I'm ok - a teaspoon story

It was, in fact, very simple.
He had it all worked out in his head.
Step one. Lift sheets.
Step two. Sit up.
Step three. Swing legs out of bed.
Step four. Stand.
He was still a bit hazy on step five.

He had threatened himself. He had bargained, bartered, coaxed, distracted, lured. He had tried the good old “I’ll count to three” at least twice.
But what was the point.
If he was incapable of doing something as simple as getting out of bed – such a mundane task you could hardly call it a task at all, and people do it all the time – then why bother with the rest of the day?
Why bother with the rest of forever, really?

Just popping by to do your bills. Don’t bother getting up. Jeez, do the dishes if you can, will you? Someone put candy in your mailbox- it melted all over your mail. It’s fine, I’ll manage. Give your mum a call, she’s been bothering me, ok? Bye.

There were people he’d leave behind. That was why he was bothering to try. People who were perfectly functioning, going on about their business day in day out, and still had the energy to care about him.
Ridiculous.
If he didn’t take care of himself, if he didn’t start doing the things people expect from a standard civilian pretty soon, people were going to be bothered.
That kept his mind busy for a good long while. He thought about his rotting corpse in this same bed. The neighbours would notice the smell after a while. Insects would crawl inside the house and find the scraps of food in the kitchen and himself and feast. The leak in the bathroom would turn into mould, the iron would turn to rust, the wood would brittle and break, until the house would be held together by decay – and then the wind would blow it all away. A speck of dust. A grain, finally no longer stuck under the windscreen wiper.

Johnny stuck his head in the staircase railing again yesterday. He never learns. We had to use half a bucket of brown soap before we got him out- it was actually pretty funny, in hindsight. He was screaming bloody murder by the time we found him. Gary says hi, by the way. Is it ok if I come by tomorrow with lasagne?

He supposed… the street cats he fed would have a hard time finding food. That woke him up from his mulling stupor, and he even sat up for a bit- before he collapsed again. What was he thinking? That he could actually go outside?
And then he felt twice as guilty, because he just had to drag other creatures in his downfall. But maybe, if he left the window open (if he could reach it), the cats would smell his body and eat him. Cats did that, right? Or was that just an urban myth?

I’m calling a therapist.

No.

I’m ok.