Today is Thursday and I haven’t been to work this week. On Monday, I told everyone that I fell down the stairs and injured my foot. And while they believed me, I spent the better part of that morning trying to sprain my own ankle.

When that didn’t work, I proceeded to muster up enough will to take a 10lb weight and drop it on my foot repeatedly until it was sore enough to make me limp. It was swollen, bruised, and severe enough to send me to the hospital (though not as severe as I would have liked). And I was satisfied that I was able to convincingly get out of going to work for a few days.

My foot is still sore now as I sit in my closet on the floor numb to everything in the world, avoiding my responsibilities. I can’t seem to muster up the will to do the things that I have been hired to do, but smashing my foot? Yep, that took guts! I didn’t even realize anything was wrong with my logic until yesterday evening when I realized that I wanted – no – needed to hit my foot with the weight a couple more times in order for it to give me enough pain to convince myself that I wasn’t just faking it.

Even in retrospect, I remember saying to myself that the pain that I’m causing to my foot is punishment for me being a lazy, trifling person. I guess that all equals crazy, but I don’t know. And after spending the better half of this morning calling out to professionals for help and getting nowhere, I’ve decided that at this moment, I don’t care. I will wallow a little longer, suck it up, force myself to do this work, accept whatever consequences come my way, and deal with this another day.