It’s important to have life goals. Here’s my new one:
To be eaten by a whale when I’m 60 years old.
Or, better yet:
Be lowered into shark infested waters in a cage with chum, except without the cage, when I’m 60 years old.
I actually wanted to be put in a pod and shot into outer space but my friend Sid pointed out how expensive that would be. That’s why all my goals now involve being eaten by big things in the ocean. Which is a weird life choice for someone who’s pretty afraid of drowning in the bigness of the ocean.
This day was so depressing and so full of fuckery and depressingness that instead of talking about the bleak nature of the day I’m going to write a list of everything that keeps me up at night:
62 THINGS THAT KEEPS ME UP AT NIGHT:
1. The lack of world peace.
2. Other people snoring.
3. Sound of dog licking herself.
4. Husband’s breath on my neck or face.
5. My own breath on my arms or hands.
6. Total silence.
7. The sound of leaves shaking when there’s no rain or wind to shake them.
8. Thinking about un-caught serial killers.
9. The sound of my heart beating.
10. The sound of other people’s hearts beating.
11. All the people crying at the same time across hemispheres and time zones.
12. The thought of more people being born and the dwindling resources available to humans.
13. The pressure of my jaw that I only feel when I can’t sleep that keeps me from sleeping.
14. My feet being hot.
15. My feet feeling dry.
16. The weight of human life all around me.
17. The belief that as soon as I’m just about to fall asleep I’ll need to pee even though I’ve already peed 5 times just before bed, then it really happens and I have to pee again and sometimes this goes on for two hours.
18. The sound of beetles rooting through the soil.
19. The thought of animals being hurt.
20. The hideously large number of people I know who’ve been heinously abused in one way or another, most of them when they were children.
21. That there are humans out in the cold dark corners of every town and city trying to sleep in alleyways or under freeway bypasses.
22. The thought of all the abandoned babies of all species around the world struggling to survive bleak chance and I can’t rescue even a trili-fraction of them.
23. That I have only a quarter to give when a homeless person asks me for change.
24. Dry lips.
25. The thought of dry lips.
26. All the people whose lives my country has callously destroyed.
27. The horrendous and unconscionable history of black slaves in my country and the far-reacing and current poison it’s spread across several hundred years.
27. All the women scared to say “no” to almost anything.
28. My own difficulty and guilt in saying “no” most of the time even if I’m able to say it when I need to.
29. That thing I said hours ago that no one remembers but me.
30. The slow grind of the earth turning.
31. The thought of people wearing socks to bed. Particularly saggy socks. Seriously, now I’ll probably never sleep again because I’ve put that in print.
32. The thought of Donald Trump’s creepy mug and toupee being printed on money.
33. Any kind of itch.
34. The feeling of my eyelids being too heavy, or not heavy enough.
35. Other people’s skin touching mine.
36. The ending of How I Met Your Mother.
37. The thought of how many dull scissors there are around the world.
38. Wondering if my child just died in his sleep.
39. The thought of Netflix getting rid of Fringe.
40. Worrying that I haven’t stored enough nuts away for the winter.
41. Debtor’s prison.
42. Thinking about how my son insists on getting dressed in the wrong order.
43. Not wanting to wake up in the morning but knowing I probably will.
44. The dread that my husband forgot to brush his teeth before bed.
45. Thoughts racing 140 m/p/h.
46. A snag in a fingernail or a toenail.
47. Wondering if Jesus got corns walking through the desert.
48. Wondering if Jesus ever had a necrotic sore.
49. Wondering if Jesus wishes he hadn’t saved his faithful brethren.
50. Worrying about having such Jesus-centric thoughts as an atheist.
51. Thinking about what tomorrow will bring.
52. Anxiety about the possibility of the phone ringing past 10pm because no one ever calls past 10pm for good news.
53. The knowledge that people torture animals.
54. The realization that white dirty stinky tube socks are too good for such people.
55. Feeling my staunch non-violence and non- revenge beliefs be challenged by thoughts about people torturing animals.
56. Leaving my mom in a skilled nursing facility tonight that is incompetent at best and negligent at worst and that represents the level of care is considered acceptable by a lot of insurance companies.*
57. The sound of a mosquito.
58. The memory of spider bites.
59. Recent spider sightings and subsequent disappearances.
60. Trying to understand what mechanism has gone wrong in men that makes them want to rape women, and why there are so fucking many men who think it’s okay.
61. ALL OF THE THINGS IN THE UNIVERSE OVER WHICH I HAVE NO CONTROL.
62. The fact that I can’t finish this list ever because it’s infinite and yet if I stop listing things it won’t reflect the perfect truth of all the things that keep me up at night because there are few things that don’t keep me up at night. In fact, that would have been a much smaller list.