Every morning I wake up to the thump of my heart still beating like a stupid puppy wagging its tail excitedly for no damn reason. What are you so enthusiastic about? Why don't you just leave me alone?! But it's so persistent, I can't ignore it and if I don't feed it it's just going to get more annoying, so I eventually get up.
I think I'm high on suffering... like on the third day of fasting, when your stomach finally gives up on you and your hunger pangs are exchanged for zen. Like if everyone I loved suddenly perished, I would just laugh. Have I reached nirvana? I'm not even Buddhist. Can I be an honorary Buddhist?
I don't know how to carry this thing. It's like when I walk home from the store with a full bag of groceries including a watermelon against my better judgment. At first it's not so bad and I can hold it by the handles, but soon I have to switch to my other hand, which also quickly fails. Then I hold the bag on my right hip, on my left hip, hug it to my chest, constantly shifting, and when both of my arms get too tired, I balance it on my head. This has its own problems. I consider calling for help, not because it's an option, but just to distract my mind while my body struggles on. I reconsider how much I really need that melon. I start making a plan B for when my arms give out completely and visualize myself rolling the bag down the street in full view of the neighbors getting out of their cars. The nice thing about carrying a heavy bag is that it's a single task, and it's finished as soon as I get home. I don't have to juggle it while going to work, being social, thinking, eating, sleeping. I don't have to be in a constant state of exhaustion.
I super don't want to be alive, yet I'm not at all suicidal. I'm too curious to see what other crazy shit will happen next. So far in my hundred years on this earth (or so it feels), I've been amazed at the variety of suffering available to the human. Just when I think it can't get worse, it gets worse -- not in depth or severity like I expect, but in another form entirely -- a sinister shape, a more putrid flavor, a color more dismal. I wonder if I'm going to get to collect the whole set, because while I have an impressive assortment, there are still many horrible things I haven't experienced yet. This is not even close to the most excruciating pain I've ever felt. I've had the sharp stabby pain and the dark bottomless pain and the vague grey-with-an-E-because-it-seems-bleaker pain. This is more like Chinese water torture in a conscious coma. I have a roof over my head and food to eat and plenty of other things to be thankful for. But it doesn't cancel out anything. It goes the other way, too, though. The suffering doesn't negate the good things. It just makes them brighter, sweeter, more acutely real.
I just want to have problems again instead of my entire life being a crisis.
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