than the day I started.
When I got home, I found out my wife read through my journals and called the police. She thinks they’re a manifesto, but if she actually understood any of it, she’d know I believe my journals are nothing more than an itemized list of reasons why she should divorce me.
I looked back in my journals to find a good day I’d had to cheer me up, and this was the best thing I could find. From July 11th, 2023:
“Shit my bathing suit at my daughter’s birthday party. She’s three, but I was the one who couldn’t hold it until I got out of the pool. I did learn something valuable today, though! I learned that shitting in front of a group of children, on accident or not, will get you on the registered sex offenders list. Fun. At least I got to shiver while wrapped in a beach towel and eat wet chips afterward.”
That’s right. That was the best day I’ve had all year. Soggy, chlorinated Doritos as consolation for inflicting a traumatic core memory on a dozen toddlers and being labeled a pedophile for the rest of my life. I look back on that day the way a middle-aged woman looks back at her wedding day, by saying ‘What happened to that hopeful, young woman?’
Here’s the worst thing I could find, just for comparison. Dated July 12th, 2023:
“Woke up covered in diarrhea again. It’s not even mine. Every night I pray that this criminal will stop breaking into my house and filling my jammy pants to the brim with drippy dookie, but every day I wake up to find I have been rejected once again by my malevolent God. Why can’t this mystery shitter just kill me and my entire family like a normal person? Why must God punish me in this way?”
Good day or bad, I’m always covered in someone’s shit. This is the baseline for my life. Here’s to another year of metaphorical shit, and even more literal shit.