It tends to come up at the most inopportune times. I had bought a game earlier that week because I felt I was getting my money’s worth. I bought shoes because my older ones were not yet due from the shop. I bought an umbrella because this was yet another storm to weather for the next day or so. I bought a nice meal because I was in a place for nice meals. Necessities, I told myself.
I felt so undeserving of everything I had bought that my mind sought to sabotage me, because I was haughty enough to even want ice cream on the way home. I spent half an hour walking back and forth the same corridor, step after heavy step, crying under my mask, muttering to myself, “But I want ice cream, I just want ice cream, can’t I have ice cream?” As if my mind was trying to recreate all the shitty little denials done me in the past, an attempt to dredge up some really deep-seated fears just for torture’s sake. I hated my mind for this, and dedicated myself to spending that half an hour to fighting what bordered between logic and plain stupidity.
By the time I prevailed, all the ice cream stores had already closed. I had to content myself from a store-bought cone–a relatively pedestrian double chocolate vanilla something–but let me say that it was one of the sweetest damned cones I’ve ever had in my life.
Left Hand, Write Hand 