If you act like it's not there...

I've had a stack of mail accumulating over the past 4 or 5 weeks that is beginning to take over my kitchen counter space, and threatening to move over to my coffee table. I've been gone so often lately that opening mail has not been a priority whatsoever. I have this attitude that I know all of bills that I have due and roughly when they are due and since I pay them online its not important to deal with actual paper mail.

My real priority has been laundry. Each time I was home for a couple days and back on a plane the following week, my main concern was making sure I had some clean boxers to pack up and take to my next destination. The mail just stood there. At first it was politely leaned up against the wall where the counter gave way to the bar. Then it stacked up and eventually spread out like sand being poured into a pile. Pretty soon I found myself sliding it out of the way each time I pulled up a bar stool and sat down to eat. I just kept trying to act like it wasn't there. Opening it would have been far too easy and would perhaps be, in some weird way, admitting weakness. I didn't need to know what was in that mail. If I didn't open it, I couldn't be held accountable for what was in it, right? If I just looked past it, it didn't exist.

It just sat and sat and stacked and stacked. People would come over and comment, while others just rolled their eyes. I felt like one of those nasty couples on Clean House being given a look by Necy Nash down the end of her nose, while curling those juicy fire-engine red lipsticked labios to the side in a skeptical smirk. I was acting like my stack of mail was invisible so why can't you too. It's not like it's a pile of half eaten food or something. There wasn't an accumulation of old chicken bones in the corner or anything like that. Nor were there any critters hiding behind the paper hills.

To me it was just a daily reminder of money that I don't have. The bills stack up and I don't have any additional funds to apply to them, so there's no use in checking on the damage. To open that mail would be an acknowledgment that the walls are caving in on me. The output is becoming much great than the input. But maybe that's all in my mind. Yeah, that's it. The bills in my box aren't really in the box, but in my mind, like the recession.