Very often

Very often, I don't know what to do. In almost all circumstances, I don't know what the best course of action is, or even what courses of action are available to me. If I knew what options I had, I have thought, it would not be as difficult for me to decide what to do. Though, I have also thought, that even if I did know exactly what options I had in a given circumstance, I still would not know which option was the best. Because of this, I take a special comfort from doing one of the few things I am confident I know how to do.

I stand over my sink and wash a spoon very carefully. I have cleaned the handle, and am polishing and polishing the bowl. I clean the spoon so thoroughly because I know how to clean a spoon, and because cleaning a spoon gives me time to consider one of the many things I don't know how to do. I don't know what to say to a friend who has said something harsh to me, for instance. It's obvious that she has only done so because she is angry at someone else, some third person, and wants me to know that she is, so I may comfort her. It's probably also because she wants me to think she doesn't want my comfort, even though she has made it clear that she needs it.

I can't decide what to say to her, or whether to say anything to her at all, what would be best, what would comfort her, what would let her know that I know she needs comforting, and that I do not like the way she has asked me for it, but that I will give it to her anyway. I don't know how to communicate any of these things, or whether I should. I scrub and scrub at the bowl of the spoon until it's no longer a tablespoon, it's a teaspoon, and still I don't know what to say to her, or whether to say anything to her. I keep scrubbing until it is a snail fork, and then a toothpick. I wash the spoon so hard and so meticulously that it is cleaned clean out of existence. I have done the thing I knew how to do until it has disappeared entirely. I still don't know what to do about anything else. I stand over the sink for a long time with empty hands, wishing I had another dirty spoon.