“How are you today?”
“I’m alive,” I answer.
As she chuckles at my response, her thin, gold-rimmed glasses drag across the counter;
she reaches for my jar of change (14 quarters, 2 dimes, 6 pennies) and pours it
out. While this approximately 73-year-old
woman is grabbing my cigarettes, counting out my exact change, and still
laughing, she says, “Me too!” They always laugh. They always say “me too.”
Can they even
comprehend being alive? I am not good. I am not bad. I haven’t had better days.
I haven’t had worse. I am just here. I am this 117-pound, sack of meat and
bones, held together by epidermis, breathing, pulsating, moving, and buying
sticks that cause death. Physically, my
blood is flowing and I am alive. Mentally, there is nothing. No sorrow,
sadness, nothing. To this white-haired
ball of wrinkles, I am alive just like her. I pray to thing they call God that
she is not alive like me. I wish this
empty jar upon no one.
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