freeze me ’til it’s over
a poem of my life right now
I don’t want to die.
I just want to solve the problems
That make my life not worth living.
Yet my current biggest barrier
Is the process of living itself.
Would if I could sleep away the time
Until my troubles pass,
But alas, my body craves what all bodies do,
So periodic awakenings
Are concessions to the obligations of
Hydration,
Consumption,
Excretion,
Repetition.
I need to eat, as do we all,
But food costs money
And money is always short
To the point where if I do eat
At most it’s one meal
Of two slices
Of toast with drizzled honey.
Sleep for dinner is a recurring feast,
An unwanted fast through most of my days,
Losing weight a lifelong embuggerance
I would prefer not to do via starvation.
But sleep eventually always gets interrupted
By stomach’s grumbling chorus of dismay,
And so I must consume and consume and consume
To appease the body’s natural ways.
Debts and bills and subscriptions aplenty.
No matter how many you stop
There’s always another.
The expensive invaluables uncancellable,
The luxuries of entertainments
The only avenues of momentary mental escape.
Prices jaggedly rise and fall like crooked teeth in the jaws of economy,
Biting, gnawing, tearing away at every freedom
Until I submit to their goal of my willing non-existence,
Fed to the machine that feasts on the poor to feed the rich.
I’m all too aware of my uselessness.
Too ill in mind and body to function as worker,
Not ill enough to warrant the grace of state.
Can’t get to worthwhile jobs without a car,
Can’t learn to drive if I can’t afford the lessons,
Can’t afford the lessons or the car without the job
To pay for the lessons and the car to get the job.
Can’t afford to properly look after myself,
Can’t afford to love someone else,
So I’m unhappy and unable to like myself,
And how can I expect to be liked or loved
When no one else can love you until you love yourself?
And so I’m doomed to be trapped
In cycles recursively vicious
For what feels like forever.
A limbo of my own making.
So why not make that limbo
Last a little longer,
Without dying to get there?
The permanent solution
To these temporary problems
Is a no-go, I know.
No matter how often
The ideation may tempt.
So I wish I could be frozen,
Cryogenically or otherwise,
So I could live without living
Long enough to reach
The other side.
Where my cost of living
Doesn’t have to be spent
On stupid sustenance
To stupidly solely survive,
And thus each month’s subsequent savings,
Unencumbered by bodily upkeep,
Could finally repay my debts
In months instead of years.
I wish I could be frozen
Until the day I’ve saved up enough
To at long last buy back
My mother’s ashes
That’ve been waiting since the funeral
I failed to pay for
Close to a decade ago.
I wish I could be frozen
Until the day I can afford therapy,
And talk to a person qualified to hear all this,
Rather than dump my woes on those I know,
And risk my myriad miseries
Making me a leech on other people’s happiness.
The guy too sad to talk to for too long.
I wish I could be frozen
Until the day I’m not afraid and ashamed
Of everything I’ve failed to do
That everyone else my age already did
Half our lifetimes ago.
Friends married with children,
While I’ve never even held a girl’s hand.
Everyone else ten steps ahead of me
Before I’ve even taken my first.
I wish I could be frozen
Until the day this is all a distant memory,
When these years of anxiety
And hunger
And isolation
And desperation
Have all ceased to be.
And maybe then
I can be allowed to finally thaw
Into something I’ve never truly known:
The warmth of what a life should be.
