Despite my rather minimalist efforts at giving myself substance through writing, my life, like warm water, just keeps on slipping through my fingers. Rendering my time on this earth meaningful, making it count, seems as futile as collecting snowflakes on my tongue. Once I realize something I have, it inevitably starts to flee farther and farther away from me. I can never grasp my qualities until they start to disappear. Now I feel frazzled, scrambling behind all the things I used to have. Potential. Especially potential. I guess as you get older you no longer have potential. If you are lucky (and a hard worker and a well-balanced human being) you can dust off your trophies and feel proud for what you were. I suppose that letting go must be hard for those people too.

So far, up until now anyway, my intelligence and my wit are still intact. Alcoholism does seem to be deteriorating my memory and my attention span a bit but luckily, so far, so good. I am incredibly fortunate to have good physical health because I have done little to earn it. I recently read a phrase in a book by Delphine De Vigan that I wanted to quote except that now I can’t find it…it said something like, “She looked like an aging actress playing her toughest role, that of an aging actress.” which, although I’m not an actress at all, made me cry a little because no matter how vain it may sound, losing your beauty is a personal tragedy. Physical appearance falls into that same drawer of things you didn’t really know you had that at some point , after you’ve dumped the content of the drawer into the trash, you begin to realize its utility. Truly beautiful women are beautiful because they feel it. They age better because they are at ease with themselves to begin with. I never imagined that I would be so lacking in self-confidence for this long. I figured I would grow some, like a chin hair or something. Guess not.