The Oblivion that Masks Pain

sad-woman

He said I’d feel better after a while; that my pain would fade along with his memory. His words echoed throughout the husk he’d left. My soul had been cored out and left to rot.

I tossed and turned, night after night, as I imagined him with the one who made him happy. My replacement. The thought of their sex didn’t bother me. It was the intimacy after – the quiet bliss when I was the furthest thing from his mind. Just days following the dissolution of our multi-year couplehood, the one which whom he’d spent so much of his life was on her way to being forgotten.

I was forgotten.

I sought an oblivion to mask my pain; anything to dull the omnipresent savagery of loss. Memories of our happiness felt false. I wondered how long he hated me before he finally let me know it was over. How long was I happy while he was miserable? How much of his life had I stolen, oblivious to his diminishing love? I knew it was all in my mind. And my mind screamed as cascades of neurotransmitters reinforced my feelings of profound, hideous dejection.

Then I had an idea.

Part of me felt sad about how easy it was to buy heroin.

The first pet store I visited had the rats I wanted. I brought them home and fed them a solution of sugar water and heroin. They died soon after. I knew the last moment of their lives had been their best.

While they were still warm, I removed their brains and ate them. I wanted to absorb the physical manifestation of their joy.

I know a small portion of the euphoria I experienced following my meal was from the trace amounts of heroin I’d ingested. But it lasted longer than a drug high. It lasted for days. For three full days, the thought of him didn’t send me into a self-destructive spiral. Quite the contrary; I felt like I was growing. I was getting over him.

At the end of the three days, the pain came back. Nightmares flooded the sleep that’d once been a respite. The fact remained: I was gradually being forgotten. I was being replaced. Someone was creating new memories with the person I love. I couldn’t let that happen.

More rats, more heroin. Another respite. Two days, though. Only two. It wasn’t working the way I’d hoped. The root of the problem was still there. Every passing day, I was becoming less clear in his mind. The prospect being forgotten was infinitely worse than forgetting him. The former made the latter impossible.

My moment of serendipity occurred while I was throwing the dead rats down the garbage chute.

He answered his phone when I called. To this day, I feel terrible for lying to him. He rushed over, as strong and protective as ever, to see who’d hurt me. When he was sitting down, I came behind him and injected a lethal dose of heroin into the side of his neck. He punched me, hard, before his pupils dilated. Before he stopped breathing, he smiled at me.

“Kate,” he whispered, “to think I’d almost forgotten how beautiful you are.” He exhaled a long, quiet breath. His dilated eyes never left mine as he blinked once or twice, almost as if he were wondering why he didn’t feel the need to inhale anymore. When he died, his smile remained.

I opened his head. It took longer than I’d expected. I made sure to keep cleaning off his face. His smile urged me to go on. After an hour, I stared at the mass inside his skull that was him. His essence. His everything.

I didn’t know what part did what. I just knew it was all him, so it was all important. Over the course of a few days, I consumed him as he smiled. Each morsel had the potential to be a piece that contained his memory of me. All his memories of the good times. All his memories of the beauty we experienced. The closeness.

When his skull was empty, I felt different. I wasn’t euphoric, like I’d felt after the rats. I felt better. I was at peace. This was my closure. I’d ensured that I wouldn’t be forgotten. The one I loved was with me again. Forever. And together, we could be free to make new memories.

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Know It All

meat

The hospital I’ve called my home for the last 30 years can only be described as an asylum. While the word has fallen out of favor, the situation inside has remained consistent. Days stretch in interminable swaths of gray and white; gray from the medication in the mornings, white from the medication in the afternoons. Only the blackness of night frees me from the consuming palate of mid-winter rain clouds used to paint my days away.

I am here by my own volition. The fact I used the law to enact that volition is a mere technicality. The fact I stole the volition of someone else to gain use of the law is another. At the end of the bloodbath – at the end of the steaming orgy of crimson and savagery – I’d gotten my wish. I’d never need to harm another living thing for the rest of my life.  

The sights and sounds which etched themselves into my soul on that May morning in 1986 still flash through. Between timed doses, gray melts into red. Red bleeds into white. To any other man, those flashes would be the proof of his madness; the seeping of illness into medicated docility. But I know far more than any other man.

On May 3rd, 1986, I awoke to find my young son in the room with me. We stared at one another for a moment. Then I rolled out of bed and went to the garage. By lunchtime, I had chopped him into 400 pieces. On May 4th, the front page of the newspaper featured a picture of his blonde hair stuck to the blade of my axe.

To those who read the story or saw the news, I was labeled a monster. To those who served the courts and reviewed the evidence, I was labeled insane. To me, however, the person who conversed with the pieces as they were liberated from my son, I was not a monster. I was not insane. I was a man who needed knowledge. My boy held the secrets to it all.

I discussed what lay beyond our universe with Aaron’s left foot. The foot laughed. It was Aaron’s small voice. It told me to ask the shin. More blows of the axe brought the shin into our discussion. But it could tell me very little; only that the knee had much more information.

And so it went.

The leftmost quadrant of Aaron’s lower mandible informed me I was close, and his upper-right incisor screamed with delirious laughter while it spoke of the secrets I’d learn from the uvula and tonsils. When the axe would no longer suffice – its blunt brutality too clumsy to properly extricate the tiny pieces with whom I needed to converse – my pocket knife and its keen precision continued the work. Three hours later, with 400 pieces of child organized around me by order of their knowledge, we began our formal chat. And I learned everything.

I write this today as a prisoner. As a patient. As a father. In this unmedicated interstice between gray and white, I can reflect on the red. Not the red of blood, but the red of It All: the rich, vermillion expanse of flesh and organs on which this universe is a scab.

On the last night of his life, an emissary from It All visited Aaron as he slept. It whispered its secrets into every part of him, and my son, who was the most caring, generous person I’d ever met, knew he had to share it with me. So he waited, patiently, for me to wake.

On the morning of May 3rd, 1986, I lifted my sleep mask to see Aaron floating above my bed, watching me. Bright sunlight streamed across us. The dancing reflection of light against the shiny crimson of his sclera dazzled me. Enthralled me. He opened his mouth, but remained silent. He tried again, but it was no use; It All was inside him. His mouth contained no cavity – only solid red streaked with veins. He brought his pinky finger to my ear and placed it inside, and the fingertip told me what I needed to do. Four hours later, I’d brought It All out of Aaron and into my mind. And now into yours.

Daily fogs of grays and whites desaturate what I’ve seen, but they cannot hide the presence of what I know is there. I am not insane. The red which courses through the arterial network of multiversal organs and flesh is beyond sanity. Beyond mind. But not beyond body. At the end of my life, whenever that is, I know I’ll get to touch Aaron again.

Even now, through It All, I feel him pressing against the walls, reaching for me, and speaking to me; each part of him singing choruses of thanks and praise. It’s the praise which gives me the most comfort as I sit, day after day, year after year, and wait. I wait knowing I am loved and appreciated. That’s more than enough. It’s the dream of every father to give It All to his son.

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Licks From a Bear

trepan

August 1, 2015, 9:00am

It’s been exactly one year since Jen left. That means it’s been one year and one day since I was fired. I haven’t worked since. I used to like the idea of being on disability; free money and all the time in the world to spend with her. I guess she didn’t think of it that way. She was always ambitious. I shouldn’t say “was.” Every day I see Facebook updates detailing her constant successes. The most recent one was her engagement. I’d never seen her look so happy.

I guess I knew things with us were going downhill when I looked forward to our fights. She’d always say something about how I’m so smart – that I was smarter than she, in fact – but that I had no ambition. It felt so good to hear that someone as brilliant as Jen thought I was smart, even though she yelled it at me in frustration. She claimed she understood my depression and my anxiety and how they were terrible roadblocks on the path to my happiness. I thought that meant she could empathize and still wanted to be with me anyway. Apparently I was wrong.

Getting disability benefits for my depression wasn’t too hard. The money isn’t great, but it pays the rent and keeps me fed. The only pain is that I have to go to therapy every week. I also need to go to monthly appointments to pick up prescriptions to help combat my depression, ADHD, and anxiety. It’s all so procedural and detached from anything resembling real care. So I’m a lonely, unemployable loser who apparently has this “great mind” that’s utterly useless. But I won’t stay like this forever. I’ve discovered a something new. Well, something old, actually.

Today begins my new life. The medication never worked, the therapy never worked, the behavior changes never worked. Medicine failed me. Or maybe I failed medicine. Either way, I’m taking control of myself again. I’m not going to be a victim of the barriers my body’s put up for me. No more attention problems. No more depression. No more anxiety. For the first time in what may be decades, I’m filled with hope.

August 1, 2015, 3:00pm

All my tools are cleaned and ready. In about an hour, I’ll start. I need to keep a pretty comprehensive journal of the procedure to make sure I’m not harming myself. I figure a running account of my experiences will give evidence of the positive (or negative) changes in both my mood and cognitive abilities.

August 1, 2015, 4:05pm

After I traced a dime-sized circle on the upper-right part of my forehead, I used an Exacto knife to carve through the skin. I wasn’t prepared for how much this was going to hurt. I stopped a couple times to wipe away the tears so I could see well enough to continue. The skin lifted off from the bone without too much trouble once I’d finished cutting. I flushed it down the toilet. Now I’m waiting for the bleeding to stop – it seems to be slowing already. It’s so weird to see my skull exposed like this.

I’m going to write a sentence or two before and after each of the next steps so I can get as good a description as possible if this all works as well as I’m hoping.

I opted to use a tiny drill bit over a single large one. A ring of tiny holes is going to take a hell of a lot longer, but I think the need for precision dwarfs time consumption in this case. I’m about to do the first hole.

The first hole is done. Imagine the feeling of biting down on a fist-sized piece of tinfoil as hard as you possibly can while your head hums like it’s filled with buzzing hornets. The vibration was so excruciating that I’m only now feeling the pain of the drill site itself. I’m going to do the next ten or so holes now before I lose my nerve.

The vibrations became less intense with each hole. The bone pain got much worse, though. I’ve never had migraines, but I assume they must feel something like this.

I’m shining a light at the ring of tiny bores and doing my best to inspect what’s behind them in the mirror. It’s not very useful. The remaining structural elements between the holes are extremely thin and brittle-looking. I’m going to cut them away with the wirecutters.

I just dropped a circle of my skull into the sink. Now I’m looking at the bright red membrane that’s covering my brain. I’m a little surprised by how many blood vessels are in there. I’m going to put out a couple more towels. Cutting away the membrane is the part I’m most scared of.

It’s done and the hole is bleeding a lot. I’m taking extra care to not put too much pressure on the organ itself when I’m working to soak up the blood. I’m feeling a little dizzy so while I hold the towel to the hole, I’m sitting and eating the piece of steak and drinking the orange juice I’d put out just in case this happened. The wound is slowly starting to clot while I wait here. The whole area hurts, but the pain is second to the strong pulsing sensation around the hole. It’s almost like I have a second heart beating there.

The blood stopped pouring out and I’m cleaning the area with water and rubbing alcohol. Now I can see my brain. It’s gray. It doesn’t look like it even belongs to me; I don’t know why it all feels so surreal. It’s almost like I’m watching all this happen to someone else. On the plus side, I’m not dizzy anymore, but I’m exhausted. I’m going to bandage everything and go to bed. I’ll clean up tomorrow.

August 2, 2015, 6:30am

I woke up this morning with more energy and drive than I’ve ever felt. Even sitting here writing this feels like a joy; I’m not struggling to find words, I’m not dreading how I’ll reread what I’ve written and think it’s stupid and pointless – everything just….works. The accounts I’d read about people who shared their experiences with trepanation made similar claims, but even as I drilled the holes I never allowed myself to truly believe it would work for me. Even now, I’m worried it’s all just a placebo effect. The pulsating feeling is real, though, and it’s as strong as ever. That was something else my fellow trepanned mentioned. They said it was because the body is letting the brain grow again; something the skull had prevented after it hardened following infancy. I don’t know if I buy the explanation, but I can’t deny what’s happening here.

August 2, 2015, 2:00pm

My day’s been spent cleaning the apartment. Over the last year, I’d let things pile up and grow increasingly filthy as my depression festered. Today, it’s like a veil has been lifted and light is pouring over everything I lay my eyes on. The place needed to be cleaned, so I just set to work and cleaned it. It looks better now than it did when Jen and I moved in. My therapist recommended that I clean quite a while ago, suggesting that a nice, open area would really help me see my home as a place for potential, rather than stagnation. Now I know what he meant. This is what potential feels like.

The hole in my head still hurts and it looks terrible, but I expected as much. If I go out, I can wear a hat and no one will notice anything amiss. I’m not ready to do that, though. I’m mildly concerned about how badly the site is beginning to itch as it heals. I’m being extremely assiduous in cleaning and caring for the wound as it heals, but I guess part of that process is that damn itch. I’m doing my best not to think about it.

August 2, 2015, 11:30pm

The first full day of my experiment is about to end. I’m about to go to sleep, and I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot today. My home is spotless, I’ve finished a short story I’d been working on for the last couple months, I’ve gotten up to date with my internet and utility bills, and I even did a couple sets of push-ups. I had to remind myself to eat, though. For whatever reason, I wasn’t hungry at all until I realized it was nearly 9pm and I hadn’t eaten all day. I’m chalking it up to my excitement. It’s been hard to contain. But, now I’m all showered and pajamaed and ready to end my day. I can’t wait for tomorrow.

August 3, 2015, 5:45am

I was up before my alarm this morning to watch the sun rise from the roof of the apartment. Last night I slept like a log and didn’t wake up once. I noticed some blood on my pillow and under my fingernails, though, and I think I may have scratched underneath the bandage while I slept. I made a beeline to the bathroom to inspect the hole and, thankfully, I didn’t seem to do any damage. Everything appears to be healing well.

August 3, 2015, 1:15pm

I don’t know if it’s endorphins wearing off or just an artefact of my depression, but my euphoric feeling has diminished quite a bit since this morning. I’m thinking it might be both; maybe I need to have a good meal. There should be something in the fridge.

August 3, 2015, 9:00pm

Whatever I felt this afternoon doesn’t seem to have been a fluke. While my mood elevated for a little while after lunch, I was back to near-baseline for the rest of the day and evening. The pulsing in the hole waxes and wanes with my mood, interestingly enough. When I’m happy and ambitious, it pulses a lot. When I’m depressed, it may pulse once every ten seconds. It may have something to do with my blood pressure, so I’ll keep an eye on that. Before bed, I’ll do some jumping-jacks and see if the pulsing returns. I’m fairly certain a higher pulse rate correlates with a better mindset.

Just did the exercise. The pulsing is the same. My heartrate is up, but my mood is still low. I’m going to bed.

August 4, 2015, 11:00am

I just woke up and I feel terrible. I was scratching the hole again. The pillow is soaked with blood and there are remnants of scabs under my fingernails. Tonight I’ll wear gloves. That aside, my mood is still right near where it was before I started this process. I’m worried the surface area of my brain that’s exposed isn’t large enough to allow long-lasting effects. I don’t trust myself to widen the hole that’s already there, but I’m prepared to do another one an inch or so away.

August 4, 2015, 12:30pm

There was a problem with the second hole. I did everything just like the last time, but on the last tiny borehole a crack formed in the skull between the original hole and the new site. I had to peel back the skin I’d left to make sure, but it was definitely there. I was forced to decide whether or not I should leave the broken piece, and I opted against it. Now I have an oval that’s about 3 inches long and 1 inch wide. Removing the membrane from this part was difficult and I had a minor issue with the blade slipping deeper than I’d wanted. Thankfully, the brain has no pain receptors. It couldn’t have gone more than half an inch inside and nothing weird happened to my body so I lucked out and hit part of the 90% they say we don’t use. I know people are saying that’s a myth, but with what just happened to me there must be some truth to it.

August 5, 2015, 8:00am

No scratching overnight. The pulsing is there but it’s nowhere near as strong as it was the first time. My mood is still low. I have to be honest with myself here: I feel like a failure. This whole experiment is another example of me setting out to do something with good intentions and having it all blow up in my face. But, but, I’m not going to be defeated by it. In the past, I would’ve stopped, Jen would’ve started a fight with me, and I’d just add it to the never ending cascade of fuckups that form my identity. Not this time, though. The increase in my ambition from this treatment must still be going strong, because I’m determined to see it all through.

August 5, 2015, 8:00pm

There are four more holes in my head. I didn’t think I’d be able to do it. Toward the end of the last one, I almost passed out. I’m glad I had the foresight to keep a few sugar packets nearby so I could regain the strength to finish up.

Besides the issue with my dizziness, these four went better than the prior two. I used the left and right sides of my head this time, right above my ears. The skull was far thinner than on my forehead, so the vibration of the drill wasn’t as excruciating. The blood-loss was significantly greater, though, which explains the desire to pass out. I have hand towels wrapped around my head so I won’t get blood all over the place. Lucky for me, I’m a pretty quick clotter. That’s a funny word. Clotter.

August 6, 2015, 6:10am

I slept sitting up and awoke to major pulsing not just in the new holes, but in the old ones as well. A small problem’s developed with the second hole, though. I think it might be getting infected. The itching is unbearable and I think it might be starting to smell. I poured rubbing alcohol on all the sides and pressed it in with clean towels, so hopefully that’ll stop whatever’s breeding in there.

My mood was pretty high. Still not as good as the first day, but much better than the days after. I’ve been thinking about Jen a lot. We had so many things in common. We loved talking about animals and used to go off on tangents where we’d discuss all the exotic ones we’d have when we were rich. Her favorite ones were rhinos. Mine were hippos. I used to tell her about the lake we’d have in our backyard where my pygmy hippo would play with her baby rhino. After they’d gotten tired out, we’d invite them up to the patio where they’d curl up next to one another while we gazed adoringly at them and at each other. I wonder how she’d feel knowing I’ve been doing all this work to better myself. She’d probably tell me to do more.

August 7, 2015, 12:35pm

I did more. All day yesterday, I drilled. I drilled and cut and pulled and peeled. I feel like I can take on the world; it’s almost like that one time I did cocaine in college, but the effect has lasted far longer. I’ll update again today if I have to, but for now, I’m going to work on some of my stories.

August 9, 2015, 9:00am

Where have I been? Writing. Since the other day, I’ve gotten down 100 pages of a story I never even knew I had in me. Reading it over is like I’m looking at the work of someone else. Someone far, far better. A stranger, I guess.

On a slightly less pleasant note, there’s definitely an infection in a few holes. One of them is weeping a gray liquid that smells terrible and all of them itch. When I rub them with the towel to try to scratch, they break open and start either bleeding or leaking clear fluid. I figure it’s like a cold that has to run its course, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t becoming a problem nearly as bad as the depression was.

August 10, 2015, 7:40am

I scratched in my sleep. I don’t know what else to say other than it was bad. It’s hard to tell from what I see in the mirror, but I might have damaged some of my brain in the holes of my forehead and left side. A small piece is hanging by a thread that looks like a tiny blood vessel. I tried to tuck it back under the lip of skull, but I had to press pretty hard to do it and I’m worried I messed it up even worse.

At least I saw a bear today.

August 15, 2015, 4:15pm

More holes for me. Shaved my head. No more hair, lots more holes. Remember those wiffle balls from when we were kids? One day I’ll tell Jen how I thought my head looked like a wiffle ball. She always liked baseball and playing with my hair. My head infection was getting real bad before the bear came. Now he licks my head while I sleep and keeps the gross stuff out. Jen loves bears. Bears and rhinos.

Every morning I have to clean under my fingernails a lot. Petting the bear gets them real dirty. It’s nice the bear shaved when I did so I didn’t have to feel like the odd man out. Those pulses in my head are nice and strong all the time. It feels good. The bear licks me a lot when I sleep.

Augs 16, 2015 5000

Scratch the bear by his ears andhe licks lots and lots. Lots of licks means a lot less itching. Jen would scratch my back when it was itchy. One time she saw me triing to scratch between my shoulders using the door frame. She called me a bear because that’s what bears do when there back itches. 60 holes, going to cut out the spaces in between. Make my bear proud if Jen cant be.

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Ouroboros

ouroboros

Calories in, calories out.

I used the dremel saw I stole from work to cut off the first knuckle of my left pinky. The bosses had to know I took the thing but I doubt they even cared. What’s a $100 tool to a company that’s worth millions? Besides, they were getting rid of me, and that’s what their priority was. Maybe they’ll take it out of the last check they said they’d mail.

Despite what I thought, it wasn’t easy to pull the bone out of the finger chunk. So, I peeled off the nail and then cut the remainder of the piece open with the dremel and took the bone out the messy way. I didn’t think much as I popped the fingertip in my mouth and chewed for what felt like an hour before the meat broke down enough for me to comfortably swallow. I tried to figure out how many calories were in the finger segment while also working to determine how my caloric needs have changed now that my body mass had decreased by that little bit. I don’t know why I wasted so many years cutting when I could’ve done the smart thing by cutting off.

My adrenaline was off the chart for the rest of the day and I could barely sleep. I was brimming with excitement; I’d actually found a way to beat the system. Why do we need food when we are food? This elation was crushed when I stepped on the scale the following morning and saw the familiar, disgusting number: 82 pounds. I punched myself and clawed at my face as I stared at the scarred, bloated atrocity that smirked at me in the mirror. Much too much of me. Far too much.

I bent the remainder of my left pinky backward and twisted. The mirror-me kept smiling. I twisted and twisted the finger until it was connected to my hand by a tiny, tight rope of skin before pulling the broken digit completely off. I walked into the kitchen and turned on the stove’s electric burner and pressed the stump onto the coils. No more bleeding. Back in the bathroom, I took an antibiotic and an Oxy I had left over from my back surgery last year. I didn’t want to get too sick to continue or be in too much pain and lose my nerve. I gazed in the mirror while I chewed the cooling flesh off the bone.

Did you know it’s surprisingly easy to find someone on Craigslist who will perform surgery for the promise of cash? We met in my garage. He inspected the place for cameras, closed the garage door, and slammed the hatchet into my left wrist. I fingered my collarbones and traced the craggy topography of my ribcage as he swore, realizing he’d only broken the bones without severing my hand. All the while I’d retreated into my head, watching the scene unfold from above. I felt the thud as the blade hit me and the dull popping as he carved away. The Oxy did a really good job masking most of the pain. To be honest, I was a little disappointed.

My Craigslist surgeon looked mildly haunted by what he’d done, so as soon as he seared the wound shut with the torch, he ran out. He’d be back soon enough, though. I sat in the garage and stared at the stump where my hand used to be. It smelled like the time mom burned pork chops and almost set the kitchen on fire. My severed hand sat on the table like a flaccid relative of Thing from The Addams Family. Picking it up, I was a little surprised by how heavy it felt. You never really think about the individual parts of your body having weight. Still, I was encouraged. This was an immediate loss of at least a pound or two.

I gnawed at the sinewy knuckle areas and fought through a dizzy spell. Orange juice helped get my head to stop spinning. Whether it was blood loss or excitement didn’t matter much. Things were finally going in the right direction.

A week later, I contacted my Craigslist surgeon again. I didn’t have any more cash, but he agreed to do what I wanted in exchange for a couple of the Oxy pills. I had at least 20 more in one bottle and an unopened bottle of 30 stashed in my bedroom, so he’d be happy for a while. Besides, we were almost done. I was almost done.

My surgeon said the next part would probably kill me. I agreed. He got to work. The pills didn’t do much to dull the pain this time. The feeling of a saw going through a femur right near the hipbone is a hard thing to describe. Even harder is the sensation one experiences the moment one’s femoral artery is severed. It’s like the world starts melting and going gray at the same time. Luckily, my surgeon had the torch ready and seared the gushing artery shut before finishing the amputation. When dropped the saw, the first thing I did was try to wiggle my toes. It felt like I was wiggling them just fine. Strange. I threw down another few antibiotics and painkillers.

Before the surgeon left, I demanded that he help me to the bathroom scale. It was hard to balance on one leg and get a proper reading on the scale, but when it finally registered, I was triumphant. 68lbs. The dizziness came back quickly and I yelled to the surgeon who was about to leave. We were going to finish this. It didn’t take long for him to agree to take off my other leg in exchange for more pills. Cut cut, burn burn. He carried me back to the scale where I teetered on my lopsided stumps. 59lbs. Then he brought me to my bed.

So here I am. My right arm works fine; I don’t think I want to get rid of that. It’s probably the only part of me I find useful these days. I figure I have another couple weeks of antibiotics left. They’re next to me under the pillow. I tucked my severed legs under the comforter. Over the next few days, I’ll nip at them whenever I’m hungry. My guess is the hunger pains will become less intense once my body realizes it doesn’t have as much to fuel. Until then, I’ll just keep taking little bites. Minimal intake, just like I’m used to. Just like what keeps me comfortably in control.

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