Wallow

Allow me a moment of self-indulgent depression. I’m feeling my mortality today. I’m just in a blah mood and I feel like maybe, just maybe, I’m getting sick. I’m tired and unmotivated and the office is too damn hot. It’s snowing outside and I want to strangle each unique and beauteous snowflake. We all keel over eventually; even you, you stupid snowflakes, so don’t blame me for your sad fate. The country is at war, and that fact further incubates my mood. Pro-war/anti-war aside, war sucks. My biorhythms are screwed and everything I see, hear, smell, touch, taste, do, or do not do mires me deeper in ick.

Oddly, I like this funk. I’m avoiding funny blogs and chipper coworkers in fear that they might shatter my sorrowful shell by making me chuckle. All day I’ve been nurturing my depression and keeping it safe. I want it to thrive just a little longer. Perhaps, I’ll crumple it up and toss it out the car window on my way home. Perhaps, typing out feelings will purge this melancholy. Whatever the case, I want my dejection to live a little longer. Rach’s prose about her grandma has given me something to think about. I now have an outlet with which to stretch my gloomy fingers and explore the sadder side of existence.

I don’t believe I fear death. I’m uneasy about it, yes, but I’ve come to grips with mortality. Death, fine. Aging, scary. I’ve got several good years left in me. You know, the kind of years where everything is uphill. Life just keeps getting better. I get stronger, hotter, smarter, and more mature with every passing day. A time will come, though, when biology catches up with me and everything I’ve worked so hard to achieve will be siphoned out of my mind and body.

Take a look at the upper-right-hand corner of my blog. That is my life trickling away. To be sure, the accuracy of that countdown is suspect, but the symbolic truth still remains. Time treats us all the alike and serves up the same finale to all living things. It’s not the finale that I’m worried about; it’s the humbling nature of aging.

Damn it, I feel my morose shell cracking. I’m whining, and I hate whiners; hence, I have no choice but to suck it up and kick my pathetic ass out of this funk.

The positive aspect of time is that it flows consistently at a single speed in the same direction. I’m not jumping from 27-years-old to 80. No, aging has a steady course that it must follow. I’ll be 80 some day, but that just means the day before I was 79-years 364-days old.

Willpower, fortitude, beliefs, and self-motivation are the weapons for fighting this predetermined battle. I’m going to lose. I’m going to grow old and die, but fuck if I’m not going to put up a fight and squeeze every drop of experience out of this limited resource called life. Screw biology, screw entropy, screw time, screw physics, and screw chemistry. All of them are worthy opponents and each of them is stronger than me, but they will sing tales of my savage struggle against all odds. Some day biology, entropy, time, physics, and chemistry will be sitting around a table at some nondescript truck stop and an uncomfortable silence will come over them. The waitress, Flo, will meander over and top off their lukewarm cups of coffee. Entropy will gaze into the swirling depths of his steaming mug and quip, “Remember that dude, Shenry. He was a bitch and half. Gotta admire a guy like that.” The others will mumble or nod in agreement and then their conversation will turn to other subject matters.

That’s how I want to be remembered.
...and so it was written, shenry at 3/24/2003 05:14:00 PM.
...and so it was appended with .