Hope is that dastardly fiend that I have fought against so long.  I had, for a time, won my battle against hope.  I had convinced myself that there was no hope, and that in so doing I could walk and live a free man, free of the shackles of fate and destiny.  I could accept the present and the future and the past and Nothing Meant Anything and the world was going to be all right.  I would lose, but I would be okay with that – I could be a friend and I could be the rock and I could not care, because there was never any hope.

Yet now I feel that serpent twisting deep within me, gnawing at my core – these deep pangs of hunger striking, reminding, demanding.  I want answers, and I want hope, and I want change.  The nexus is the same – she who summoned the beast has fed it, inadvertently (advertently?  One wonders.)  What is the course that I must take here?  What path should I follow?

I understand the Old Ways, all of those “Thou shalt not”s.  Though I do not find any meaning in them, I understand Oaths and Promises.  Though I hold no call to the institution that I now find myself in conflict with, I accept the oaths and bindings that lie beneath.  And I accept that they have meaning to someone, somewhere, and because of that meaning, they are worthy of protection.  That is where my honor takes me.  Am I nothing more than an honorable fool?  Should I damn the consequences and live free of this responsibility, torn down of those shackles twisted and bent around me by tradition and morality?

Six words.  They’ve tumbled through my mind these last few days more than they have in a long time – a long time.  Is it real, or is it another aberrant manifest?  Is it my mind creating the problem, or is it my heart?  Six measly little words that have nothing to do with anything and yet, some would argue, they are the most important words ever to be misused in the English language.

I fight this war on so many fronts.  I fight myself, I fight the old conventions, I fight the new conventions.  I find myself having to defend its existence to the only person I can talk to, and she just stirs things right up again.  I’m growing weary.

Am I wrong?  Am I right?  What is right and wrong in this context?  Is there a duality?  I can envision a way where I am both wrong and right in every context here.  I see the walls all around me and I begin to suffocate: I see no way out.  Hope burns within me, and yet I can find no way out of this labyrinth.

In this place shall I write my final will and testament.  Going to the doctor’s today I wanted to hear bad news.  “To die would be a great adventure.”  I don’t know what else I have to live for, and I’m not entirely certain that I want to.  I wish I could just fade away.

Love would betray me, though.  My love and my friends’ love and my family’s love.  I have become more than what I was.  Through some strange machination I am now more and less than the monster that hid in the shadows.  I am more than just the ghost; I have become a participant in life.  Thus the answers begin to form: Hail the shadows, for I have walked among them and been washed clean.

With these words I begin to see the path: I am no longer an unbiased observer.  I can no longer pretend to have the luxury of distance or detachment.  I must accept that, regardless of whether or not these feelings are true, they are real to me.  What to do with them?  Do I give them form and spill them forth, chancing the thrust of the blade that could destroy me?  Do I guard them, nurture them, work them, as the worm from within, hoping, one day, to bear their fruit?

You never know.  Hope is a strange and powerful villain, a vain and varied temptress that will carry us all to our destinies – be that doom or otherwise.

And thus I’ve spilled them, the six.  Thus I buy myself more time as my mind coalesces the problem.  My problem is a simplistic one, at the end of the day.  I don’t know why I can’t just accept it and move on… Everything must be so life and death mustn’t it?  To die would be a great adventure…

It’s been almost seven years since I’ve felt that old familiar madness.  And every second that passes brings me further and further from that end.

Seven years ago I learned to be alone again.  I had nearly forgotten that I had forgotten how to be alone, but thankfully this blog saved me that revelation.  I started it around seven years ago, to celebrate the start of a new life.  And here I am, once more, living the old.  The world spins, time passes by.  But the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I’ve picked up vices along the way.  Not many – I should have more.  I always think I should pick up more vices.  I sometimes wonder what the point is in living a “moral life”, or a chaste life, in my situation.  I have no reason to believe in Heaven or Hell, no reason to continue living a life of purity.  I’m already killing myself slowly through my sedentary lifestyle, why shouldn’t I pick up other habits that will end up killing me?  I should fill my lungs with putrid smoke and keep my liver drenched in alcohol.  After all, is that not the point?

Why should I be the chaste one?

Why should I be the rock?

The old madness comes a’calling, and the warrior is dead.  Too long did he lay dormant, too long was I sedentary.  There is no longer a warrior inside of me, just a man of sloth.  Not peace – sloth.  Why do I care about you?  Tell me, please, for in these times I would like to know.  What is the point of morality?  Is it an end unto itself?  Is it just a better way to live?  What is moral?  What is good and evil?  Am I a good man for keeping my secrets, or am I a coward?

I just don’t have strength anymore.  Not tonight.

I shouldn’t post this.

Or perhaps I’m weaker.  Perhaps I’m the one whose changed.  With every iteration of the dread disease I grow more susceptible to its wiles.  With every passing wave of euphoria I find myself buckling and slipping deeper and deeper.  Until one day there will be nothing left of me but a quivering mess, a puddle of pain and rejection trampled to the floor.  Some day I will be unable to fight, and then where will I be?

I wish I could just say it.  I wish I did not bind myself to oaths that I cannot keep.  I respect the institutions that surround you.  For that reason I remain silent.  For that reason I will never say what makes me sad when I am with you.  I shall be a rock, and I shall be bitter, and one day I shall die.  Maybe on my death bed I will look upon my life and see that I did the right thing – that I lived my life in honorable ways.  And I will smile, because I was honorable.  Then on that day shall I find the peace I seek.

I used to be better at this.  I used to write poetry and song.  I was used to love, when loving was the thing to be done.  Perhaps when last I lost a love I lost with it as well the ability to compose a lyrical thought.  Perhaps the day of my lobotomy I exorcised not just my thoughts but also all future thoughts, all future capacity to accept and feel and write songs and rhyme.  Why do I feel like writing you a poem, when no words come forth?

When no words can come forth?

What stops me from writing you a poem?  I cannot admit to life, for the institutions that surround us binds me elsewhere.  Perhaps it would be different if you were unhappy, or if I thought I could bring you happiness.  But I fear that all I have for you is ill foreboding.  Is it truly this that I’ve come across?  After all this time, I come to this fruition: I am not good enough.

I am the beast, and to my lair I should retreat.

Already I begin to feel the fatigue of living a life without a fast and accessible source of energy.  Overall my mood has been morose and unhappy.  But I can feel myself bouncing back slowly – every day is a climb back up out of the darkness.  I don’t intend to reintroduce complex carbohydrates the way the South Beach diet entails after two weeks – my plan is to keep things as low in carbohydrates as possible, while grazing with regularity to keep the internal fires stoked (nuts during the week, cheese and cold cuts during the weekends.)  Sadly I did a run to the grocery store today – I forgot how bloody expensive eating this way can become.  I’ll have to price-watch more now, too, which will make things more uncomfortable.

Morbidly obese is the term, though I’ve always found it distasteful.  Morbid, like disease follows me around in some macabre dance.  But then, I suppose that’s the point of the name – obesity to the point of sickness.  From a medical standpoint, my heart could explode this minute – this instant – and I will never finish writing this sentence.  I would simply be found some time later, slumped over my keyboard, timed out of my WordPress session, having never hit the “Publish” button.

You would think that would be scary but it isn’t.  I don’t really see obese – morbid or otherwise.  When I look in the mirror I don’t ever think fat – although strangely, when I look at pictures, I do (I wonder if science and psychology have ever studied this phenomena.)  It’s even very difficult for me to write this.  I know I am fat – but I don’t feel I am.  (Or perhaps, as Dak’kon would put it: “The body knows that it suffers, even as the mind does not.”)

This weekend something snapped in me.  I’ve struggled with weight loss before.  Every year, it seems, I take on the challenge of losing some weight.  Last year I actually succeeded, losing almost 30 pounds, before my general malaise kicked back in.  And then the Holidays happened, and the pounds started to pack on again.  I didn’t regain the whole lot – not yet – but I’ve gotten back up to where the doctor’s scale doesn’t quite cover me.  That’s right – when I go to the doctor, they can’t even take an accurate measurement of my weight, and we kind of have to guesstimate.  (Also – analog is so passe).

And then last week MDS looked me dead in the eye and asked “Why are you eating crap again?”  The words hit me with a physical force.  There’s no good reason – no good reason - for me to be eating crap again.

I’ve started making my own lunches again.  I’ve been making all of my meals for the past few days – proteins, vegetables.  A diet intensely low in carbohydrates.  No simple sugars.  No more white breads.  No more sandwiches at lunch.  No pizza.  (Good God, no pizza?)

This isn’t a lent thing.  I’m going to need far more than 40 days and nights here.

One hundred and sixty five pounds is my goal – that’s to lose, not to weigh (I think I’d look silly at 165.)  It’s a big fucking number, especially when I have to fight to gain (er, lose?) every single pound.  I don’t really, honestly, know if I have the strength to make it.  I hope I do.

But if I don’t, well – that’s the whole point of publishing this on the web.  To the world.  So everyone can see, and know, and tell me – lend a hand if I need it – and tell me to cut the crap when I succumb.  Remind me of my strength – or lend me some of their own.  I suppose I’m just throwing the energy out into the world, hoping to get some of that back when I need it.

Because I’m going to need such strength.

I have a long road ahead.

165.  Day 1.

This is now a journal of my transformation.