My Body: Benedict Arnold

Up until a few months ago I was a physical marvel. I could stay out all night drinking vats of beer, then pop out of bed at first sunlight, eat a whole chocolate cake for breakfast, eat about 9 pounds of raw meat throughout the day, then finish it all off with a pot of coffee and country fair-style deep-fried maple syrup kebabs and more beer, and then spring out of bed the next morning. Oh, I was fat and unhealthy and miserably out of shape, don't get me wrong. But I felt fine; nothing I did to my body seemed to bother it. Now all of a sudden, every single thing I do kickstarts extreme umbrage from my body. Had a few beers last night Big Guy? Oh good, now you can spend the next days hung over, crying like a baby at how bad it feels. All meat and no veggies today, Xmas? Enjoy the next three days of excrutiating pain thanks to your old friend the gout! Past 6pm and I come within one city block of someone with caffiene? Up. All. Fucking. Night. Miserable. Oh, and my new favorite: apparently now I have to stretch for about 45 minutes before a 30 minute workout and then again after the workout. 90 minutes of stretching for 30 minutes of workout. It's like more than 30 seconds of foreplay for chrissake. Who the fuck else does this?

And recently I've joined another old man club; the knock knock! we're here, your 6am bladder wakeup call!!! All of a sudden every morning at 6 my eyes spring open and I've got what feels like 9 gallons of piss knocking at the door. What the fuck. And of course EVERY MORNING, I try to blow it off, ignore. Which is asinine for several reasons. Number one, it's not like I'm going back to sleep anyways. I'm an awful back-to-sleeper; once I'm up, I'm up. But even if I could go back to sleep, wouldn't I just jump up, hit the can, and get it over with? Now, that option would take, let's say...90 seconds. 90 seconds, and I can be back under the covers, worry-free. Either I can go back to sleep, or dream about Mrs. Xmastimes Have I Loved. Or, I could choose the other option, ie the option I choose every morning like an idiot. That means convincing myself that it can wait, it's no big deal, go back to sleep. I lie there tryng to ignore my bladder while demanding myself to go back to sleep. So of course I lay there and my brain kicks up to about 700mph trying to settle all this, and before you know it I've spent about one hour of my day lying in bed with a full bladder trying to go back to sleep although I know I won't. Fucking hell.