About being alive

„I am bad at being alive.“

My witch would giggle with a shrug, thinking that these words were true for her as well, but already having fallen out of time anyway. My unicorn would agree but not be bothered at all, and another friend I amused too much with this today.

I still think I am right about this. Others suck at math, or at using printers, and I just in general suck at being alive.

I also don‘t quite get what other things have to do in order to stay alive. I am thinking of the mold growing on the walls of my old apartment each winter, as well as the moths having once attempted to build their nests in my flour. Each of these findings demobilized me and I still hear myself screaming: „It‘s alive.“ When I watch compilations of mushrooms naturally growing somewhere out in the nature, I get the same urge to scream. Looking at our bodies, or the bodies of any other mammal really, also has the potential to make me lose it. There are so many gross looking fluids to identify, as well as other products of our bodies that just make me wonder why.

Just why.

Having a body always potentially means pain. Your skin can break, your blood can clot. Your organs can grow little friends set to kill the rest of you. Having a body seems in general like a bad idea. Having a body is the reason we even had a pandemic, since the virus needs it to spread. Having a body also means that wars can ruin it, can cripple it, and can cut it to pieces, or to foam, since there are not always pieces left.

And yes, a body can also feel good, but between all the terrible things happening in then world, this seems like such a rare occasion.

I would like for a body, any body, to be loved, and to be taken care of, and to be filled up with the pumpkin loaf cake I baked the other night. I would like it to be whole, and to be cherished.

I have a problem with being alive, because I want to put hearts into a skin thicker than I can ever grow.

„Being alive is fucking tough“, I mumble into my fourth piece of cake, with tears that are painfully real joining the taste.