Tuesdays and Saturdays

A new type of journal. Dilligent diary keeping. The before. The after. And everything in-between. We have to work out the patterns, she says.
So we can stop the patterns.

And you are also not allowed. Two days next week. You choose. As if it matters. So i said "Tuesday and Saturday". And that she writes down. "And that doesn't mean on other days you have permission."

I started to cry. "It is too hard." I don't want to stop.

Don't want it to be the last thing remaining of me, when I leave. What a fear.
Does she even know she's implanted seeds for this new distaste.
But anything to stop me. Does this mean it's getting better.

It only increases. More and more frequent. More and more severe.
More and more substantial each time.
Larger the dose.
Deeper the insertions.
Harder to feel.
As I grow more blunt.

I can hum softly most of the time.
Today though, an ancient story jolts in my memory.
In the Victorian times. Men wore earrings. The trend began with sailors. Who carried the fees for their burials on themselves, on their earlobes. The rings pay for the cost required to gain a resting place, if they were lost at sea and found on foreign lands.
For those people, how frightening is it, to leave their homeland?
For them, there really is no return.
Or it's the same for all of us, just some of us never realise.