I spend a lot of time thinking about myself.  I think a lot about how my personality- my self- feels like an animal I am constantly trying to outsmart so it doesn’t eat me.  I have almost no control or insight into what going to happen next.  It is very easy to have a lot of personal insight when you feel like an observer of your self.  I don’t tell people that I think about myself a lot because that makes me sound like I’m a certain way.  I’m not that way though, I’m a different way.

I know for sure what happens to people after they die.  Your energy leaves your body and becomes whatever you wanted it to become.  You can go to a blue heaven with pearly gates, or become a new baby or a dog or a tree.  You can split yourself up and settle back in as your grandchildren’s eyebrows.  You can just be dead in the ground too, if that’s what you want.

Pretty frequently I get so sad that my heart actually hurts.  My stomach tightens and my heart aches.  Last week I went to the gym to try and run it out and I got chucked off the treadmill.  There were only about 72 people watching and gasping, but I keep thinking about how much worse it would have been if my pants had also fallen down.  When I do stuff like get dumped from the treadmill because I’m trying not to be so sad it makes me feel sort of proud of myself.  Because I know that not trying is easier.  Dulling the edges makes things hurt less.

Plus, the physical pain resulting from getting thrown off a treadmill really does distract from emotional pain- which I have less patience for the older I get.  I think some of my arm muscles got torn of the bone and that’s much more specific than swirling melancholia.  And two 98 year olds behind me who were power walking on the treadmill with walking poles will have that story to tell for the rest of their lives.  So all around, a productive day.