Free I'm Sorry You Feel That Way by Diana Joseph Page A

sheets. It would make the boy yell and stomp his feet and maybe even cry. I hate that dog! he said, while the puppy hid under the dining room table.
     
     
     
     
     
    I too, behaved in ways that suggested I had issues. Most of my issues aren’t that unusual among those of my race, class, gender, and level of education—white, middle, female, college—and these issues include low self-esteem, panic and anxiety attacks, unre-solved anger toward my mother, and general bitchiness.
    But my main issue was, and to some extent still is, a kind of eternal hiccup of the crowded mind. No tiny sips of water can cure it. No breathing in a paper bag can make it go away. It’s what happens when I zero in on a particular thought, how I can worry that thought until I am worn out.
    For example. If the cashier rings up my order, and it comes to six dollars and sixty-six cents, I will purchase a roll of Life Savers or I will put back the brick of Colby Jack, but either way, for the hours and days to come, I’ll worry about what it means that my groceries totaled up to that number. Is it a sign? If so, from whom? I don’t want to think about it.
    Then this will happen: Because that number has appeared to me in the grocery store, I’ll see it again on a license plate on the car ahead of me in traffic. It will turn out that the car just happens to be going where I’m going because they stay ahead of me for a really, really long time. This will make me nervous. The thought will occur to me that the car with that number license plate is leading the way. My heart will pound.
    Then that number will be part of somebody’s phone number, and it’s imperative that I make the call. Then I’ll see it on a billboard advertising sandwiches: each meatball sub is three dollars and thirty-three cents, and if you buy two, like I’d have to, well, there it is. That number will turn up when I’m playing poker, and somebody beats my pair of kings with triple sixes. A switch in my brain flicks on and off and on and off. A light in my head is flashing. A bell is ringing ding! ding! ding! I won’t want to think about it, but I can’t not think about it, then in the middle of the night, I will wake up to think about it some more.
    I’ll obsess about whether or not I turned the coffeepot off. The curling iron. The gas on the stove top. A voice in my head will say, You better go check! You’re gonna burn the house down! I’ll obsess about whether or not I locked the door. Are you sure you locked it? Are you positive? Better go check. There could be a rapist hiding in the basement already! I’ll obsess about if that thump I heard while driving was me running over someone: an old man with a walker, a little kid on a tricycle, a bum and his GOD BLESS sign. You better go check!
    I’ll obsess about how I smell too strongly of perfume, putrid perfume, an especially loud and stinky kind I received for Mother’s Day, and thus feel obligated to wear. You reek! the voice says. You are offending people! I’ll obsess about whether or not the shirt I’m wearing is too tight— You’re a slut! —and, upon deciding it is, I’ll obsess about my motives for buying a too-tight shirt— You’re a slut! —and how, maybe, in Lost and Found, there will be a sweater I can borrow. You’re a slutty slut slut, the voice says. And you smell like a whorehouse in France!
    And later, after I return the sweater to the cardboard Lost and Found box, I’ll think I feel itchy. Like on my arms. My shoulders. My neck.
    Fleas, I’ll think.
    Body lice.
    Cooties.
     
     
     
     
     
    The puppy did not have fleas. He had melty brown eyes the color of chocolate. He stared at me with them. He watched my every move. Sometimes, I’d glance up from the book I was reading or glance away from the movie I was watching to find the puppy staring at me, his eyes shiny and unblinking.
    When he fixed those eyes on me, I did his bidding. It was like he put a hex on me, he worked his mojo. I