why are you on your own tonight?

I tried to be kind to the nurse. I introduced myself. She told me we’d already met. At first, I thought she was cold, but then I realized she was actually many different nurses, each rotating through their shifts. To them, I was just another version of the same story. Another face. Another diagnosis. My troubles weren’t remarkable. I had a grief counselor, like most people there and a suicide counselor because I had said something I wasn’t supposed to say.

I started writing in a notebook. I made a list, a kind of personal dictionary. My handwriting was large and uneven. Flesh. Blood. Floor. Lightning. I tried to figure out what these things meant, and what they had to do with me. Doorknob. Cardboard. Thermostat. Farming. I understood what North was, but “left” was still confusing.

It was easier to describe the world than to find where I fit in it. The suicide counselor said the ones who hadn’t come probably never would, and the ones who stopped showing up weren’t coming back. She’d seen it all before. Saw it daily. The person they remembered was already gone. In their eyes, I had broken the deal, I’d left first, and they were already mourning.

So I started a second notebook, just for bitterness and blame things that would spill into the first list if I wasn’t careful. It was brutal and unpleasant. But it was also honest. And it made me feel sick.

What do I know? What do I truly know?

I built meaning with a dual ledger

A doorknob is a stone shaped for the hand. It lets you break a hole in a wall.

A doorknob is your dumb skull. You won’t make it through this.