Decrepitude

And then it swings back again.  The moon is full, and everything's against you.  The girls don't smile, and you can't get an answer to your emails.  You look in the mirror and your hair is all weird.  Something is wrong in your lower intestines.  You have work you must do absolutely, but you are dizzy and cannot concentrate.  You realize you are not the man you were.  At the gym, you decide to run outside rather than on the treadmill after lifting heavy weights, and a mile into it, some monstrous thing blows in and drenches you for the remainder of the run.  It ends when you get back to the car.  "Oh," you think, "I will just eat last night's leftovers," but you have already eaten them for lunch, so at home when you heat last evening's meal again, it begins to turn you stomach.  You want to be skinny but reach for the scotch out of desperation.  There is nothing else to eat in the house.  You could go to the store, but something is broken inside and you know you are in for the night.  "What is wrong with me," you ask, but you already know.  Habit.  "O.K.," you think, "I hate everything," but you know it is only yourself that you are speaking of and to.  Fear and Self-Loathing.  "Look what your god has made of me," you shout with fist raised to the sky remembering vaguely this very scene in some forgotten movie.  No, wait. . . it was "Bram Stoker's Dracula."  You wish you had that power.

I have not done what I should have done tonight.  I am sure I will not sleep.  Time passes and days go by and I do not do what I know I should.  There is nobody to kick me, nobody to tell me I should.  This is how it begins, you know.  The slow motion decrepitude that comes to everyone if they last long enough.

There are only so many lives, you know.  Even for a cat.