February 15, 2010 - Breakfast

So that was Valentine's day. We had lamb and made valentines. It was good. But I promised I'd get back to this website.

Where did I go? I've lost the fever for self-improvement, preferring instead coffee, cigarettes, and red meat. R-- getting fired introduced an element of chaos into my somewhat staid environment, to add to the chaos at home as Project Littlesocks enters its eighteenth month.

Just like in Iraq no one can tell if the surge is working. I am reduced to my ejaculatory essence, clarified like ghee, injected. It wears us down. You'd think we'd want an answer, some knowledge about how it all turns out in the end. Twenty years from now will we be cashing in the college savings accounts, beleaguered, lower-middle-class, exhausted, or taking expensive couples-only trips to Greece? You don't want an answer, though. You want to try everything. You want this to go on as long as it takes.

As [Wife] floods her body with expensive chemicals I've been taking in my own steady flow of much cheaper toxins. It's interesting to me that I can eat fairly shitty food on a regular basis and not gain much weight--a pound here or there. What the fuck was I eating before? But it's all in the portions; an ounce of shit rather than a half-pound. It adds up, but more slowly.

I gain weight differently now; it pools into the gut whereas before I simply swelled. And there is a new awareness of a machine grinding, in need of the familiar greases: fiber, water, exercise. Everything rubbing against everything else ultimately wears you down. My last body was optimized for self-poisoning. This one rejects it somewhat, pushes back. Sore stomach, a general disquiet. It doesn't want the badness.

So why have I fucked up, gone off the rails, stopped logging calories? When the world is rubbing against me and randomness is ascendant I can order things with treats. Look at this familiar set of good emotions, I can say, aren't they pleasant? But of course it's a slippery slope until I'm back at the candy jar.

The real reason all of this started, as [Wife] and I discussed last night, was that the train would come into the station, and I would go, "man, I could just, uh, hop, down there onto the tracks." That only happened once or twice. But whoa!

So I'm done with that. That's gone. But this is no longer a point of pride, all the weight loss. It's become who I am, south of 300 lbs with 70 to go. I guess I have to see it through.

On April 1 we're moving to the South Slope, right across from the park. There's a place for my bicycle in the basement. I can ride and ride, ride in circles until exhaustion, and be home in two minutes. I'll cut through the parade grounds to get to the park. There are two streets to cross, no more, and then I'm on the loop, 3.4 miles and I can do it over and over until I am destroyed, day after day, rain and wind and snow.

Weight: 292.25 lbs