From across the desk, I watched my lawyer examine briefly the check I’d just handed her. She smiled fleetingly then wrote out a receipt in her loopy hand.
“Congratulations,” she said as she pulled something out of a file drawer in her desk. “Here’s your thousand-dollar folder.”
It was a simple black folder with the name of the firm embossed in gold across the cover. It held approximately five hundred thousand pieces of paper. All of which needed to be completed. By me. As soon as possible.
When I got home from our appointment, I shoved the folder in the kitchen junk-drawer (where my collection of defunct can-openers lives; I destroy can-openers the same way other people break finger nails). I shoved it in the junk-drawer and there it has languished for the past several weeks.
It’s made a few cameo appearances on my counter-top. I filled in my name. My social security number. My address. The children’s names. Then a wave of utter exhaustion threatened to knock me over. I put the folder back into the drawer and sat down for a rest.
And that’s how it’s gone. I fill out a few lines with the same effort it might take someone else to climb ten flights of stairs, and then I can do no more.
I almost have to trick myself into looking at it. I’ll idly flip the folder open when I’m on hold with the doctor’s office; as I concentrate on the music, maybe I can fill in two lines. I shove aside a bag of groceries and answer a question between putting away the milk and the canned goods. I set it on top of the laundry pile and while I’m folding tiny socks, I note some small piece of information that I need to gather.
Never did I imagine that this separation thing would require so much mental energy.
With a pen in my hand and some impossible-to-answer question in front of me, I stare off with unfocused eyes and imagine one night creeping up to where my soon-to-be ex-husband sleeps. I think of slipping into bed with him, putting my arms around him from behind and asking him please, could he please be the man I need? So that I don’t have to go through with all of this? So that I can relax? And not worry about how I’m going to pay for my insurance, or how I’m going to sell this house, or how it can possibly be 11:30 at night and I still have four things left to do before bedtime?
No. Of course he can’t. And more importantly, I can’t be the woman he needs.
***At this point in the writing, I took a break and wearily dragged myself through the shower. Once again, my very loquacious buttplug began begging softly to be used. Because I hate to disappoint my buttplug (or my bottom), I agreed to its demands.
Wow, life certainly does seem better when I’m wearing my buttplug.
This will be my approach. When next I have a moment to tussle with The Folder, I will wear the plug.
With the plug in and my mood thus improved, I could probably finish the thing in one sitting.***
