Cold Comfort: Monday, July 1, 2024 – Agatha

Dear Diary,

Look you’d think they’d at least give you a choice between three names rather than just assigning you one. It’s not supposed to connect back to your real life, blah blah blah, but come on. Agatha? Freaking Agatha? I’m going to have to train myself to answer to it. To turn my head when someone says “Oh, Agatha!”

This was never going to be good. I knew that. But it could’ve been better is all I’m saying.

My therapist suggested journaling, but this is going to be burned before I leave here, because it’s going to be about here, and we’re not supposed to carry anything like that out with us. If it’s fiction, that’s different (there’s one of those reviews by someone claiming they wrote a novel while they were here, but it’s probably not any good, because they didn’t actually say it’s been published) but anything about the people we meet, yada yada yada, is illegal.

We all had to sign that stupid form with our legal names, and now we’re here and somebody else, and just make that make sense.

Okay Agatha that’s not the point of journaling. Or of being here. The point is avoiding headlines, avoiding doom scrolling, practicing meditation and mindfulness and dear lord I’m going to die of boredom. Why did I let them talk me into this?

Deep breath. Okay. Worst year of my life and all. God, I almost wrote “worst year of my life so far” and here we go. Doom spiraling again.

I can’t just think it’s the worst year ever because that’s entirely unrealistic. I’m young. Unless I die suddenly in some sort of catastrophic event, there will, someday, be worse years. And that’s not doom thinking. That’s just a fact. I’m still alive and I’m here at this stupid retreat living some people’s dream, and come on, I’m not even the only person doing it. There’s a waiting list, so all the cabins are full. Plus it’s not just the Meyers. They’ve got a couple other people working and living here, and they stay the whole season.

I am here to get away from, and recover from, the things that have happened to me that should have been private but are far too public.

There. That. To live in the moment and not repeat all the awful things and the worst night of my life and the fact that everyone, everywhere, around the world thinks they know what happened, and what I should’ve done, and why it all happened, and just all that shit that I was supposed to leave behind when I got off that dinky airplane and saw Jonathan standing there.

No name cards or anything. It’s just him, the same face as the promotional material, and he waits for your bags and you load them up and if the guy in 3 isn’t the one in my favorite show then it’s his identical twin.

Okay and did anyone ever think of that? I’m never going to be able to say I met him. That we talked. Not about ourselves, no, but come on. It’s the sort of name that makes young women everywhere scream and faint and claim their ovaries exploded, which is both gross and ow, but I’m cursed. He offered me a hand to get down from the van and I can’t ever tell anyone about it.

And yes, Dr. Weber, I’m concentrating on that because it means I don’t have to think about why I’m here. The shit I’m running away from, except Dr. Weber wants me to think of it more proactively, so the shit I’m learning to deal with by being here.

Okay was it really wise to agree to this when being cut off for a month means no therapy appointments, either? It’s almost time for dinner. Guess I might as well see what they do with all our requests.

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Cold Comfort: Monday, July 1, 2024 – Alyssa, coming July 3