Eating My Way to the Bottom

Imagine a huge ice cream sundae. Perhaps, if you know the ice cream parlor Bridgeman's, you know of the Lalapalooza Sundae. It's huge and I ate one once. I forget how many scoops of ice cream, but it doesn't even matter because once you are full and driven to continue eating you just simply eat. When I was eating my way to the bottom of that sundae, I lost my sense of taste. I lost my sense of fullness. I just ate because I wanted to be done. It's such a stupid thing to do, yet there are food challenges all over the nation and television shows and obesity. Just because something is stupid and meaningless doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Depression has no bottom. Just as I think I see the bottom, assume there are only a few painful bites left, the depression expands as if it is eating me and my life and not the other way around. A profound experience unfolds as depression eats my soul; I find my soul is infinite. I'm not about to launch into a philosophical/spiritual discussion of the eternity of the soul. Fuck that. Whether or not I turn to dust, get reincarnated, or enter the pearly gates I find that while alive, life is eternal. As such, depression knows no bounds and the eternity of being eaten alive by this deadly psychological phenomenon is profound. I can only take so much and not take my own life.

But I don't. Instead, I stand on the edge of the bottom looking down farther while I fall until with breathtaking precision my body shuts out the pain and the drive to survive makes me take a few more bites. Empty, stupid, meaningless eating of life in a banquet that has no end. I long, desperately, for an end. I need an end.

Just one more thought. Insanity is sometimes defined as "doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results." I feel like each breath I take is just that - an exercise in insanity. Perhaps all of humanity is insane as we inhale, over and over, with the fullness of expectation only to exhale and there is emptiness. I don't know if this thought is dark or if it is beautiful.