Monthly Archives: January 2016

The Long Walk Home (Flash Fiction)

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Prompt: “Heart of my Own” by Basia Bulat

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Its a long walk back to town. The moon is up. The trees are whispering tall and shuddering with secrets. Andie walks a strong, steady pace not quite a stride, not quite a jog. She doesn’t let herself panic, though the edge of it ices her heart.

She would curse him but she is trying to save her breath, to make it match her steps. It is a kind of meditation, lost in fury. The miles unreel behind her. This night has already been the longest night of her life and it will only be longer still as she walks the long, narrow country road, trying not to worry too much about the hundred or so horror movies she has seen featuring a woman just like her walking a trail just like this only to find herself sunk deep in perdition.

And bears. There could be bears. Andie keeps her eyes straight ahead, not letting herself notice how sinister and vague the world appears around her, rocks and fallen limbs wrapped in shadow and the frequent flash of eye shine staring back at her from the road just ahead.

She would be walking all night and, unless some car came and rescued her, any one step could be a fatal last step into the slavering jaws of a waiting wolf.

These thoughts fueled her stride. These thoughts and the impetus of fury that had pushed her out of Freddie’s car. Freddie with his sour breath and his too big hands that knew no boundaries.

It was no kind of date to drive deep into these woods, isolated and alone. He said he wanted to show her field where they could watch the meteors fall far from the neighborhood lights. She had wanted to believe him, but as soon as they pierced past the last of the streetlights, his hands had grown restless and friendly and deaf to her refusal. Kind at first and then insistent and then forceful.

What is it about men that keep their hands and lower parts separate from their minds?

The night air was cool and damp with the falling dew.

The moon is bright, silvering everything, but not quite full. No worries of werewolves this night. Make yourself grateful for few traveling mercies.

And the predatory hoot of owls in the distant trees. They are watching her. The entire forest is watching her. The woods have eyes and they are following her with voracious interest. If she stumbles, if she falls, they will press in around her and liberate the meat from her bones.

Andie keeps walking. She looks not to the right. She looks not to the left. She is only straight ahead and bent on reaching her destination and doing so in one piece. She wants to arrive without being eaten. The forest has a hundred hungry stomachs, each clutching and slavering at the scent of her passing. The forest is deep. The forest is dark. The forest has voracious appetites. Andie promises herself she will thwart those appetites and reach her destination having denied the night creatures their moon-salted meal.

I’m in therapy. You probably should be too.

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Last week, a friend thanked me for sharing the fact that I see a therapist. He was very kind and very genuine. It was, he told me, a brave thing to share. He thanked me, he said, because he sees a therapist too and was glad not to need to be embarrassed or ashamed.

The funny part is that I never actually intended to share that. It was just a little fact that wandered into a post about self-help books.

Funnier still, I am the kind of person most people would not assume needs therapy. I am, in general, a happy, patient, even-keeled kind of person. The friend who thanked me is also a happy, patient, even-keeled kind of person. We aren’t the poster children for psychotherapy. Except that we are.

A few years ago, my life went haywire. My typical habits of coping and perspective-getting began to fail. I accidentally adopted new habits of thought that made my life more difficult, my thinking cloudy and my perspective short. I became anxious and needed help finding new, better habits of thought. I needed someone to let me work my way through knots of emotion that kept me caught in anxiety and dread.

It was the best decision I could have made for myself. I don’t lie on a couch. I don’t touch my inner child or talk very much about my mother. I just talk about the things that have me feeling stuck and listen when I need someone to point out when I’m being dramatic or silly or lazy. I am reminded to take responsibility for my own feelings and not to take so much responsibility for the feelings of others. I am reminded that life is growth and situations change and that worry and anxiety usually happen when I try to live too much in the past or too far in the future. I get reminded to be where I am and feel what I feel and do positive things to control the few things I can actually influence and let go of the rest.

I don’t know what my friend’s experience of therapy might be. I suspect he would say some of the same.

I want to thank my friend for being kind and generous and for taking the time to say thank you. He has me thinking about the merits of having a professional partner to help you keep your thoughts in order. Things are much better for me, but I’m not done yet. I still need the therapy. You probably do too.

Self-help: No shortcuts. No secret passwords.

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Before I close the college library for the two-week Christmas holiday, I always grab a dozen or so books to be certain I have good things to read over the break. I’d like to tell you that my stack of holiday reads is a carefully thought out list. It isn’t. The stack is more of a smash-and-grab operation.

A week into my vacation I was surprised to notice that my stack had a dominant theme: cultivating habits of greater focus. A few of the books I randomly grabbed:

  • Getting to It! Accomplishing the Important, Handling the Urgent, and Removing the Unnecessary by Jones Loflin & Todd Musig (library near you)
  • Driven to Distraction at Work by Edward Hallowell (library near you)
  • Better than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives by Gretchin Rubin (library near you)
  • The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg (library near you)

I realized this a few moments are reading Marie Kondo’s The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing (library near you).

I won’t need my therapist to help me decipher what this means. I waste a lot of time worrying about prioritizing my time and whether or not I am well-focused on the most useful things. A related anxiety: many of the things I do in my daily life are done on a kind of autopilot without deep attention or thought.

Intrigued by this non-accidental accretion of books, I thumbed through several to get a sense of what I was up against. The first chapter of Getting to It! is an assault of questions:

  • “At any time of day, do you find yourself saying ‘When I get the time I will…’ or ‘One day when things are different…’ and then realizing how familiar that sounds? Do you reflect on the past five years and become frustrated..?”
  • “What if a high percentage of your tasks and actions were actually contributing to accomplishing those things that matter to you?”
  • “What if you felt you actually had time..?”
  • “What if you actually enjoyed…?”
  • “What if some of the chores on your list…?”
  • and on and on ad naseum

I put the book aside. The questions were annoying and the cadence familiar. It was the steady, rhythmic incantation of the infomercial man. Time management. Clearer priorities. A tidier, better organized life-space. Close cousins to Kaboom! Cleaner and Oxyclean laundry detergent.

I piled the self-help books together in a bag to take back to work. I’m all for a bit of ass-kicking inspiration now and then. Sometimes I need a quick recap of things I already know. But, for the most part, I already know what needs to be done. Less time thinking; more time doing. And reading about the thinking about the doing isn’t very helpful.

To paraphase the sage George Carlin: if you read a book that somebody else wrote about self-help, isn’t that just help?

So I begin my new year by setting the self-help books aside. I am one step closer to spending my time the way it actually needs to be spent.

Worry less. Do more.

Rinse. Repeat.