{still smoking.}

it's been said that all anyone ever has to talk about is themselves, because that's all anyone ever really knows. i am going to die. i said it aloud in my car at a stop light on the way to the grocery store. it seemed i needed to verbalize, so that i would come to terms with its factualness. i have been freakishly gripped by the all too common fear of dying. this plague consumed me very suddenly about a year ago. i was sitting in my car reading in the dark, and rubbing my left hand across my neck. as my fingers grazed the lateral tendons holding my head on place, i came across an ill-placed lump. panic swelled. i grew cold, chest burned and my throat closed up. there's nothing quite like discovering body malformations, while being a thousand miles from home and living in a car. thinking about it now, the ironic part of that story revolves around what i happened to be reading, No Exit, by sarte. but since that specific moment, i have been in a constant state of terror over the act of dying. i say "act of dying" because i'm not afraid of no longer existing, rather the timely progression towards death. the wilting of my body, eventual weakness, and the inevitable pity that i'm sure most people who know they are dying receive from the healthy, who are really thinking how glad they are that it isn't happening to them.

i've spent innumerable late nights finding and questioning many kinds of supposed abnormalities all over my body. in order to figure out what the problem might be, i would go online and look images depicting some similarity to my flaw. which turned out to be an absolutely terrible and accordingly, horrifying idea. there are so many pictures of mouth cancer on the internet. and i'm sure they only use the most grotesque cases to characterize cancer.

i believe the scientific term for these actions i exhibit is "hypochondria", however, using such a terminology makes me feel right cheap about the whole affliction. as though, my entire person can be simply written off in some respect. it's like calling someone an alcoholic. one can use the term, but have no real idea what it's like to be an alcoholic, like any other psychoneurosis. they just assume it means you drink too much. just like being a hypochondriac means you are afraid of illness too much. i'm sure no one really wants to know what it's like to be either, but it still strikes me as an easy oversimplification for such a considerably displeasureable state of mind.

it isn't that i'm necessarily afraid of dying alone either. this can be handled. and anyway, i'd be the one dying, so i would assume that the only individuals who might feel alone are the one's "left behind" following my death. i once told my father that if i died i hoped he wouldn't be too upset over the whole ordeal, because i would be dead, and being alive is pretty fucking hard anyway, so really, it would all be for the better. which isn't to say i don't enjoy the act of living. a good beer, fat and friendly chickadees on the sidewalk eyeing me for food, a quality climbing tree, hot days and cool grass, sticking my feet into the water while lying in the sweltering sun, all of these things please me to an infinite extent. daily i profess my gratitude for something worthy i witness. but lately the days seem long with work, and time doesn't seem to ever be mine. i wonder where the hours go. why i don't have the opportunities to bask in the natural richness of the day. co-workers invite me to the bar, where we go on and on about some caddishness that i don't care about and is in no way profitable to the life i would like to lead. then there are the obligations to the ones who have come to care for me greatly. more and more i feel completely detached from everything going on around me, and consequently can't seem to simply find myself in the mess of life i live in. what am i doing wrong. all i want is water. and the earth to speak to me in a place where pettiness is absent. where my car won't get towed. and i don't decide to drink myself to some state of artificial solidarity.

i guess the point of all of this is to tell myself that i am going to die, in order to realize that i am alive. and in all the instants where i find myself dissatisfied, there is actually an achievable graceful exit from that into something else. which, when chosen wisely, will decidedly bring me closer to where i should be. i'm not under the assumption that there is any sort of solid fulfillment, however, i would like to try and work my way towards that abstraction. and through such a venture, i might not feel so bad about dying. death will simply be what it is, for everyone who ever lived once.