slouching

the chair i have at work routinely rotates down. today i noticed that it'd done it again. i get so used to having to reach the keyboard in a weird manner that it becomes second nature. i wonder in the mornings why my neck hurts, or my shoulders.

i'm slouching.

at work i slouch because my chair is sneaky about swivelling down. at home i slouch on the sofa, i slouch while doing a crossword before bed, i slouch as i type this. when i slouch my back bows out, backward, and i hunch up a bit.

i feel a lot of the time that that's how i go through life. i'm permanently huddled a little lower, stomach too lazy to lift up my rib cage. or perhaps it's just my abdominal muscles, waving the white flag. or my vertebrae, loose links in their bone chain.

i'm not getting anywhere, at my job. i'm not getting anywhere with my writing, with anything.

when i was seeing my therapist, helene, i felt this guilt to move forward. and when i started to take my meds, and remembered to exercise and watch what i was eating, i felt as if i could move forward. the sun sinks south for winter and i lag--email unchecked, games unplayed, people ignored.

slouching is malicious, i've concluded. if i wasn't slouching my back probably wouldn't hurt, i'd write more often and maybe get published, perhaps i'd be in touch with more people.

it's all a big bottle of What If. i can get stuck in that miasma for days. in fact, i have been.

whenever i drink from that bottle, my slouch deepens. i compare myself to other people in my life--my sister, friends--and i find myself lacking.

and the slouch deepens--it's despair, and it tugs me down quite faithfully.

dan wrote in his blog that he thinks of serena, often, and it keeps him awake. i do too--probably more often than i need to. it's the what if of where she is at--is she "better" in some way, better than i am? better off, better emotionally, not such a mess?

does she slouch, thousands of miles west?

i wonder this about many many many things. does my sister have time to slouch? my homeowning friends? or is it just me, tripped up and spineless?

i feel like an invertebrate--perhaps an amoeba--that's been reformed into this human self, propped upright around a skeleton. my amoeboid nature wants to slouch, and there is more of it than the bony structure upon which it's been molded.

and i slouch.