I've been Hitlering myself, Stalining myself, Musollining myself, Maoing myself for the past 7 months. I do this because I am a coward, and totalitarian regimes are conducted by and inflicted upon cowards. Something interesting about me is that I am 5'10.225" in the morning. As the day goes on, my spine compresses and I am shorter by about a quarter inch to a half inch come evening. I generally refuse to acknowledge to myself that at midnight I'm 5'9" because, as stated above, I am a coward, and a vain one. This past September I weighed in at 210 lbs, putting me undoubtedly in the "overweight" segment of the population and just on the border of mildly obese. That's funny to me, that last summer I could have been 5'9" and obese or 5'10" and just bog standard overweight-american depending on the time of day, really. But you have to understand that if I were not a coward, this would not matter. The non-cowards among us, the brave and the beautiful, they pay no mind to these things, they can drink milk without spoiling it.
I am no longer as overweight or obese as I once was. The last time I weighed myself, I was at 187.8 lbs., meaning that I've lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 25-30 lbs of fat when you factor in muscle gains. I still have a long way to go, of course. But I have been lifting weights and counting calories and yes, this has unsurprisingly made my life less unbearable. But I'm still a coward. You can't lift away cowardice, cowardice is not something to be shaved off by a caloric deficit. I operate under the delusion that if I can reach a certain set of numbers it will be mathematically impossible for me to be a coward. Lately, I’ve been coming around to the conclusion that my cowardice is parabolic— diminishing itself quietly into infinity but fundamentally unable to arrive at y=(0).
Yeah I lift brah. You must understand that I do not lift to feel strong, but to make external my constant, gnawing, smothering internal weakness. I used to hope that I could draw it out and smash it away beneath the barbell. I'm beginning to understand that my condition is chronic-- it's cellular, in my cytoplasm. When the muscle fibers tear, it is the cowardice that rips itself apart, and when the muscle fibers rebuild themselves it is the cowardice that comes back all the more potent; I foam roll at my cowardice in hopes that my lower back will be less tight, my hips more mobile, the fear made flesh less aching and sore. But really it just looks like I’m having awkward missionary sex with an imaginary partner alone in my living room.
What is it that I’m so afraid of? Why am I saying all this? I don't know. There's a girl who I want to talk to and every time she texts me I feel sick. I apologize for how mundane the answer is, really I do. But every time I try to communicate with her I feel like I've said the exact wrong combination of words. She texted me happy birthday today and I somehow found a way to say the wrong thing. She thinks I’m funny, she likes to talk to me, and every time I make her laugh and I hear her laugh I'm reminded of the insect I truly am. Only a coward feels this way when he's around a beautiful woman. No other explanation. Every single woman I’ve ever loved has terrified me.