You’re Gonna Die Alone (& Other Excellent News)

by Devrie Donalson

But challenge is a drug, and I’m a junkie. I don’t know how much money it would take to pull me away from the lure of filling my life with higher and higher peaks to climb. I’m always outrunning something, or chasing something, and I don’t rest very well either way. I thrive under pressure, and I love the feeling of getting a gold star. If I’m not pushing my brain to try new and more challenging things, I feel like it’s just a little raisin in the making—crisping up in the sun. If I’m not moving, something wicked is coming my way, and I’ll also probably die of atrophy. Whether universe-given or self-destructively created, the scales tip too far, and I get overwhelmed. Overwhelmed enough to freeze while the responsibilities and promises I made start gathering like a heavy, pregnant storm cloud right over my head. No matter how I try, I can’t reach into it and pull down something solid to work on. It’s just foreboding mist, no structure or body, gathering and getting darker. Eventually, after enough threatening, it storms, and I never have an umbrella. There’s my sorry ass, caught in the rain that I brought on myself—not a piña colada in sight.