March 21

Growing up as the youngest child in a West African family, I don’t get apologies much. Not for the minor of major. Not for the mundane or grandiose. Not for outward insults or for things that I was not meant to hear. Mainly, I am told that it is a privilege that I am even acknowledge as human because, “Back in Sierra Leone/Benin/Before you came along.” Mainly, it just serves to remind me that life was grand before I came along and PC’ed it up. I asked my dad to apologize for calling me a snake eater once and, I cannot make this up, his response was, “Your apology is in every bill I pay to keep you from feeling like and orphan. Ungrateful monkey.” I was seven. And I never asked for another apology again. SO, whenever I get an apology, I feel all sorts of weird about it, stuck between, “Yeah, I deserve my feeling to be validated for that asshole thing you did,” and “Let me worship at your altar for acknowledging that I am a full ass human person whose feeling you might have trampled the fuck over.” It gets even more complicated when the person apologizing hasn’t actually done anything wrong. Case in point:

Now, before you say, “Well, Ariel made him do it,” I just want you to inform you that the only person I stayed in contact with was my therapist. My phone was off all weekend. So the little mermaid had no idea that he even cancelled the date. So his apology, offered without coercion, is surprising. And what makes it even weirder is that he has nothing to apologize for! Helena, my therapist, laughed out loud, in my face , when I showed her the text he sent. I thought I was gonna have to call an ambulance when I told her that I didn’t tell Ariel about the cancellation. She then reminded me that Ariel edits my blog post.

She also thinks that, knowing Ariel, she might have just mentioned that my week leading up to the cancellation was not the best, so his reaction might be due to the fact that he genuinely feels bad for making a crappy week that much worse. She also thought that he really didn’t want to cancel, because guys don’t date on potential.

So, then why did I say no, you ask?

Simply put, I didn’t want to. And it’s not that I didn’t want to go out with him ever. It’s just that, even now, I just want to be left alone. ANd I know, I know, that it might just be a depressive spiral and I should just hang out with people to lift my spirits, but you know what happens then? I drag myself further down because I am convinced no one want to hang out with the dour girl. And I get more dejected. And the emotional slump is prolonged. I know me, and I know that if I try to speed up this getting better process, it is going to be Hell actually feeling better. So I said no, because it’s cookies, cocoa and couch for me until I actually feel like interacting with humans again. Which, is something that my family, even my therapist sister, would frown upon.

“You’re alive. You have a job, a house. If you lost weight, you could have a husband. So, why are you claiming to be depressed? Why do you want more attention?”

Why do I want more attention? I don’t is the simple answer. The long answer is, I have tried so hard to appease people that I had to hire someone to tell me not only was it okay to not be okay sometime, but that it also means that I need to take a step back and make myself happy so I don’t end up jumping off of a building. I pay someone two hundred dollars a God damn hour to instruct me on how not to kill myself. Attention seeking, my ass. So yeah, at the doctor’s request, apart from going to work to pay for things, my only job, until it is complete, is to get better, by any means necessary.

Excluding breaking the law. That would be bad.