Alana's Dharma Blog

Waiting for more information from the doctors, waiting for a diagnosis, waiting for the symptoms of illness to set in, waiting to get sick and die, I got to thinking more about what exactly autoimmunity is and how it is an illness that fits my own brand of crazy…

What is autoimmunity — it is my own body attacking myself. It fits. It fits my personality. I am so harsh and unaccepting, of others, but especially of myself. It is part of my effort to curate who I am, to curate a world that I find acceptable to live in. I forcefully reject what is unacceptable in an effort to define not me, not how things should be. I use self control, and discipline, and self loathing, to force me to be more of what I want to be. Just look at my old gym routines and dieting, my extreme efforts to be a fit-not-fat-alana and you, I, can see just what kind of person I am.

A note from present-day-alana (April, 2023):

In recent years, the concept of ‘arbitrariness’ has, over time, become a core point of contemplation in my practice. As I consider the idea of ‘identity’, where it arises from, and, ultimately its hollowness, considering arbitrariness has been a key tool for me. Afterall, if the characteristics we choose to build our uniqueness – our identity— from are just arbitrarily selected, could have been anything, THIS OR THAT depending on the circumstances, can we really claim that the identity we have built is inherent and absolute?

Is my identity really so damn special if I just choose characteristics arbitrarily, choose the meaning I assigned to them arbitrarily, and then arbitrarily claim I possess those characteristics and therefore I am a certain thing? What is arbitrary is just a random choice, a personal whim, it is meaningless. The identities we build –that seem so solid and important to us – could have just as easily been something else if the stars had aligned, if that is what we had selected, and curated, and convinced ourselves of. There is nothing so special about what we chose, what we believe ourselves to be. There is no significance to an arbitrarily constructed ‘alana’.

But, I am getting waaaaaayyyyy ahead of myself here. We will, I promise, in due time circle back…I offer this introduction only to highlight just how important, and nuanced, a tool ‘arbitrary’ has become for me, because this blog here is going to share one of my earliest, nascent considerations of the idea of arbitrariness.

It all started because I had sent a brief line to Mae Neecha, sharing a bit about my recent contemplation efforts on the 5 aggregates of clinging, and asking for a bit of clarification about #5, consciousness. Something Mae Neecha said in passing really got my wheels turning. She said:

“Basically, it is a process that relies on arbitrary permanence (choose A or B – there’s no real meaning) and then builds upon that uncertain foundation (well, last time you chose A so since you’re familiar with A, let’s choose A again… over and over until you “become” A)”.

Below are the contemplations spurred on by her comment:

On Mae Neecha’s point that the creation of self-starts with some arbitrary ‘choice’:

I was thinking it is like moving to SF. I moved, once I was there, I came to identify with it. It became me, me an SFer. When I left, I was devastated, losing a part of me. And in NY I hated it because it was so ‘not me’.

Birth in a body is much the same way, I end-up in a body, just as I ended up in the city of SF, and over time it becomes who I am. I am defined by the body, I imagine that it manifests me, that I have a specific future with it. The thought of leaving it is painful.

Of course, from my current perspective, it is hard to see the ‘choice’ that went into my body, but in other circumstances, the choice is more clear. For example, I shop for homes, I buy one with architecture, or location, that reflect me, my preferences, who I think I am. I choose features I think will bring me comfort. In the selection process I imagine a future with the home, a future I believe the home will bring about (note to self alana: this didn’t work too great with the Manhattan loft or the country home in Connecticut).

If you have the resources, you can pick a home, one you believe reflects you. One that conjures an imaginary future you like. Of course, with less resources, you have less choice. With a body, this is likely how a transgender person is born into a “home” they don’t see as reflecting them (trans folks are the perfect example of how the 4e body really doesn’t manifest our imagined version of our self –I have used the idea of being trans in several contemplations about if our body can ever really reflect our identity).

Of course, even in a case of less resources, the identity built, and the objects selected to reflect that identity, are still arbitrary. Based on old aggregates, which were also arbitrary. Like the study of kids broken up into blue and brown eyes and told blue eyed kids are inferior and brown eyed kids superior: Before the study, the physical trait existed, but there was no identity. But the identity was planted, and then the trait used to prove it. Just like with the beaver dam (you can read the beaver contemplation here): I am the one who chooses which trait to focus on. I am the one that assigns one meaning over another. It truly is arbitrary. Worse, I don’t just choose the trait, the rupa, to identify me with, I choose a particular state of rupa, 1 arrangement in the continual shifting of a form that is optimally me/mine. And when rupa shifts past that peak state, I am stressed and saddened.

I call something mine. Mine is in my mind and not the object: At KPY one time I saw a ladder with a post-it note that read, “Mine not yours”. The writer was claiming the ladder. But every reader, from their perspective, would read the ladder is “mine”. No where buried in the ingredients of the ladder is an extra element “mineness”. That exists in the mind alone. No 1 ladder acts fundamentally different than other ladders: It is, as all things, a product of causes and will continue for as long as the causes allow, and then it will cease. Sticky note and imagination aside, there is no special ladder.

Just like all bodies are made of the same elements, none is special. I just choose a specific set of traits, give them meaning, claim they identify me or reflect my identity and then I try and force the particular body I am in to reflect those traits. Or, I choose the traits because they already exist in the body I am in. On and on this cycle goes. Trying to use form to manifest self.

But that is not what from is. That isn’t what form does. How do I know? Because everyone can use this body, just like everyone can use that sticky-noted ladder. Every woman knows anyone can use our bodies at anytime; we grow-up with stern warnings about the dangers of walking alone at night, of leaving our drinks unattended at the bar, we live in fear of rape.  If this body is free for anyone to use, how do I claim it is something that will uniquely reflect me, my desires, my vison of who I am, my vison for my future?

If this body really manifested me, made my identity reified in form, then it wouldn’t change into states I despise. How do I reconcile a shift into aging, or ugliness, or smelliness, or sickness, or death, or post death decay, with a form that manifests me? Those aren’t traits or states I would claim. They are not how I see myself or what I imagine my future to be.

When my body, my objects, my traits -the As and Bs I have chosen – shift/decay/disappear, I am forced to adapt, to adjust, to accept; if I am the one needing to adjust to the objects (a little botox to bring that brow back to smoothness, a new car when the old one has broken down, devastating mourning over the lost ex and the quest for a new lover to fill the partner shaped hole in my heart) then can the objects really be proving anything about me other than my beliefs –my desire for them, the ignorance that I have that drives me to  continue to chase and cling to what shifts and slips away?

I recently had begun making chanting a daily practice and, after enough rote repetition, I stated getting curious…I started reading the English, considering the meaning of the passages more closely. There were a few that really struck me, but over and over I kept coming back to a part of the morning chanting that talk about the five aggregates of clinging. Per the Buddha, those bitches bring about a whole world’o’suffering. Its all “sorrow, lamentation, pain distress and despair … the five aggregates for clinging are stressful”.

Apparently, it is so critical that we understand these five, that chanting verse itself explains, “So they might fully understand this, the Blessed One, while still alive, often instructed his listeners that:”

Form is inconstant
Feeling is inconstant
Memory is inconstant
Mental processes are inconstant
Consciousness is inconstant

Form is not self
Feeling is not self
Memory is not self
Mental processes are not self
Consciousness is not self

All processes are inconstant
All processes are not self

Well if the Buddha himself thought this was worthy of a little consideration, who was I to argue…so I decided to begin considering the aggregates, each in kind: How they are a sources of stress? Changeable?  Not self? I felt like I had already really spent time considering form, so I thought maybe I would skip ahead a bit and try feeling. Now strictly speaking, in Buddhism feeling is just 3 things: positive/negative/neutral.  I know the academics of this, but to make my contemplation more interesting, to get the creativity flowing, I considered feeling a bit more openly. I used our day-to-day definition of emotions for my exercise. In doing so, I was able to capture more than just a strict definition of +/- and could consider a broader aspect of nama –my inner life, the me I think I am, all wrapped-up ‘safe and sound’ in this body.

Feelings, they change so quickly, I can be angry in one minute and then feel calm, happy, even elated the next. What is more, my feelings, they are out of my control: I don’t want to feel angry, I don’t want to feel afraid, but ultimately I can’t just will these feelings (really imagination–#4 –when we are speaking of the aggregates) away.  What is more is that these feelings of mine don’t reflect me, sometimes I am downright ashamed of how I feel. I can’t use these feeling, or my thoughts, to manifest my sense of self: They are fickle, changeable, out of my control, they cause me distress, so how could they be me?

Memories too seem to fade. In fact in any one moment I can suddenly remember one thing and forget another. I know for sure these are out of my control, otherwise I would never forget a deadline, or I could easily shake the memory of a nightmare when I wake instead of continuing to feel haunted by it. I guess I feel like my memories are a part of me, but at the same time, I realize they reflect moments that are gone. No more. They are phantoms of what was. So how could these insubstantial things, that live in my mind alone, be me?

Imagination of course is a bear. It is always trying to steal the stage, be the star, direct the play. But if I am honest, it too is capricious. I imagined NY was a fabulous new adventure, and then I imagined it was a hell I would be trapped in forever. I imagined SF was my forever home, then I imagined how the fires would flare my asthma nonstop. If I controlled imagination would I stress so much about moles and lumps? I don’t want to imagine illness, death, but as soon as I see a sign that reminds me, makes me remember a danger, my imagination literally runs wild. It runs me right into stress and despair. So is imagination the me I want to be? Is it who I am

The problem is, when I get to the not self part of the teaching, I hesitate. I am willing to say what I feel, remember, imagine, arrange physically is not me. But I assume I am the imaginer, the arranger, the feeler. I many not be a given aggregate, I may not even be the collection of aggregates, but I  keep thinking there has to be an entity behind all these and that is who I am. I assume that the symphony, the system, the process, needs a conductor. I am the conductor, the great entity in  possession of the aggregates.

I decided then to review some of my prior contemplations on possessing –what evidence had I found before that made me question whether or not a claimed object was really a possession of the claimer, and if a possession could prove a claimer’s sense of self. My mind zoomed-in on the story of my old Bite Me Socks: Socks that I had once found so funny, I had claimed as a reflection of my humorous self, which degraded and became worn just as my own sense of humor shifted and changed. Socks and sense of humor both evolving, at their own rate, in their own direction, ultimately away from each other. The things we claim, shifting, just as we who claims them shift, so how exactly can a possession prove an owner? How would shifting aggregates that I identify with –claim — really be able to prove me?

In fact, on closer inspection, it is clear that if there is an entity that does the imagining, the feeling, the arranging, the remembering, it must be shifting and changing just as do the aggregate. After all, over and over I see the same stimulus, like a song, can fuel different feeling, different memory, different imagination across time. If the owner of these aggregates were unchanging, than how could the same externalities trigger different mental processes at different times? And, if the processes change over time, don’t they impact the supposed owner? Doesn’t a new memory need to change the person doing the remembering? If I say that the changeability of any given aggregate is part of the ‘proof’ that the aggregate isn’t who I am, don’t I need to apply the same standard to the supposed self/possessor of the aggregate? Is something that keeps changing, in ways I don’t drive or determine (I am not after all forcing a song to make me fee a certain way), who I am?

The other evidence I weigh when considering each individual aggregate is its propensity to cause me suffering. The whole chanting verse basically leads with the dukkha –the assertion, upfront, is that the 5 aggregates of clinging are stressful. In each aggregate, I see causes of my stress. If I really am the great aggregate possessor, don’t my own ‘possessions’ cause me stress? If I conduct a bunch of processes that stress me the fuck out, isn’t that claiming myself to be a victim of the stresses brought about by my supposed possessions? A conductor that can’t even evoke a symphony that sounds good to them, that doesn’t really control the sounds of the instruments at all, isn’t really much of a conductor. Doesn’t identity, possession, require some measure of control?

For several months I had been doing a little exercise: Tracing daily suffering back to it’s cause, and over and over the exercise showed me that if I want to find a cause of my suffering, the first place to look was at my desires. What is it that I want, that I cling to, that I wish to acquire or avoid, that spins up my emotions, my suffering, in the first place? When I really consider the aggregates closely, desire seems to arise as a product of the aggregates working together. Desire needs a physical form to sense a physical world trigger, a memory of that trigger and an imagination of what it means/ will do for you later, and a feeling of it being fun or crappy. In other words desire is a product of the aggregates as a process. Then the aggregates go and create a plan/ action to satisfy desire. Along the way desires change, aggregates change, new desires are born and on and on goes the aggregate process. It is a continual shifting process.

The aggregates aren’t a self. So why do I think they need some self, some possessor or conductor (who isn’t even possessing or conducting) to function. Processes don’t need a puppet master, they can just  unfold and change and then unfolds further from their changed state. Ad Infineum. This is normal. The problem is claiming the processes, identifying with them, being ignorant to the fact that they are all inconstant. Not self. This is the teaching that the Buddha felt was worthy of frequent admonition, and while I can’t claim, in my heart of hearts to deeply understand it, at least I am closer to understanding that the machine doesn’t need some great overlord to run. Aggregates don’t prove a possessor, processes don’t prove a conductor.

With that tooth pain gone, I got to thinking more clearly, and I couldn’t help think more about what it was that tooth could teach me. Specifically my mind turned toward the relationship between form and imagination. You see, in the weeks prior to the tooth extraction I had begun to consider the question of where my stress in life comes from –what exactly is the cause of my dukka? With the extraction, it was so clear that the cause of my pain was the tooth, but the cause of my stress, that was all imagination.

Rupa is an essential ingredient to my stress of course, it is what I fixate on, what I obsessive over. It is the skin spots that prompt my concern over skin cancer, the lump that I stress might be breast cancer, or the leg cramps that turns my mind towards thrombosis: I have this body and I don’t want to loose it. But clearly the body,  with all its spots and lumps and cramps,  isn’t the cause of my stress –imagination is the real culprit.  Imagination must be  the cause of my  non physical dukkha because without imagination dreading the worst –assigning meaning and portending the future — all the lumps and bumps in the world couldn’t cause stress.

Imagination is sorta a double whammy though: It doesn’t just imagine the worst while I wait for biopsy results to come in. Imagination has the naughty tendency to imagine only the best, ignoring the worst, right up until I read the rupa ‘signs’ of illness and danger. That all-sunshine-and-rainbow side of imagination, the side that ignores a sky that also has storms, is what gets me into trouble in the first place. Ex 1: The country home Eric and I tried to rent (Blog About it Here), when we signed the lease it was the joys of the quiet and the fresh country air, only after I had moved in to find rodent droppings near the laundry, did I begin to imagine –to stress– about how to deal with a mouse infestation during a pandemic. Ex 2: Eric and I moved to NY imagining the exciting, eventful, cool, artsy life we would have there. Only after we moved did I see my imagination had left our the filth, the noise, the bustle that came hand-in-hand with such an artsy, event filled city.

I have this body, because  I craved the experiences I imagined I  would have with it. Imagination is why, after being born into this body, a shifting arrangement of four elements, I claimed it, said it was me/mine. Imagination of what will come next, of further living, and becoming, and enjoying, make me cling all the more tightly.  But right up till I experience it, my imagination glosses the tooth pain, the stress of worrying about more pain, worrying about loss of a part of this body –and eventually the whole thing. This imagination that I live for, that gives me identity, that gives me hope actually stresses me the fuck out. Why should I live for something, be born for something, that brings me so much suffering?

A long time ago, Mae Yo asked me, “What does rupa do to people?” Now I see, rupa is the clay nama uses to construct its fantasy world. It is the props in the imagination’s story line. It is the match that sets my heart ablaze. But fire can’t start without fuel. You could throw matches at an empty firepit, devoid of kindling, all day long and never get a spark. Rupa is just 4 elements, an empty firepit. It is my imagination that allows for my heart to be set ablaze with stress, and the hope that gives rise to it. And hope, fantasy, all my imagined delights, are come at the heavy, hidden, cost of STRESSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!

Yesterday, I finally had my long-suffering, cracked tooth extracted. It had been all panic leading up to the extraction: I feared the pain, I feared infection, I feared catching covid all masks-off-vulnerable in the dentist’s chair. But the tooth had reached the end of its life, and an infection of a top molar could endanger mine, so it was, at long last, so long tooth.

After she had pulled it out, the dentist asked if I wanted to see the tooth, and I reached-out my hand to take it from her. After so much worry, the extraction had been painless, anticlimactic. That tooth so unassuming to look at now, was the cause of so much suffering. Or was it? As I considered the tooth more closely it dawned on me that the tooth was the cause of my pain for sure, but I was the cause of my suffering…

So let’s back up a second here for some context.

The tooth had hurt me for years, anytime I chewed on the right side of my mouth, it sent an electric shock of searing pain straight through my jaw.  Just before Covid struck I had a root canal, it seemed clear to me straight away that it didn’t work –I still had pain –but my dentist encouraged me to give it a few months to ‘settle’ before I decided to pull the tooth.

And then, there was Covid.

Long after the dentist opened, long after the whole world opened, I was still locked down in fear of Covid. Nearly 18 months with no one but Eric, avoiding even medical care to protect myself, my body. The whole time, the tooth didn’t just physically hurt, it threatened. I spent every day awaiting, dreading, the moment of imminent tooth failure. And now that failure had come, exposed me to pain, exposed me to risk, all I felt was relief that this tooth I had clung to, obsessively worried about for so long, was finally gone.

The thing is, its not just my tooth, its my whole body that I slave over, stress over, obsess over, all as I wait for its imminent failure. That was the reason for the whole 18-month Covid lockdown. This is my life. Will I feel similarly relieved at its end? And if so, why do I do this to myself, why cling so tightly to this body, when like clinging to the tooth, it causes me suffering and stress?

I suppose, much like with the tooth, I cling because of what I imagine the future will be. For the tooth I clung to avoid a nightmarish future of painful extractions and Covid catching. A future that never did come to pass.

I think without this body, I will never get all the futures I fantasize about –no post covid celebrations, no travel, no family reunions, no long life with Eric, no happy retirement. Of course, even with this body, those may never come to pass.

I cling to this body because I think I need it to become, to actualize what I imagine, to satisfy my desire, to satisfy me… but then why hasn’t it worked yet? If this body really could be satisfying, could make me self-actualized, could definitively confirmed and affirm me, why hasn’t it stepped up in the last 40ish years?

I cling because I think I need my body for the thing that happens next. But can I really need something, once I lose it, for what is next? What is next happens without it.

For all of my imaginations about this body, about all the future adventures we will have together, the only experiences that I can guarantee are ones I don’t want — sickness, pain, death. All I do is cling to the uncertainties between these definites — illness, aging and death — and with that clinging I create suffering far greater than the constant pulsing pain of a cracked tooth.

I was sitting in the kitchen while Eric was preparing lunch, watching as he tossed the shrimp peels, the lemon rind, the parsley stems, into the trash. Eric loves to cook. He derives so much of his value — his sense of identity — from his ability to feed and nourish others, to prepare food as delicious as it is wholesome. Cooking isn’t just what Eric does, Eric IS A COOK.

The scampi was, as most of Eric’s meals are, delicious. But, as I was cleaning-up, throwing away the remaining waste, I got to thinking: If a chef claims the finished meal, don’t they also need to claim the waste? The trash? The rotting parts? The shit? How can just one part of the meal, one part of the ingredients, one state of the food, reflect the chef?

The more I thought on this, the more clear it became — the scampi, all rupa, reflects only itself. It is nama that is a choosy narrator, curating a story, claiming the parts to ignore, and the parts to highlight. To be a chef we must claim only the delicious meals, only the tasty parts of a meal, only the peak moment of food, the rest is discard like the shrimp peels and the lemon rind. Incidental. Passing parts of the story. The compost heap is not us, it is not what we claim, its organization and ordering not a sign of our status as a great arranger.

My body of course is just like a meal: If my body really reflected me, why are there so many moments I am embarrassed by it? Why the dissonance between the wrinkles I see in the mirror and the me I imagine myself to be? Why would I pluck and discard the gray hairs –not me/not mine — while carefully washing and conditioning all the brown ones that are left? There is a disconnect between how I see myself –the me I want to be, the body I believe in my heart-of-hearts represents me, reflects who I am, stands-in so the whole world can see ALANA — and, well, reality.

The evidence is actually there, abundant, as plain as the compost bin after a meal, I just choose to ignore it. I am strong (ignoring those times I am recovering from injury, or ill, or have been out of the gym too long). I a beautiful (ignoring the pre-Botox state, the blemishes, the dark circles on sleepless nights). I am buttoned-up and pulled together (ignoring rumpled clothes after a flight, matted hair when I get up in the morning, the stench of my body after a hard workout). I am on top and in control, and this body reflects this deepest of identities and personality traits. Only the recalcitrant wart on my right big toe, the uncontrollable fall allergies, the tooth pain, the fact that I have been locked away from family and friends for over a year fearing a virus that can kill me, beg to differ; these tell a tale of an Alana decidedly out of control, of this body and the world it inhabits, its just that my choosy narrator decides to ignore all this.

I so deeply want this body to reflect me, to shout to the world who I am. I take every incidence of ‘success’ as proof  that I can force this body to conform to my will, my desire, my sense of who I am. I look at the post botox state and think -Eureka!! This here proves I am beautiful, I am in control, ignoring the very clear evidence that the fact I need botox in the first place clearly proves otherwise.  I pretend sometimes is proof of control. I pretend there is affirmation in the moments that a particular arrangement of rupa conforms to my desires.  I pretend that I can claim a state of something while disowning other states. I pretend I can carve out meaning — identity — from the passing states of the rupa I claim, wildly believing there is significance to the momentary impact I can have on these things. Alana, The-Beutiful -Botoxed- Great-Arranger.

Of course ‘I know’ all objects are just 4 elements. The meal, this body.  On some level, I know there is no way to shove identity into cracks between water, fire, air and earth. But still I think I can overlay meaning on top –this body isn’t me, but it can represent me. And there is of course truth to this, what is a representation after all other than something we imagine stands in for something else? My choosy narrator gets to choose. Its just that imagining something represents something else doesn’t mean it REALLY DOES. A hint that this is true is that both the object we imagine represents us, and our imagination itself changes, there is not some immutable pairing between fixed imagination and fixed object.

For a long time, I imagined going back to SF. I imagined it was my home, an SFer was who I was. SF was my future. But as fire season started getting worse, it began to dawn on me, as an asthmatic, that SF couldn’t be my future, it couldn’t be my home. It ultimately strained credulity for me to believe that a place inhospitable to my living and breathing could be who I was.

At 20 I never imagined that my 40 year old body, with its gray hairs, and sagging breasts, and eye crinkles, would represent me. To 20 year old alana, today’s body is some middle aged woman. But my imagination has, reluctantly, painfully, with much dissonance and disappointment, ultimately shifted as the body shifted.  What choice did I have? Form is not obligated to take the shapes I imagine it takes, to follow my sense of self, my desires, ultimately it is me and my own imagination that must adjust. If I fast forward a little, I consider a dying body, a corpse, the inevitable end for this body. Much like SF, there will come a point that it strains credulity to believe that this shifting, decaying, sack of skin and bones can represent me, can be me.  But, as my clinging testifies to, I am not there yet…

Right now, I am just sitting around waiting for this body to break and die. To reach a point where it is an inhospitable place to live, to breath in. To no longer be able to build my fantasies of a future life around. And while I wait, I will pay for my ignorance — my denial of the truth — with the labor, born of clinging, to preserve; the agony of loss when those efforts to preserve fail; the thousand daily embarrassments, disappointments and disgusts as I reconcile myself, again and again, to a body that simply won’t, can’t, be the reflection of me that I want it to be.

It was early 2021, vaccines came on the scene, and a faint light at the end of the Covid tunnel came into view. For over a year, I had almost totally isolated myself, I had practiced will, patients and fortitude in the name of protecting and preserving my health. Just as the world was starting to seem like it could be a safe place once again, I got quite a rude awakening; it turns out that even with isolation, even after vaccination, safety was nowhere to be found…

I had a series of health scares and one body part after another was sickening and breaking, threatening to be the death of me. It started with a broken tooth, not so bad. And then a finger that randomly turned blue and triggered a cascade of labs and blood work that showed I may have/will develop and autoimmune disease. And finally there was the suspicious growth that looked to my doctor like cervical cancer…I waited for testing, waited for results, my rheumatologist told me I just needed to wait and see if I ended up developing lupus, or mixed connective tissue disorder, or some other terrible, debilitating, degenerative disease. It dawned on me that this whole life is sitting around waiting to break and die.

Needless to say, this was a period of extreme stress. It was a period of close inspection of my body. It was a period where I really started considering the intersection between my body and stress, the dukka of rupa, the fear from form. For all of Covid, I had waited for safety, I had fantasized about the freedom a vaccine would bring. It turns out, there is no safety to be found for a breakable body and freedom isn’t an escape from the bondage of my living room, its an escape from the bonds of my deeply delusion views. In this next chapter, I share the contemplations that took shape in the early days that I realized I was just waiting to break and die.