My Health is Not the Same

Ever since I quit smoking, I've felt a vague sense of my own weak constitution. I've always had a strong body, usually fit, and spells of tiredness never pulled me into a thin fog during the day.

I wonder, "Do most humans experience a slight weakness during the day? A subtle tiredness?"

It's as if I'm sick with some illness that has not yet made itself apparent.

About four months ago, I started up again on the drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes routine. I tested my already poor health--

I had a hankering for excess pleasure. I forgot what it was like to drink, smoke, and be merry; and I wanted to find out. Like my name, Lethe, from Greek mythology; the River of Lethe, the river in which one forgets, I forgot.

Now my health is not the same. I feel like I have a cold that never goes away.

I can only blame the cigarettes for doing this to me. The last hurrah did me in--

It's physical, my body feels tired and weak; but it's also metaphysical, my soul feels tired and weak.

At different hours, I will have different experiences of my physical self. Some hours I don't think of it and it goes away. I will simply coast. Other hours, it's like going up a mountain trail with a heavy backpack.

I just want to give up, throw my bags down, and sleep under a tree. But usually--and this is about three or four hours into the day--I press on, I get a couple things done.

And then I take my afternoon nap. Such an easy life, it would seem. But to me it is a terribly busy life, and I look at the clock in disgust, with a serious aversion to it. Because the clock never gives me enough time. It always steals time away.

With my lingering sense of a weak constitution, and for several hours of the day, a plain irritation at things, well that leaves me with only a couple good hours to enjoy life, to enjoy being human. And believe you me if I get two hours then that was a good day.

I'm lucky to enjoy twenty minutes of lasting mind/body strength and vitality. And usually it is late, as it is now, in the middle of the night, when everyone is asleep.

ARTWORK BY RUDOLF HAUSNER