Have you ever spent an entire day of your life trying not to think? You know the kind of day of which I write:  category class “THIS SUCKS” sort of day. For me, that was yesterday. Whether I force myself to blame it on being a Monday or on being a Monday in the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, it doesn’t matter.  It was an Unthinkable Day!

So how exactly do you make it through the type of day when life is like a nearly mortal wound: the kind which won’t really kill you, but hurts like hell to even think about? How do you deal with the day in which life itself is actually painful and you are so wrapped up in trying to defeat that feeling (or at the very least, to ignore it) that it’s 7:30pm and the children’s bedtime before you realize that you didn’t even comb the baby’s hair today?! How do you amble through that sort of day?! 

You start that type of day limping like any other. Early morning brisk jump out of bed. Coffee. Hair. Makeup. More coffee. Clothes to feel hot by. Third cup of coffee. Water. Check. Check. Check. Check. Etc…   As you admire your handiwork in the bathroom mirror it hits you: The Unthinkable Day. You look straight into your own eyes and exclaim with dismay: “It hurts to think! So I won’t!”

Now because you are conscious and somewhat conscientious you quickly decide that you can’t spend an entire day not thinking. So you figure: “I’ll write! Writing always makes things better.” You sit down determined to pardon and release the inmates from the prison of your reeling mind, letting them off on good behavior before they rise up in absolute anarchy and everything between your ears begins to pound. Instead you find yourself wandering through Microsoft Word starting a dozen different posts only to find yourself hitting the backspace and the delete keys way too often to compose anything worthwhile or to bring the worthwhile to fruition. In your frustration you give up, put the laptop aside and realize: today you are not having trouble writing, you are having trouble LIVING!

You feel yourself on the verge of tears and are tempted to turn on TLC just to let a few rip.  In an all too unwelcome moment of lucidity, you shake yourself awake and you refuse to reach for the remote. Television is too much a waste of time, you know that. You are not about to fall into that trap.  At this point, morphing into a couch potato would just add to the pain. TV does not a domestic goddess make and your life won’t change by immersing yourself in someone else’s.  Whew. You are happy to have come out of that challenge unscathed. Next!

By eight AM you begin to wish that you could put an end to your own misery by working your heart and mind through to a brilliant solution for all of life’s problems. Then you realize that you are not thinking today and it’s not even an option… you’ve got too much to do. Where the hell is your fairy godmother?! Bibitty, bobitty, boo, my ass! You plow through your to do list in its entirety, knocking out every task before it manages to knock you down. There is a comforting sense of order in completing those tasks. You are somewhat pleased with yourself for at least making an attempt to counteract the imbalance of the life chaos that is beyond your control. You remind yourself that most of it in someone else’s hands and, ultimately, all of it is in God’s. So stop thinking. You promised yourself that you wouldn’t think today!

You spend the remainder of The Unthinkable Day avoiding thought and nursing the wound call life.  It’s not nearly quite as mortal as you had first imagined. It hurts, but you’ll survive. You hope for a better tomorrow.