I swear I’m a fucking masochist. I swear, the world works in reverse karma, and you have to cry before you laugh. You have to feel the excruciating pain, sadness, and anxiety before your body tingles in euphoria. You have to run ten miles, breath in pained gasps, with every nerve of your body convulsing before the endorphins kick in and everything is numb. Then, you can run forever, and never feel a thing. This is why tickling is torture. Before the regurgitated giggles, there is a brief flash of fear, caused by the violation of your body by someone else. This is why I worry when I am in a strange state of calm and everything feels perfect. There is always calm before the storm strikes. I would rather be in the storm than wonder when it will ravage my utopia. So I embrace this torturous state of mind. The storm has risen again, and I am again changing course. The remnants of my past have sunk, and I do not even yearn for it. No, I am liberated. I will soak in this eternal sadness, the stress, the sleepy insomnia, the feeling of being half a spirit, peeled slightly in the edges, a faint ghost of my former self.

I feel lighter now. Perhaps the karma is kicking in. Perhaps tomorrow I will enter a new body– strong, fit, agile, thoughtless. How beautiful it would be to simply live and not think. How magically pure. Then nothing would be a surprise or disappointment. And the present would never be a tug of war between the past and future. Everything would be what is, not what could be.

I swear I’m not making this all up. It’s true, the karma part. I’ve experienced it too many times, so law of probability is in my favor. And I am a closet masochist. I can attest to my life-long love affair of depressing music, the nights of self-induced tears, the newly acquired running addiction, the tendency to back away from love for sake of keeping one imperfection in my life. Perhaps through the sacrifice, I will gain what I want most. Then again, what do I want most?