If you look really closely at this picture, and you have spent over $100,000 on a medical degree or you’re a clairvoyant, I bet you can see the shadow of death in my eye already. There’s probably evidence of type 2 diabetes to the naked professional eye.

What I see is that I need to get my eyeliner game up 10 notches and stop taking pictures of my eye bags at 11pm.

The only death I’m not afraid of is one I’m in control of.

If I was a musician I would either be a classical pianist or a Chinese hip hop artist. No contest, no in-between.

The human population most in need of moral support, in my opinion, are those of us who suffer from mental illness and those of us who suffer contact with other human beings.

I wanted to wear a black band for Bowie but my black band doesn’t fit me anymore because my arms have tripled in size since Myrna Loy and my racist misogynist grandpa Tom died. I haven’t had the heart or energy to make a new one. I feel guilty about this because I didn’t cry when Myrna Loy or my grandfather died. Even though I loved my asshole grandfather. I didn’t cry when he died.

I’m not winning my personal battles, in case any of you are keeping score. I’m losing big time and part of me is crushingly scared. The other part of me knows that this is just part of whatever my legacy and life are supposed to be. I’m sad. I’m sad I’m not the person I was 20 years ago in many respects, but in other respects I’m so much better now even with my dreadful failings and losing of personal battles that may result in my death.

My nightmares last night were awful and lingering. Not vividly or specifically, they have lingered insidiously without specific shape, sound, or words. All I know is that there was an unconventional school library and neighborhood I was traveling through and hiding in that felt bone rippingly fraught and personal.

Someone had krill as pets.

It was one of those nightmares where you wake up knowing you’ve left half yourself in peril in the underworld but still have to go through the motions of working, of caring about the corporeal world.

I spent a million years tortured by my nightmares and poor sleep habits.

Can any of you understand me when I say that these horrible terrifying manifestations of my subconscious self, of my other life, have become necessary to me? That even though I’m completely haunted by them snaking through my head all day toying with my comfort and sense of reality, I’ve come to see them as the couriers of my spirit?

Is it acceptable, possible, believable, that the nightmares that plague my “sleep” and wake me at 4 in the morning are the most important connection I have with life outside my own muscle and blood?

Is it too on-the-nose to be okay with the tiger taking the gazelle down?

Is it too on-the-nose to be okay with being the gazelle every single time?

So much of what we’re taught in life is to fight. Fight authority, fight people who fight authority, fight the status quo, fight those who challenge the status quo. Fight your instincts, fight weakness, fight until fighting kills you. Fight every natural urge you’ve ever had because somehow humans have become the dark lords of all flesh.

We’re animals, like all other animals.

I’m almost certain I have: cervical cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, diabetes, high blood pressure, imminent death disorder, brain tumor, rough patch of cancerous skin, breast cancer, bone cancer of the foot and elbow, eye jaundice, blood alcohol times 10000, 2 dying teeth, necrotic tissue masquerading as a disgusting yellow bruise, lung cancer, and tuberculosis.

Philip has just assured me that if I was to experience life without frequent nightmares and poor sleep I would not miss all that. He said the words “Stockholm Syndrome”. I don’t know. Does that syndrome apply to a terrorist like poor sleep and frequent, persistent, life-long nightmares? How does he know that part of his spirit might not be enhanced by being haunted his whole li-

Oh.

I’m sitting here considering the potential damage of trying to seek extra mental/emotional support through Kaiser. I’m not sure how much of my haunting can be unloaded on a therapist’s couch. Not sure Kaiser even has therapists available for just listening. They always want to send me to groups even though I’m allergic to groups more than I’m allergic to poorly designed forks.

Ah shit. I keep hitting my own raw nerves.

It’s true that my nightmares follow me through my waking hours, that they dog my heals wherever I go, but sometimes they offer something I’ve never found in waking life that I treasure more than gold, glitter, or beer: safety and respite.

Buried in most of my nightmares are secret pockets of safety, places of temporary refuge for my spirit and skin from the fiends chewing relentlessly at my edges. These moments, seconds, pockets of complete safety are like cocoons, like beautiful tiny ships of complete silence and peace. Moments where I am completely invisible to the howling of my ghosts and the reach of my living nemesis. I never feel these blissful safe moments in real life. I never feel this brief beautiful sense of invincibility, of spiritual protection, of total and complete uncomplicated universal love as I do during many of my worst nightmares.