“The thing about it is, is that I will never get better”

All I could think was that it was sort of like getting old anyway. At least in my experience. I don’t have aged knees or a hip replacement yet. No back twinges when I rise from bed in the morning. But in my quarter-life years I realize that age takes its toll. Beyond the toll of injury and just experience. There is less of me building and more of me stagnating. Some of me starting to fall apart.

And that is just the bodily part of it. My aching shoulders, fluttering ear drum, and eye twinge can attest a fact that I at one time scoffed. In middle school, when I still thought highly of myself, I read a medical fact that appalled me. To think that stress, mental as much as physical, damaged the brain and body. The body I understood. We are organic machines. Our gears and turbines and engine certainly degrade. But to me my mind, my thoughts, were infallible. What situation could one not think themselves out of? I thought the mad were simply weak. I thought the depressed lazy. Not willing to expend the intellectual effort to escape themselves. My imagination was stronger then.

Now age has claimed it too. I cannot think away aches, pains, or memories. We are not so adaptable as we would like. And so we return.

“I will only ever get worse”

I write this as the moon slowly turns in mindless rhythm round our earth. In about an hour, or about 1/24th the time it takes for the axis of our home rock to spin a single rotation, that sphere circling sphere circling sphere will interrupt the sight line. From our view here on earth the ball of fire which fuels our beating heart shall be eclipsed, however briefly, by our nearest neighbor. Incredible coincidence. To think that dusty ball that occupies our night is the exact size and distance from us to make the feat possible. For the orbits to align such. A cosmic wonder. A cosmic delight. Our time here is no tragedy. Not good, not bad. Just certainly beautiful.

And yet

“It will only get worse.”

My concessions to age and beauty regardless, and the universe putting on a show for itself, I conclude only this. God must masturbate in front of a mirror.

I am tied to this earth. By birth and countless generation. From that first miraculous single celled thing that thought to reproduce itself. For the hell of it. The molten churnings of the land and whipping winds in storms. The sprouting of trees from the brittle soil. I too was thrust into the world now. NOW. Right now. I am here. Never before or to be again in my current form. To witness both the majesty of life and its great mystery. And in the same 24 hours, one turning of our rock, I hear such words.

“No recovery.”

How can I accept that? How can I look up and gasp in chance spectacle in one moment. And in the next moment, when the shadow slides away and the heat and light of life return in yellow blinding hope, live a life knowing.

“It will only get worse.”

Am I to live a life opposite to that of this earth my home. Where its light is only momentarily interrupted now and again. Am I to instead live in shadow, only seldom relieved by brief moments of lightness? Do I really have to live as night?

If so. Let this moon be a comfort, for at least I can stare into its face.