I’d intended to do nothing today. Well, nothing except read, that is. You know, go easy on myself. Maybe take a nap, rest. And whereas that’s exactly what happened for the first part of the afternoon, the rest of the day has gone to pot. For one thing, our air conditioner broke, which means the house has been getting gradually hotter with each passing hour. And if that weren’t enough, our freezer stopped working too, which I noticed when I walked into the garage and stepped into the River Jordan.

“It probably just needs defrosting,” Dad said

“Like my sex life,” I replied.

So that’s been the evening. Right in the middle of dinner, the air-conditioner repair man showed up, then the freezer thing happened. So everyone’s been running inside and outside, the guy working on the air conditioner, and me, Mom, and Dad transferring all the food from the outside freezer to the inside one–cramming-cramming-cramming everything from TV dinners to chicken wings inside and–since all of it was covered in water–making a big damn mess in the process. Then we dragged the freezer into the driveway, hooked up the water hose, and sprayed the caked-up ice inside until it disappeared like all my hopes and dreams.

Just kidding.

Sort of.

Now it’s seven in the evening, and I’m straight-up irritated, mostly because I’d rather be reading a book or visiting some friends who invited me over earlier. But instead there’s the freezer project and this, the blog project. I mean, some days writing is a real source of inspiration and relief for me, and other days it’s just a pain in my ass. Like, there are times I’d like to chunk my laptop across the room and give the internet my middle finger. Seriously, I don’t recommend trying to become a better person. Just watch Netflix. Self-help and personal growth, let along sharing your every thought with the entire virtual world, is for the fucking birds.

And as if ALL THIS weren’t enough to get me worked up, now there are a million flies circling around me, the result of the back door being opened and closed so many times this evening.

Shoo, fly, shoo.

For two out of the last three nights, I’ve dreamed about dead bodies. In last night’s dream, I was trying to dispose of a dead body, first in a large body of cold water, then in a trash can. And whereas my therapist says dreams like this are good because dead bodies represent the discarding of no-longer-useful parts of one’s personality, they’re still not fun dreams to have. Again, in last night’s dream, there was an entire row of giant trash bins filled with trash. That’s good because it means I’m discarding a lot mental and emotional junk I don’t need. But still, there was a dead body–and all that trash–there was even blood. Talk about gross. Not exactly the best way to start your morning.

I say all this to point out–once again–that personal growth isn’t everything the books in the self-help aisle make it out to be. It can be a real bitch at times–ugly and uncomfortable. Because what do you do when a part of you–even a not-so-useful part of you–dies? What do you do when you’re USED to having a lot of mental and emotional STUFF around, then suddenly it’s no longer there? Personally, I find that part of me wants to celebrate The Great Letting Go, and part of me wants to hang on. Ugh. It’s so disorienting, so frustrating. You think, If I’m not that person with all that trash, WHO am I? And WHAT exactly AM I becoming?

I still don’t have an answer.