A Visit With Guilt

As I crawled into the family room after too little sleep to do my morning calisthenics, the light clicked on. Guilt was sitting on the couch, waiting for me.

I didn't have any spirit. I grunted in her general direction and sort of collapsed on the floor to start push-ups.

She apparently had been up long before I had: she was showered, dressed, and had a cup of coffee in her hand as she watched me, nose on the carpet, ready to start.

"I talked with Confusion yesterday. He said he'd already been by" she chirped brightly as she raised the cup of caffeinated goodness to her lips.

"Umm" I responded, promptly losing count. Maybe I was on 15. I didn't know.

Let's call it 15.

"He said you had a good conversation but based on his relation of the conversation, I thought it might be time for me to stop by and chat with you" she continued, watching me again contemplate the floor from 3 inches away.

Sigh. I finally got up as apparently she was not going to be satisfied with less than acknowledgement.

She smiled brightly at me again as I sat down on the couch.

I gestured open handed towards her to begin.

She simpered. "Oh nothing really - just that Confusion mentioned you were wondering about things and directions, and of course that means thinking about you and what
you wanted to do versus your roles and responsibilities you have in your life. You know me - you're never really doing enough, or you're never really doing it correctly." She smiled brightly at me again as she took another sip of coffee. "I thought I'd stop by and we could talk it through."

I looked at her with a cocked eyebrow. "Talk it through?"

She smiled condescendingly. "You know, the whole 'I want to do things I enjoy and live my life' versus 'I need to do the things that I am doing because that's what I'm supposed to do'. You really need to focus on your responsibilities and being stable and reliable."

My eyebrow remained cocked. "What if I don't care for any of it?"

She smiled again. "You're not supposed to 'care' for any of it. You're supposed to do it. That's the beauty of being me" - here she smiled again - "it's not what you do, it's how you feel about it that matters. And mostly I'm here to make you feel guilty about whatever it is you're doing - or not doing."

I sat there thinking about it as she sipped away on her coffee. "Wait a minute" I said. "What you're saying is that no matter what I do, you're here to insure I feel guilty?"

She sighed. "Silly boy, it's not anything you do, generally it's only things you do that are not in line with your responsibilities. Well, I mean you should feel guilty about those too - but only that you're not doing enough on those. The others, it would be ideal if you felt guilty that you either spending too much time on them versus your responsibilities or your spending not enough time on them. But it's best, of course, if you simply just felt guilty."

"So there's no winning here for me?" I asked, somewhat confused but somehow feeling totally defeated.

"Of course not" she replied brightly. She looked at her watch, then stood up. "This has been simply fabulous. A wonderful talk, but I've got to get on. I have aerobics with Depression and Anger at 0600, and you know how they are if you're not on time.

"Oh" she said as stopped at the arm of couch, looking at me slumped in a confused defeat. "You didn't do your full round of push-ups. You're slacking off. You should feel guilty about that." And with that she flounced off humming "Let's Get Physical", leaving me in the morning darkness holding her empty coffee cup and the impending weight of all I needed to do - but couldn't or wouldn't get to.

Odd - I was feeling guilty about it all...