Thirty - Jill Emerson [1]
(I don’t know what that last means. But I will not cross anything out. That’s part of what this diary is all about.)
And so to put down, now, once and forever what this diary is all about. Not a place to record everything that happens, not a source of guilt when a few days go by without an entry. But merely a place to write messages to the girl in the mirror.
I found myself, all afternoon, coming face to face with my reflections. Not my verbal reflections but with mirror images. Literally. The mirror over the bathroom sink, on the bedroom closet door, the car’s rear-view mirror, all sorts of mirrors. And I kept studying myself either critically or generously, and also I found myself just staring blankly into my own baby browns, staring unseeing is I guess the phrase, while I tried to puzzle out how this diary business ought to be aimed. And then I decided to write it to the girl in the mirror.
Which is to say not to my own self, because the girl in the mirror lives in her own world, really. That world must be rather like this one, because the girl’s life puts the same lines in her poor face that Reality (I saw a hippie button that says “Reality is a Crutch.”) has been putting with increasing frequency in mine. So I write to you, Mirror Jan. To a nonexistent person who exists as another self or I. Thus I need only tell you the things I find interesting. I don’t have to describe myself all that much, do I? You and I must look at each other half a hundred times a day. And I don’t have to apologize for the occasional run-on sentence, or for other errors of style which would be inexcusable if this were pretending to be some sort of Capotene nonfiction novel.
For that matter, I trust you won’t mind if I cease herewith to address you in the second person—it does seem rather precious. And that you won’t be dismayed if days or even weeks pass without word from me. Because it seems to me that the reason I generally abandon diaries is that they turn into chores, and my track record with chores of any description is Not Good.
And, actually, I rather would like this to turn out well. I don’t know exactly what I hope to accomplish, but—
But bullshit. I know what this is supposed to accomplish. It is supposed to be therapy. It is supposed to keep the everyday housewife from going quietly or unquietly over the edge. From dropping out of her tree. From wigging out.
Why do we have so many euphemisms for unpleasant truths? So many cute ways to describe ourselves if, for example, we are drunk. Or if we go insane.
I am not going insane.
I am going insane.
I am sick of this, for now. I think.
January 8
Last night was horrible.
Howard came home with what I think the lower orders would describe as a hair up his ass. Just a wee bit too much aggravation at the office and just a wee bit more booze than he positively needed in the club car. When I picked him up at the train he started bitching at me for not having had air put in the front left tire. It is not flat, but then neither is it round, and we had decided that I would have them put air in the tire, a service they perform willingly when they sell you gas. Had I failed to get gas? No. Then I meant to say that I had gone into the gas station without getting the tire filled? Right, guilty. Well, what the hell was the matter with me, anyway? A good question, and one which, although I said nothing, was not entirely original on his part; I had been asking myself much the same thing all day.
He had a couple more drinks with dinner. I don’t exactly blame him. Dinner, let’s be honest, stank. A noble experiment. One of those packaged things with equal parts of dried herbs and poisonous chemicals. Betty Crocker’s Rice Galitzianer, perhaps. Sometimes I have fantasies of buying stone ground flour and organic vegetables and making everything from scratch, and then