Trying to Distract Myself (Chapter 9)

When the sun rose, I rose from my boulder bed and went back to the folder I had created the other day. I looked through it and wondered if I had enough energy to go to all of these yet. There were a lot of caves and though it didn't take too much energy, it was still energy, and all those caves would chip away at the energy I had stored. Maybe...maybe I should go to some now and go to some-no, it wouldn't be the best idea. I wanted to, but I didn't at the same time. To go to all of them at once would require another couple of days of energy storing, but to go to some and then the rest later would take even longer. But it would make me feel better to go to some and then to some later. I wasn't quite sure what to do so I paced around for a while, considering on what to do. It was starting to really bother me.
I ground my teeth and tried to distract myself by counting the grains of sand on the ground. It did work for some time, though not for long, for when I counted, my mind would wander off from the task yet still be counting, and then my thoughts would turn back to the problem I was trying to avoid. So then I tried to count birds flying past me overhead. Once again, same problem. No matter what I did to distract myself, my mind somehow always managed to turn itself back to the cave issue.
Knowing that it was better to wait and do it all at once, I desperately tried to make myself wait. I wanted to go see some caves now but knew it was better to be patient. Of course, my heart was yearning for Fala and wanted to get the cave searching over with, but my mind told me to do otherwise.
Once again, I set myself to not think about the caves and Fala, so I tried to count seconds. One...two...three... Somewhere around 200 I began to count caves, and it was around 400 that I really realized I was counting them. Giving a scream of frustration, I kicked a nearby boulder, sending a stream of pain from my toes to my teeth. It was dumb to try and vent by hurting myself, but the pain did distract me from the caves. I wanted to keep hurting myself to distract me, but I knew for one, that would be bad for me and two, my mind would go back to the original problem anyways.
There really wasn't any way to avoid the subject. Even so, I kept trying. I counted different kinds of objects, I tried to meditate. I even tried knocking myself out, I was that desperate. All I ended up with was a nasty bruise on my head. It was really very stupid.
Then I went hunting, and that got my mind off of the caves until I was eating and spacing out. And then it was back in my head again.
At some point, Dyari came back and we talked about just the randomest things for a while. It helped keep my mind distracted, but it didn't work for long. He left to go back to his time and then I was left by myself to try to sleep. And naturally, I began to think of whether I should go look at some of the caves now or wait it out.
This was how the next couple of days passed as well. I amassed an amazing collection of bruises of all colors and there were probably rings under my eyes. Dyari did help, though not for long. Finally, the day came that I had enough energy to go to all the caves at once.

AN: Okay, yeah, that was stupid, but I felt that doing that. So too bad.