its bound to breakdown. at a certain point everyone gets sick. fighting atrophy, we do our best to keep the leaves off the front steps. leaves cause dampness to stay in, dampness eats away at the elements. in retrospect it was futile, eventually it was to fall apart. so why not keep changing the radio station, cycling through the closet and changing the players? why stick with a script you know will not work out in the end? if you can tell the future, why not simply get there and start again somewhere where you dont know the ending? questions like these keep me up at night, or put me to sleep.

sweat forms on the back of my neck and my teeth, in no particular place, hurt. i want to drown it all away with sedatives, to crawl back under the covers and pretend that being aware is so hard. to numb oneself over and over is an acceptable form of suicide. death from a thousand lashes, one glass at a time. an abandonment of ones duties in an effort to placate the realities of it all. to speed the day away, to drowned ones feelings until the self is inebriated and incoherent….mainly to oneself.

is it better to be aware? if ignorance is bliss why would one want to become aware of oneself? why wake up at all and stare into a mirror, climb onto a scale and compare oneself to others or to themselves of yesterday. our drive to a better place becomes like a running joke as the mind and body start breaking down. there is no new car to replace this old one, each time you open your eyes there you are. within your world, encased in a body that is unescapable and in a life that is tied so tightly around you its almost choking you.

-on vacation, tropical island in southeast asia, sometime in my late 40s. recent fight with wife.