I really thought this was the day, but it turned out to be just another day like every other day for the last two weeks. I did do without any pain reliever until almost dark, and I lasted without the brace nearly as long. But as the day wore on, I wore out, and the pain came back. If I’d got my Kaiser password in the mail today, I would have made an appointment. But I didn’t, so I didn’t.

It’s depressing, you know? To think the worst is over and then to have it come back and smack you like a frying pan in the face? Depressing. Not that I was all that confident earlier in the day. I sort of knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, that I was fooling myself. I really, really wanted to be better, and I kept up that myth for as long as I could make myself believe it. And I’d probably do it again tomorrow and the day after, if I thought I could get away with it.

So I won’t make any promises, because I’m too weak to keep them. It’s like promising not to eat a doughnut, and then waking up in the bakery. No, no. It’s like promising to pull weeds, and then having it rain. No, that’s not it either. It’s like making that promise and then fooling myself into thinking it’s raining. That’s more like it.