Doomed

[Thirty minutes, go]

I find small ways to self-destroy, subtle and insidious strategies so well-hidden that my conscious mind remains unaware of their presence even as they're being put into practice. Not alcoholism or oxycontin, not gambling or physical mutilation, just targeted guerrilla attacks upon my dignity and sense of self that forward the thanatos campaign on an hour to hour basis. To outside observers, I assume, these look less like lacerations and more like bad habits, weaknesses. (Maybe this presumption is false, since it's often true that those outside my head are more aware of its workings than me on the inside. Or always true?) Even to me they seem only like frustrating lapses of will until I remember the truth: an enemy concealed in my mind seeks at all times to destroy me. Weakness is the means, not the end: it allows the enemy to gain a foothold and begin its gleeful slicing.

So what do these attacks look like? Stooped over a tupperware container, mindlessly shoveling an unheated mixture of acidic leftovers into my head. Logging onto Facebook at work, scrolling through a news feed, eyes narrowing or widening slightly at stimuli so slight they hardly register. Listening to a song, a decent song, over and over for the hooks and the beat until its slender worth is bleached away entirely. Bit-width pleasures. Slipping down a slope into a narrow muddy mental well, just shoulder-width if that, of memory repetitive and meaningless in scope, its context lost, a moment pilled and shredded over time into a solitary image and a phrase of conversation -- probably about myself -- years elapsed and lost to everyone but me and meaningless to everyone but me. And in that spot, people are lost to me. And alone, and alone.

Little things, little pleasure buttons to push and pleasure loops to unfulfill -- they kill. They allow the enemy to scrape away the day and self entirely. Get out the two-day old spaghetti and a cold fork. Uncouple the sensory input from one end of your being, the analytical and emotional response from the other end. Then, stare sightlessly, pace aimlessly, eat mechanically, but at an animal pace. Retreat inward in a grosteque parody of meditation. Living in the moment is inconceivable; annihilate the moment with a gray wash of obsessive nostalgia.

Put it on autopilot. Put a brick on the gas pedal and a clamp on the steering wheel, crawl down on the floorboard in the fetal position, and let the chips fall where they may.