Adfectati Diem

I'm in one of those moods where it's difficult to shower. Go ahead and judge me if you want. Sit there on your high horse of mental and emotional stability as the commander-in-chief of your own personal hygiene.

First of all, as Americans, we shower way too much anyways. In Europe, they'd applaud my current mood as an altruistic, water-saving gesture, rather than the behavior of a woman who lays in bed for hours not quite sleeping, just clenching her jaw and trying to force back a dream where things felt good. Oh man, that dream was nice; can't I please just go back there? 

It's not that I want to lie around in my own filth. On the contrary, while I'm lying there thinking about what an insurmountable task cleaning my 5-foot-4-inch frame will be, I envision myself as a normal individual, someone who just pops right out of bed ready to start the day. Hell yeah, life feels great! I can't wait to get out of this cocoon created of clearanced dorm-room bed accessories, cat hair, and Kafka quotes and get my carpe diem on. I wanna get up and shower and put on capris and hit the Starbucks before I hit the bank, before I hit the store to buy decor and teeth whitening strips and then hit the cafe to get something with kale sans gluten before I meet up with my girlfriends and discuss anything but the patriarchy before I go home and shower again and put on something from a non-second-hand store before meeting up with my boyfriend or fiancee or husband for date night at the place where we always go and we always order the same thing and then go to the store to buy more decor before we go home and fall asleep binge watching something we only half give a fuck about. I mean, I truly do want that life. But I'm stuck in bed -- and by bed, I mean the couch -- thinking of other things. Thinking about time, how there's not enough of it, there's just never enough time, and I'm running out of it while I lie here thinking about the swiftness of time, trying to motivate myself to stop wasting time, to get up and shower and start my day.

Now don't get it twisted, I'm still washing my hands. And washing them often. In fact, I caught myself washing the soap before washing my hands the other day, so don't fret, I've still got that going for me. Actually, all this talk about washing my hands is making me think I should probably go wash my hands. Yeah, I'm gonna go wash my hands. Hold on just one minute while I go wash my hands . . . ​

I guess it all comes down to depression. That's the easy, condensed explanation, and let's face it, in this world of one-hundred-and-something-odd characters, that's all anyone ever wants to know is how you feel in passing. Even doctors or friends or sandwich artists . . . "What would you like on this one?" "Soul fulfillment, a right to my own body and mind, no regrets on my death bed, oh and salt and pepper, please." I mean, who gives a fuck about anyone else's suffering these days anyways? Think about it when you drive to or from your time-sucking job when you're surrounded by rush-hour traffic. Think about the complexities of your own experience, and then look into the window of any of the cars that surround you and let it soak in that every, single person on this planet is experiencing their own complexities that very few ever get to release. I like to get upset and want to hate the people around me, the people that bring me down, but then my stupid humanity kicks in -- which is truly a shame because I really thought it was most certainly sucked completely out of me between the years of 2009-2013 -- and I understand that we're all just trying to get through this life the best way we can. I can't imagine that other people don't lie in bed not wanting to shower, not wanting to do anything, because their lives are so far from actually living, truly living within their own definition, that the burden of passing time doesn't weigh them down, tie them down to the pillow, overwhelm them with the simple tasks of what culture tells them is actually living as they focus on being a 'productive member of society."

Franz Kafka once said that productivity is doing something you were never able to do before. It's like celebrating the small successes, even if you hit reset over and over again. Like, hell yeah, I was able to shower on Thursday, but not on Friday, but here comes Saturday, and I'm gonna try again. And I don't know how it's gonna turn out because Billy Joel is on the radio, and seriously, fuck that guy.

#stillnotmarried
#depression
#saturdaymorning
​#carpediem