I am not musing about perching on a sidewalk and casually leaning forward until my soft gooey body is in the path of a Mets bus.
I am not spending wide-eyed nights swaddled in a quilt and also inside a backpacking tent that has been raised on top of my bed so I can simulate a womb.
I am not groaning, moaning, twisting my limbs together and mashing my face into the couch cushions every time I remember the things that I have verbally promised to do and the contracts I have signed and the agreements I have entered and the nothing nothing nothing I have done.
I have been thinking about shaving my head. The notion first occurred to me when I was brushing my teeth and my eyes slid onto my reflection in the mirror. There was so much wiry brown, almost black, hair, whirling and twisting and jutting into the space surrounding my head. I felt sick. Like a crown of thorns, the hair was digging into my scalp and compacting my thoughts and feelings underneath, into a space that was too tight, that was about to burst.
My eyes watered. I knew I was going to scream unless I acted. I grabbed sharp scissors from my bathroom cabinet and sheared generous chunks of hair, from the back, from the side, from wherever. Damn the consequences. I needed to be free, to be clean.
The little brown black wires worked their way beneath the neck of my t-shirt, onto my sweaty skin, and they itched and stung. I removed my shirt and made a cursory effort to brush them off. I went to bed. I slept, beautifully. "Fuck," I said as I woke to my alarm.
So, I have been thinking about shaving my head.
