Friday, March 21  

Trouble

Vic has a heavy guilt complex. It is so ingrained that she suspects herself of being in trouble when in fact she hasn't done anything all, good or bad, in 48 hours so how could she be in trouble really?

trouble: noun 1. A condition or situation characterized by danger, distress or annoyance. 2. A cause of worry. 3. The condition of being in need of immediate assistance. verb 1. To cause anxious uneasiness.

She often asks people, who often reply in surprised reassurance, whether she has done anything to offend them recently. Usually she hasn't, but that doesn't dissuade her possibly paranoid notion that somewhere in the universe there is someone who is angry with her. She waits for doom. Not knowing from which angle it will approach.

Vic thinks its sad that she spends so many hours of her life under this swell of dread and wonders if it is the seedling of some greater mental erosion that is boring its roots into her. Her father's father had an unavoidable problem with paranoia and near the end of his life disgraced both himself and his family by refusing to come away from the kitchen wall which he listened through with a water glass, taking notes and muttering to himself. Vic wonders if she will end up like that, the grandfather she was named after (it bears mentioning).

She troubles herself for a while about the relative easiness of taking a heriditary swan dive compared the difficulty of brainscans, psychotherapy and anti-psychotics. But then, allowing herself to become paranoid about developing paranoia isn’t really the healthy, move-forward thing to do at this juncture, is it? No. So snap out of it, Vic. Up, off the couch. Clear the coffee table, put the dishes away. New day and all that. Go outside. Bring something edible that doesn't come in a Ben and Jerry's cardboard pint into the house and let's get on with our lives.

Vic leaves the house with confidence and renewed vigour. No one is secretly angry with her.

Heavy rain tumbles out of the sky quite suddenly, just at the moment Vic crosses the street toward the grocery store. It falls in strong, hard, thick lines and makes her think of the toads that fell in Magnolia.