Tonight, a baseball game plays on the TV. It is my habit to turn one on in the summer evenings, but tonight the game is fairly irrelevant.

I think a lot about my body, which has aches and pains in various locations. Issues that recur day after day.

My house feels pretty much like a dumpster. Piles of miscellany lay all over in each room. Carpets are stained by poorly removed cat barf. One bathroom is grody. The other has a toilet that is offline because of a failed seal between tank and bowl. And when I come home to it after leaving it, it never feels like my home. And yet I feel too incompetent to fix it- like every other issue that is piling up in my life.

And I find myself reflecting that I don’t want most of what I am living in.

And my mind, disarmed for years, does not see there is any path, any power within me, to change anything about my solitary plight.

And then I notice that Po is walking around the house like an uncomfortable animal. He moves slowly. He sits upright for long periods of time. He has slept all day. He is not hungry. And I conclude he is not feeling well, and is maybe nauseous.

And he is one of the few things in the house I do cling to and find joy in.

Lately, it all just feels too large.

It all seems like a validation- an indictment- of why I am single; why I have been single for most of my life; why I have no children; why I will be alone later in life, if I make it that far.

And yet I just try and stay numb and ignore the subtle entombment that my static life has been building around me.

Because nothing for me changes.

Something- some things- have to change. Because right now, this thing I am doing is not much of a life.