As I was driving home from my father's this afternoon (a girl has to do free laundry somewhere!), I took a long cut through the downtown area on a lark. Driving South on Center Street, I passed a retirement home with an elderly man sitting in a wheelchair outside. He seemed so serene, gazing at all the cars that passed his way. And I suddenly had the urge to cry.

Is that all there is to life? Dying as you sit outside the only home your decaying body can function at while you stare at a parking garage and wait for the reaper to call your number? There's no heroic battles to be won, no final mountains to climb? If that's all there is to life, I want out now. I can't handle the monotony. I can't handle the certainty of it, day after day being wheeled into that same place, watching the same corporate assholes driving by thinking that they're so important and feeling incredibly sorry for me... that seems a fate worse than death.

If I could plan my life out I would have it all. Great battles to be won, great loves, a perfect relationship with my daughter, my dream job... but life doesn't work like that. At the very least, when I leave this life, I want to go out in a blaze of glory. I don't want to sit outside an old folks' home, waiting for my time to come. I want to be rock climbing, sky diving, having sex in the pouring rain. I want to know I did my best, tried my hardest, failed and succeeded gracefully and with dignity and honor. Based on that, I doubt I'll be going anywhere anytime soon.

This entry was posted by Mellie, on Thursday, October 27, 2005.