Okay, almost distracted from my task. No internet connection and it would be so easy to stop right here and now, decide I have accomplished enough for one day and go back to bed. But I do not need the internet to write. I can write on MS Word and then post later. It is just a matter of walking down the sidewalk to the front lobby and asking for the access code, which expires every two days. Oh, how my mind pounces on every excuse to remain as I am…..

I am 54. Age seems to be the number one descriptive after human and female. Sometimes I fantasize I am an alien who has been dropped off here by mistake. That would account for my confused and totally f****d up approach to life. According to the internet, however, I am species homo sapien, genus homo, mammal.  WkikAnwers gives the full scientific classification:  Eukarya Animalia Chordata Mammalia Primates Hominidae Homo Sapien (sapien) stet.

I am not attractive. There are some pictures in which I look pretty, but they are rare and it has been a long time since I objectively judged myself and came out okay. I have been overweight all of my life, I am very pigeon toed, and since my 40s I have developed terrible acne so that my face and neck are very scarred and blotchy. When I get into beauty is only skin deep, you can’t judge a book by its cover, it’s what ‘s inside that counts, etc., I come up short and disillusioned.

I am unemployed and have been for the past five years except for brief intervals of part time jobs and two short-term stints at full time jobs that did not last six months.

I have nothing in terms of material possessions. Okay, not entirely true. I do have a Kia Rio with 49803.2 miles logged and it is filled with the basic camping equipment-currently employed as being homeless on the high end of things. I have my 14 lb. laptop (I wanted a large viewing screen at the time). I have a cell phone and am now on the family plan with my daughter and her boyfriend. I have a small storage room that my eldest daughter is covering for me in which the last remnants of a middle class life are boxed, consisting mostly of memories and a set of Pfaltzgraff dishes, Yorktowne, the blue pattern. In addition, there is a bedroom in my mother’s home that is full of papers, books, pictures, clothes, and other odds and ends from the times I have spent there since my breakdown and unemployment. My youngest daughter’s basement holds another set of dishes, my Christmas dishes, a nonsectarian snowman pattern. No one wants my dishes.

I reside at this moment, and it is all moment to moment, in a hotel on the White Horse Pike in Absecon, NJ. As far as I can gather, this is about the cheapest digs around, short of finding a sympathetic someone who would rent a mentally ill, homeless, unemployed, fat and ugly broad a room in their home. It is temporary since this is not a flop house or long term abode and my savings are bound to run out sooner rather than later.

With this in mind, this inevitable looming loss of all that keeps me from the streets of Philadelphia or Atlantic City or Camden or Newark, I know I must change my life, me. After 54 years of trying to find myself, I have come to the conclusion that the only option I have is to invent myself, because there is nothing to find.

So this morning, as I watch the digital clock numbers keep time from about 5:01 am, I go over the facts in my mind. I have to start somewhere. Getting out of bed would be a good start. How about brushing my teeth and taking a shower, luxuries so many do not enjoy. Can I write my way out of this cerebral pit of despair? Can I fundamentally change my life and become well enough to do more than survive in this world? I want to make a difference, but I am so physically unfit and so mentally scrambled that I am a burden to most. 

Getting out of bed would be a good start.