All the Days

(via)

Yesterday, I turned 48, which is as depressing as it is terrifying, which is also depressing and terrifying. How did I get to be this old? In two years, I will be 50. It simply doesn't seem possible. I think part of the reason this is the case is that I did not expect to live this long. There were too many things along the way: the cancer, the hurricane, the teenage ride in the drunk-driven car that nearly rammed headlong into the telephone pole, the long-ago first date with the drug dealer who ended up threatening me with one of the guns from the safe under his bed, the stupid choices, the intermittent drug use from my twenties, the time over a decade ago that I had a nervous breakdown and nearly killed myself.

To quote "Magnolia":

"This fucking life... oh, it's so fucking hard. So long. Life ain't short, it's long. It's long, goddamn it. Goddamn. What did I do? What did I do? What did I do? What did I do?"

In a way, this life feels like what Paul Auster called a "posthumous life."

Somehow, by luck or fate or something else altogether, I appear to have outlived myself.