Cecilia

At the risk of providing more evidence to be used against me in the case to put me away, I’d like to introduce you to one of the characters roaming around my mental landscape: Cecilia.

Before I can tell you about Cecilia though, I need to introduce you to my weird tendency to anthropomorphize various parts of me and then narrate for them. One example would be my uterus. Her name is She-Hulk and she is angry most of the time. My liver is some kind of cross between Bob Cratchit and Eeyore; earnest and hardworking but sometimes sort of depressed and sorry for himself. Even the more abstract parts of me get their own personalities. My paranoia’s name is Bobby. He’s a clumsy British hit man who is after me. I often walk out of buildings and look over my shoulder to make sure he wasn’t hiding against the wall and I whisper- “Not today Bobby!” He should really get his whole own entry. That is for another time.

Anyway. Cecilia.

Cecilia is the part of me that takes over functioning when I’m too tired, stressed or drunk to operate my own self as usual. She’s a kind of a last resort autopilot I guess. I sort of think of her as the teenage niece of some other part of my brain who just needed summer work. She’s sweet and SUPER excited to help but really not that competent and so I usually hide her away in the mailroom of my brain doing the less important functions where she won’t be seen. I mostly assign her to things like wondering what it would be like to kiss Woody Allen.

Sometimes though, the rest of my brain checks out for the day and much to my horror, Cecilia takes it upon herself to fill in. It’s like she emerges from the mailroom to find a ringing phone in the office and instead of letting it go to voicemail, she picks it up and tries to do business.

Exhibit A: Last night Cecilia fielded a late night phone call that I have little to no memory of now. Although I was partly, or completely asleep at this time, it appears that I spoke to a friend for 6 minutes at 1:00 a.m. and now I have to figure out if there was any information from that call that I need. Did I make plans? Did I promise to do anything? Did this person profess love to me? Naturally Cecilia took no notes on this call because she is entirely worthless as a secretary. I don’t know how many times I have to speak with her about NOT answering the phone but she’s a little overzealous and really does mean well.

I think the key to keeping her away from my normal functions is coming up with a whole lot of meaningless things to ponder which will keep her busy somewhere in the back of my brain. Also staying as awake and sober as possible at all times.