Frustration and anger cloud my ability to think, as if a thick coating of distracting goo has glued itself to my brain. It weaves itself around it until I have lost all hope of ever finding the thoughts that I have lost. What happened, I wonder, to just this morning, when everything made sense? Why is it so hard to make sense of it now?

And then, to my dismay, I feel the ache.

It begins in my heart and sinks down to my toes, and thereafter travels that path again and again, at a constant rate of torture to the rest of me. It is not so much a pain as it is an unbearable weight. This weight plants itself in the middle of all of the action. It sits upon my heart like I sit upon my bed when all else fails. It refuses to move. No matter how hard I try, the weight is still there. It still distracts me.

Not even the all-curing chocolate can raise my spirits. I have sunk down lower and lower since the day began. My smile is nowhere to be found. Where exactly it is hiding, I do not have the pleasure of knowing. One thing I do know is that it lies deep inside my soul; somewhere I cannot seem to reach, let alone find. And, until this sort of body-wide crisis is solved, it won’t come out. It will remain where it cannot be seen, felt, or shared with anyone, or with myself.

I slowly begin to realize as I sit that the weight and the pain that isn’t really pain will not go away. Not even prayers at this point seem to soothe my mysterious anguish. If I knew what was bothering me, surely I would seek some sort of help in fixing it. But again, my mind is cluttered; coated; useless.

There is only one way to deal with my pain, I think. There is only one simple, easy way to relieve the unbearable weight that still sits upon my heart. No one has to know; this is a secret between me, myself, and I. Behind closed doors, I am free to do as I please. I am free to remove my primary pain-relieving instrument from the drawer beside my bed. And so, then, I do.

I take a deep breath just before I begin. The start of it all is always the hardest. Sometimes, even, the most painful. I never get much out of the first few moments. They are rough; unsteady; unpredictable. Anything could happen. The task could go any sort of direction, any time it pleases. It could all end badly.

Yet still, I don’t let my negativity stop me. I press on; I press in. I touch the pointy end of my instrument down to the surface and press down. Hard. At first, I don’t feel any relief at all. I move the object this way and that, waiting for the moment in which all of my emotions will leave me. They will drip from my brain and from my heart; they will spill from my hand. There’s no turning back now. The damage has already been done.

Eventually, I feel my emotions slip away. The weight on my heart leaps from its place and vanishes in thin air. The aching stops. The coating wrapped around my brain falls away. Satisfaction brings my smile from its hiding place.

I close my journal and set my pen aside.