Phobia

At eighteen, I have passed my peak.  I am over the hill and running full tilt down the other side.  I have sped up time on my own and have honed in on the light at the end of the ever-shortening tunnel.  For fear.  For fear of staying in the dark.  The darkness of life.  For fear of becoming.  I am an old woman, I am decrepit.  I am senile.  I have become so to avoid becoming so.  I am afraid of becoming my mother, my father.  My grandparents, their false teeth, their hearing aids.  Their used tissue paper skin, transparent, covering a soft web of congested purple veins.  My grandfather’s shaking hands, my grandmother asking me again and again who I am and where my mom is.  “Where is your mother, Molly?”  No point in telling her I’m not Molly.  She’ll only ask again, in thirty seconds.  Five, four, three, two. . . one.  “Molly, is your mother here?”  

I am haunted by the nightmarish image of myself sleeping on the couch, toothless mouth hanging open, a drawn-out nasal snore emitting from my withered head.  But the vision doesn’t end there.  No.  It gets worse.  Underneath my stained, mint green, highwater pantsuit, my swollen, neckless body lays in an unsightly state of disarray.   Lacking proper support, my sagging tits droop on either side of my body, falling to my elbows.  My puffy shoes have the velcro opened up in order to give my varicose feet some extra room.  Shitting the bed and doddering about, food falling out of my muscle weakened  jaw, I am merely a vast embarrassment to everyone about me, even if I don’t belong to them.  

I am scared of reverting back to diapers and bibs, of store clerks patronizing me with dear. “Would you like some help with that, dear?”  Sometimes it seems that the only difference between the very old and the very young, is that the very old know what’s happening and they are growing into it, rather than out.

I am afraid of subjecting someone else to the sickness part of in sickness and in health, but I’m even more afraid of finding out there’s no one who would take that vow.  I dread well meaning but snobbish twenty-somethings explaining life to eighty year-old me.  My children trying to pass me off to one another like a useless family heirloom that sits about collecting dust and only represents sentimental value.  In other words, no value at all.  

I couldn’t survive living long enough that my only remaining friends are frumpy african violets or elderly cats with skin diseases.  Having already reached middle age, it is a relief for me to never have to worry about carcinogens or crows feet or saving for retirement, since those things will never touch me.  Afraid of caring too much, I have become careless, preferring the feeling of wind in my hair to the security of the helmet.

I don’t want to go on living so long that the world’s insanity overcomes any trace of youthful optimism and innocence and I become embittered or loony.  I have chosen instead to live fast, die young and leave a good corpse.

Fearing too much life has me scared to death.

Spike.

I was planning on writing this in my usual free-verse style, but I decided to try and put it together in a more organized prose-like fashion.  It still feels kind of staccato, like it should be set up the the line-break pauses of poetry.  But just read it slow and take it for what it is. Maybe a little of the quality can be sacrificed to break out of a comfort zone? Or maybe I should just stick with what I know I can already do.