Page 28 of Letters From A Stalker

Jokes instead of answering like a normal person: apparently every time I open my mouth.

Turning feelings into tasks: TBD because I still think he made that one up

I stare at the last line. Then I look around my kitchen. The counters are clean. The mail has been sorted into three piles beside the fruit bowl: bills, work, garbage. My groceries are organized by the meals I intend to make this week. There’s a handwritten list stuck to the refrigerator with appointments, deadlines, errands, and the reminder to call Nanna tomorrow evening because Wednesday is the night she watches that Spanish telenovela she literally lives for, and calling during her show apparently constitutes elder abuse.

I slowly look back at my phone.

“Shut up.”

Dr. Blackwood, despite being several miles away and entirely unaware of this conversation, remains irritatingly silent.

The microwave beeps.

I eat standing at the kitchen counter because sitting down feels unnecessary when I have things to do, and that realization arrives at almost the exact moment I think it.

Things to do. Of course. I look at the notes app again.

Turning feelings into tasks: 1

I add it with considerably more aggression than the situation warrants.

By Friday, I stop counting “I’m fine” individually and start using tally marks. This is humiliating. It’s also becoming increasingly difficult to argue with him.

The problem isn’t that I lie when someone asks how I am. Everyone does that. Nobody standing beside you in an elevator wants an honest answer to “How’s it going”. They want “good”, maybe “busy”, and then they want the elevator doors to open so both of you can return to pretending the interaction never happened.

That isn’t what bothers me. What bothers me is discovering how often nobody asks and how I started saying it preemptively. A coworker noticed that I had been quieter than usual during a meeting, and before she finished asking whether I slept badly, I told her “I’m fine”. Nanna heard something in my voice during our Wednesday call, and I told her “I’m fine” before she could worry. Tessa asks whether my hand still hurts. It’s fine. My boss asks whether I can handle another report before Friday. Absolutely fine. A cashier apologizes because the card reader freezes while I’m paying for groceries, and somehow I apologize back to her. That one earns an entirely separate category.

By Thursday night, my note looks like the diary of someone slowly realizing she has a personality disorder caused exclusively by excessive politeness. What’s worse is that once I start noticing the words, I start noticing everything around them. The little laugh I make after saying something too honest. The way I automatically soften an opinion when someone disagrees. The number of times I type a message, reread it, and add “lol” or an appropriate emoji because apparently a sentence existing without reassurance might kill somebody. The way I say “no worries” when there are, objectively, worries. The way I apologize when someone bumps into me. The way I make myself useful whenever I don’t know how else to exist in a room. That one sits with me longer than I want it to.

Friday evening, I’m folding laundry on my bed when I find myself thinking about the funeral. Not because I want to. Because apparently my brain has now joined forces with Dr. Blackwood and neither of them respects personal boundaries.

I remember sitting at my kitchen table with a notebook open in front of me while a woman from the funeral home explained different service options over the phone. I remember writing everything down because writing made it manageable. Casket. Flowers. Clothes. Music. Photographs. Food afterward. People to notify. Death turned into bullet points. Grief turned into errands that resembled a grocery list.

I remember someone asking whether I needed a moment and telling them no because I had already taken too much time away from work. At the time, it felt like strength. Maybe it was. That’s the part I think Kai would understand. He hadn’t told me that functioning was wrong. He hadn’t looked at me with pity when I explained what I did. He simply refused to let me use functioning as evidence that I hadn’t been hurt. There’s an irritating difference.

I fold one of my shirts and place it on the stack beside me. Then another. And another. Halfway through folding a towel that doesn’t need to be folded because I folded it yesterday and apparently pulled it out of the closet solely to have something to do with my hands, I stop.

“Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me.”

I stare at the towel. The towel offers no defense. I drop it onto the bed.

Turning feelings into tasks: 7

I add another tally mark. Then I hesitate before opening a second note. This one doesn’t have a sarcastic title. I stare at the blank screen for a while before typing.

Things I remember about the bus.

The assignment I’ve been avoiding all week. Physical sensations, thoughts, memories. What happened immediately before and after. Sounded easy enough when he said it. Feels far less easy with the cursor blinking at me.

I type the first thing I remember.

The gum.

Then: Wet coats. Coffee. Rain on the windows. Tessa’s phone in my face. Being irritated with everyone for making noise.

I pause. That hadn’t occurred to me before. The panic attack didn’t begin with the song. Something had already been happening. My skin felt too tight. Every smell was stronger. Every sound had been irritating. I wanted Tessa to stop touching my shoulder. I wanted the person behind me to stop chewing. I wanted everyone on the bus to be quiet.

Then the song started. I keep typing. The memories come differently when nobody is asking questions. My father hitting the steering wheel. His voice. The way he smiled when he sang. My mother sitting in the pantry with his phone. Nanna begging me to get off the floor after one of his lovers called, thinking she got my mother on the phone, explicitly describing the way he just fucked her and how they’ll get rid of us. Then the call saying he was missing.