OUT-OF-BODY . . .

Do I sound like a broken record yet? I feel like an alien is inhabiting my body and my psyche. I feel not myself . . . or perhaps this is my new self? How do you tell, anyway? I mean, am I supposed to be able to tell when I'm growing, or changing or becoming a new, different, yet the same person? I feel like my mental, emotional and physical skins are being stretched, tested, tempered, but I don't know why or for what purpose. Everything makes me . . . itchy and restless. Like I'm on the cusp of something. Like something needs to happen NOW so I can get some relief. It's like sexual tension, without the sexual element. What the heck does that mean?! Eh, verbal vomit . . . I need a mental Immodium.

***

Mortality is a very strange concept. Lately, it has been on my mind a lot. Many people around me, or associated with me through varying degrees of separation, have been falling ill, spending lengthy amounts of time in the hospital, dying, recovering. Even my mysterious boob, which is now pain-free and for all intents and purposes cooperative and sans lump, has loomed large in this consideration of life and death.

As I was telling some friends this weekend during a miserably inappropriately-timed moment, I feel that I am . . . well, dying young, for lack of a better phrase. Now, this sentiment should not be read as a cry for help, or an indication of any dissatisfaction with my life. Quite the contrary!!! As I attempted to explain to my friends, it's more of a signal of how satisfied, indeed, I am with my life, but that I feel that I'm on borrowed time. There are people out there who are meant to live well into their 90s and live long and hopefully fruitful lives. Me, I feel as though I have to cram those 90 years into, say, 30 or 40 or so. I could be hit by a car one day; I could be felled by a swift-moving terminal illness; I could just GO. And being conscious of this every day makes me savor my days more passionately than anyone else would, not because I am afraid -- I'm not -- but because I'd hate to be closing my eyes and thinking "I was half-assed about my life."

It's why I want the cool job. It's why I want to cram my social schedule chock-full of nuts, even if it makes me sleepier than I should be. It's why I want to hang with my family in all my spare time. It's why I want to run 5Ks, go to Bruce concerts, take people to dinner, fly to London, spoil my friends and their babies, buy senseless kitchen knick-knacks for my mom. I don't have TIME to sit around and wait for things to happen. I don't have TIME to have others arrange social events for me. I don't have TIME to pine for a husband and babies of my own. I don't have TIME to maintain and babysit lazy, passionless, milquetoasty friends. I don't have TIME to passively anticipate what might happen tomorrow or next week or later on -- I just have to DO it.

***

On the other hand, I've never felt healthier in my life, and that brings the weight of my own mortality to the forefront as well. Running on Sunday morning with breast cancer survivors, men and women who have lost loved ones to breast cancer, men and women suffering from breast cancer . . . how fortunate am I to be healthy and illness-free? How could I have ever taken my health for granted? The freedom to run consecutive miles outside, to lift weights without pain, to eat what I want, to indulge in the occasional bout of debauchery and know that I will recover the next day, to feel the relief of a stretch, to dance the night away. These are simple freedoms that not everyone has. What makes me more deserving than anyone else? No, it's not a guilt thing. It's a take-what-you've-got-and-use-it-to-the-maximum-advantage thing.

***

Now you're all freaked out, but try not to be. It's not as though I sit around and think about dying all day. Please . . . I have better things to do, remember?

GRIN.