The sins, in this case, being gluttony and sloth, I suppose.

WellI am really reaping what I have sown now. I feel sick all the time, I get weaker by the day, I feel dizzy and fragile and ready to collapse at any moment, and it’s clearly only a matter of time before The Big One – and there are many possibilities, like stroke, heart attack, and diabetic coma – comes to get me and make my life so very much worse and/or over.

Funny word, that. Over.

I feel like the walls are closing in on me and pretty soon this grave I have been digging for all these years will collapse in on me and bury me alive under the sheer weight of all these unhealthy days.

That’s the thing about being a fat person. You wear your sins around your guts. Your big fat form testifies to everyone how badly you have lived.

And yet, I can’t even be sure I had any choice.

That’s the titanic question of my very existence. Am I a helpless victim of mental and physical illness whose entire minecart trip to Hell was pre-ordained and there was nothing I could ever have done to prevent my sticky end?

There’s a shameful kind of comfort in that thought. But it comes at the price of being doomed to die horribly.

And that’s bad.

The idea seems a lot less comforting when you realize it denies future agency.

The alternative is that I am fully culpable for all the things happening to me now because I could have prevented them so easily with just moderate changes to my behaviour and I chose instead to keep sitting on my ass hiding from the world and playing video games and not doing anything to help myself besides take pills and modify my diet.

Which was clearly not enough.

That level of culpability could very well crush me psychologically. The demons of my depression could really have the proverbial field day with the notion that everything I am going through is ALL MY FAULT.

But I dunno. Maybe that isn’t all that bad. Not if it opens a path to survival.

I mean, I have hated myself for a really long time, so it’s not like I am unaccustomed to the demon’s prickly little pitchforks.

Yeah yeah. Hellfire and brimstone and self-loathing. Whatever.

So yeah. What the hell. It’s all my fault. I did it all. I neglected my health, I lived quite stupidly, I chose to stay hidden and buried in my games, and it’s my fault I never swam against the tide and by doing so toughened up so I could finally DEAL with things.

That sucks but it’d a burden I am going to have to grow into because I definitely don’t want to die a gross and painful and above all STUPID death strapped down to a hospital bed in some back ward where they put all the really non-telegenic cases they’ve more or less given up on.

They’ll die soon. We’ll be rid of them. It’s okay.

So yeah. I officially take responsibility for all the dumb shit I have done. It’s not going to be easy to process, but it’s what I have to do if I want to live.

Besides., I can’t just think about my immediate psychological comfort any more.

I have to think long term if I want to get out of this thing alive.

And that means taking responsibility.

More after the break.

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I almost died last night

So let’s talk about that.

To refresh your memory, the complete cessation of appetite I experienced yesterday meant that I ate nothing the whole day.

This was bad. This is something I should not do. Something which should not happen. And something which hopefully will not happen again.

Because as a direct result of being radically unfed, last night I entered a state of blood sugar crash that damn near killed me.

As in, I was, no exaggeration, minutes from death. I could have crashed out and fallen into a diabetic coma and then threw off this mortal coil as all the cells in my body starved to death.

What a horrible way to go. Would have been ironic, too.

Fat guy starves. Ha ha ha.

And unlike my usual pattern, I am going to hang on to this near death experience and do my best to learn from it.

Usually, I am like a kid. Sure, it’s bad when the crisis is going on, but once it’s over, I bounce back and put it behind me and don’t think about it again.

And while such resilience has its advantages, it makes it very hard to learn from experience because experience doesn’t stick.

I just shake it off and go back to my usual mode. And that’s not good enough.

If I want to live, I am going to have to hold on to experiences like I had last night long enough for them to actually modify my behaviour.

Which means, in this case, that I need to have a plan for when my appetite dies.

I definitely cannot afford to “indulge” my lack of appetite by not eating. I have to be able to force some food into myself even when absolutely nothing appeals to me.

Fruit seems to be something that can penetrate a lack of appetite for me. Like I said yesterday, fruit is highly appealing to me, and is not as “challenging” to my lack of appetite as something with meat or bread or even popcorn.

I guess a dearth of appetite really pares one’s tastes to the bone.

Perhaps I should invest in something like Fruit Roll-Ups, which are fruit in a form that is fairly shelf stable and therefore will keep if I just stick it in my “pantry” and leave it there on a strictly “in case of emergency break glass” basis.

They have added sugar, though. So I would have to search for an all fruit brand.

I mean, the added sugar wouldn’t be a problem if I am crashing, but what I want it something I can get myself to eat when I can’t eat anything else.

More directly to the point, I hereby vow to myself and the world that I will never miss another meal. Even if my appetite is DOA, I will find SOMETHING I can eat that has enough carbs etc to keep me alive.

It’s not going to be easy. Forcing yourself to eat when nothing is appetizing never is.

But I don’t wanna die.

So I am going to have to get used to it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.