Cereal Killer

Today at the gym I stepped on the scale. Lady Justice removed the blindfold from my eyes and revealed to me the weight of my actions. Or, inaction. For the last month I've maintained sustained inaction. I haven't exercised, or even considered the health consequences for any of my decisions; I pled the 5th. I stood silent on the scale, trying to avoid confessing the heinous crimes of omission I'd committed against my body. In the last 30 days I've consumed so much millionaire's and billionaire's bacon that I've become a tried and true trillionaire. I've gorged myself on McDonalds, cupcakes, muffins, pastries, chocolate, red wine, beer, burgers, ice-cream, candy, decadent desserts in indulgent proportions, pizza and Kit-Kats. Gimme a break. The Three Musketeers told me they can't save me now; not even ol' Baby Ruth. The scale doesn't lie: 7lbs. Oh, I forgot the Swedish Fish, but I only ate those in my pescatarian phase. All things considered, that isn't too shabby. So what if my abs look like a loaf of bread instead of the back of a muffin-tin? Who cares if I have two chins? The more to love you with my dear. 

As the judge, and writer of this tale (stenographer really), I've already sentenced myself. A month of solitary. Just me and salad. No tossing.

After the gym I went to work and received a cryptic text from my mother concerning my sister. There was a shooter presumed to be on campus at my sister's school. She said my sister was in lockdown trapped in a classroom until the gunman could be apprehended, but my mom couldn't get in touch with her because her phone died. I spent the next hour scouring the internet for news updates while praying my sister was safe. I wondered why people find schools a viable target for violence. Why not the DMV or the Post Office? Downtown in gridlock during rush-hour maybe? The line for the bathrooms at a music festival? But not a school. Why a place where people go to improve themselves, to learn things, to help people? That would be like bombing a yoga studio or a physical rehabilitation center for injured children. Then I thought about the perpetrator's state of mind. Perhaps motivated by a pained powerlessness or deep feelings of inadequacy. Fear and hopelessness. Inefficacy. Alienation. A gun then, provides fantasy and a cure. To assert absolute power and control over the lives of those around you. To make them feel as scared and helpless as you do. A misguided attempt at liberation and even communion resulting in death or incarceration, or both. Or maybe the killer wants so badly to be that he kills not to harm another, but to fulfill his self-image as something irreversibly abhorred, abominable. I'm sure the psychological profiles have been mapped out. It's tragic to think love can be so irretrievably lost to allow for such monstrosity.

Soon my sister texted me letting me know she was ok, that I didn't have to worry.  

Speaking of worry, Monday I woke up in the throes of a harrowing intoxication. I had gone to sleep relatively sober just after eleven, but I woke at 7 with terror's hand around my throat. My vision was incomplete and blurry, movements slow and strained; equilibrium nil. Everywhere I tried focusing my eyes hurled me into spiraling corkscrews of vertigo. Anxiety, like a barbed-wire-wig, sat atop my skull clawing at the back of my head and neck. I stumbled from my bed to the bathroom like an anesthetized toddler. Trembling from some unknown fear and foreboding, I struggled to brush my teeth, repeatedly having to stop to breathe. I wondered if it were possible I was lucidly sleep-walking. I crawled back into bed and decided working was not an option. It took me 15 minutes to write a sentence on my iPhone explaining I wouldn't be in. I wondered if I was having a psychotic break. I closed my eyes to escape the thought and woke up at 3pm drenched in a depression that stuck to me like wet clothes. Had I pissed the bed? "You're in trouble," I thought. No, urine trouble. Fortunately, for me, there was no pee-pee in my pantaloons or my sheets. 

I sulked and skulked around my apartment in a daze, wondering if maybe I'd had a seizure. I considered going to the doctor but figured he'd dismiss me given the wine I'd drank and the herbs I'd smoked the night before. Why are doctors always so quick to blame altered states on substances that alter your state? I think my state is still California.

Instead I laid in bed and ate nearly 3 boxes of cereal, serially. Seriously.