Lots of leftovers with a Texas sheet cake.
My mind clears as I pull out the rest of the ingredients, grab a few bowls, and get to work.
It’s a calm, blessed relief, the muscle memory of mixing, and soon I’m pouring the batter into a shallow pan.
While it bakes, I turn a circle in the too-big-for-one-person kitchen.
“Frosting.” I say this out loud, then walk into the pantry. When I flip on the light, I see the ticks on the wall marking Minnie’s growth.
Some have exclamation points next to them. All different colors of marker and pen.
I breathe, stiffen my spine, and turn away.
I walk into the living room and flip on the television just to have some background noise.
The house is so quiet. Too quiet.
I walk into the den and look around. The built-in bookshelves are full of books, mostly mine, but I haven’t read anything new in months. I sit down in the armchair, and when I lean back, I feel something hard behind me. I reach behind the pillow and grab it. I don’t have to look at it to know what it is.
A journal.
My journal.
The one thing that was supposed to “help me heal.”
It hadn’t been my idea. My therapist, Dr. Lydia Baskin, recommended it in the weeks following that fateful night at the auction. I was seeing her religiously up until two months ago when she looked me straight in the face and said,“Claire, nothing about your life is going to change if you don’t change it.”
I might’ve rolled my eyes at her because Iknowthat.
But also because I don’t knowhowto actually do it.
She said to start with small changes. I’ve tried small changes. All they do is bring me closer to having to make big changes.
I open the journal and thumb through the pages, momentarily proud of myself for taking her journaling assignment so seriously. I’d been a faithful journaler for months.
But my pride is short-lived when I notice that almost every entry is a rehashing of the one before. Page after page of bitter diatribes from a woman who is angry. Devastated. Terrified. Hopeless.
A woman who, even all these months later, is still exactly the same. Well,mostlythe same, but now with a smattering of heartbreak mixed in.
I flip to the last page before a series of blank ones.
There, in bold black letters, are the same words Dr. Baskin had said to me.“Nothing about your life is going to change if you don’t change it.”
I’d written it down, underlined it,andcircled it, and I have no memory of doing so.
Those words had not been well received, but some part of me, the part that wants to heal, must’ve known they were important.
And while everything about my life has changed in the last year, none of those changes were ones I’d made. They’d been madeforme. They’d happenedtome.
Under that quote, in the same bold lettering, is a question. One Idoremember writing.
My mind spins back to that day in therapy, sitting in the chair opposite her—me, cross-legged in my black leggings and worn-out CSU sweatshirt, and her in her pantsuit and stilettos.
The journal is open in my lap, and Dr. Baskin says, “I want you to write down a question, and then I’m going to give you some time to answer it. Then we’ll talk through it together.”
I look down at the journal, back in the present.
The question is simple, but the answer is definitely not.
