I can barely manage an honest conversation about myself anymore.

It's not plausible. It's waking up from head trauma, unable to speak your native language. Walking around a hospital ward, then at home, then at work and back again, looping around in a half-open gown.

I am often, simply, goddamned miserable. But it's an edifying misery. As if I built my own mansion, stuck my trowel in the dirt, wiped my bloody hands, and with balled fists on my hips declare to McMansions that overlook a highway, "I made this son of a bitch. I am proud."

And I will slowly poison myself. And I will not have the shred of an idea, semi-constant inclination, or true-desired staccato to disturb the wrappings.

And I will come back here, time after time, to a house that has been abandoned decades long. Because nothing changes here. The dust settles, the cobwebs get a little thicker. Maybe a few people update their shit, like me. But we're just those casual alcoholics at the bar at some after 3rd shift hour, reminiscing without ever exchanging a word.

If I had to be completely honest with myself, I don't have clinical depression. But I am starring down the barrel of my life. Just my eyes fixated decades down the line, at the death that comes for all of us. And I have no fear of it. I take no great joy or hatred or perishing thought at ceasing to exist.

Most everything just hurts. And takes effort. And demands all of my resources to manage even what ends up coming off as a garden variety neurological disorder. But it's not. I just don't care. House renovations, a kaleidoscope of activities, constant needs from my students. I take care of it, and occasionally take pleasure in it.

But a full-throated fuck? Not really.

What I enjoy most is being by myself at work and late at night. That is how I know that despite the emotional pain, and feelings of inadequacy when I know my wife does not look at me the same way she did 5 years ago...that's how I know I'm really okay with all of this.

And that's why I don't fear death. Because I don't really understand what the difference is except for seeing color.

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