SELF-DESTRUCT

SELF-DESTRUCT

(A helium filled Gulliver, I am tied to the ground with a web of ropes.)

I love to smoke. By all accounts, it is deadly.

Without any self-pity; I cannot find any real reason to waste time with smoker’s guilt or make life more comfortable for you. Don’t breathe my air, walk in my space or kiss me.

I have been smoking at least a pack a day for well over twenty-five years. I smoke menthol.

I quit smoking as soon as Paul was diagnosed with Lymphoma. I wanted every possible moment with him in case he died and he did. There was no good reason to remain a non-smoker.

With sex, I do some things that the CDC says I shouldn’t do.

I don’t like vegetables much. Some are okay but only eat them when someone else cooks or coaxes me to do so.

I drink so much coffee and Red Bull that my stomach crawls up my esophagus and burns my tongue.

I have used aspartame, cyclamates, splenda…, etc., since I was four or five years-old. I eat four to six popsicles, (sugar-laden, not sugar-free), every night before I go to bed.

I hate to sleep.

The list of big and little self-destructive “habits” goes on and on…

There are riskier “habits”, even more self-destructive because I keep them secret.

Is this my lame interpretation of a common death-wish? My way of taking up speed-racing, boxing, mountain-climbing or free-falling from 20,000 feet?

Until Paul died, I was afraid of death. Since early childhood, I had lived life in a panic, convinced that I was already dying and would die, if not tomorrow, then sometime very soon. This terror drove me to manic “fits” so excruciatingly painful only the sight of my own blood could stop them. At four or five, I stuck my pinky finger into the high speed blades of my mom’s white electric mixer. I did everything you weren’t supposed to do…stuck a key into an electric outlet, swam right after lunch, touched the iron when it was hot….

In adolescence and adulthood, I found more efficient and sometimes pleasurable ways to self-destruct with bottles, pipes and pin pricks. I sabotaged some, if not all of my relationships and ignored, “career opportunities”, by dabbling in the darker side of service work.

Success is an anchor to the earth.

With the love of the friends who did not run away when I pushed them and during the almost eight years of Paul; I touched ground more often than I spun up, up, and away.

When Paul died what was fragile, split wide open, and frayed ropes, snapped clean off. No fear of death and no desire for longevity.

I know it is criminal with so many who dream of shaking their canes at speeding cars of teenagers or negligent homeowners who do not shovel their walks.

Direct and immediate participation in suicide is not an option.

Besides, there are still some very tight ropes.

1. Medication, without it; I would fly right off planet earth.

2. I work out to remain attractive, to get sex; endorphins are a bi-product of both activities.

3. I don’t drink or do non-prescription drugs to keep a last promise.

4. My friends are gold.

5. My dog is platinum.

6. I love to dance and I love to work. Sometimes both at the same time.

7. My memories of one person are stronger than all other memories combined.

8. I have one small, itching, wonder.

Does an unknown “something”, follow an unimaginable death and an affair with self-destruction? If you survive, are you, with great effort and torn muscle, pulled backed down to solid earth?

Tethered and secure, are you left with a desire to live well and not just a long time?