It's cloudy but bright enough still to make me feel guilty for staying in bed when I know my senior dog is at this point, painfully holding her bladder. And shit, me too. I hold my breasts so they don't stir much as I sit upright, because fucking ouch. I place a hand on my lower abdomen, "I can't wait to meet you either, baby, but if you implode my tits in the first trimester, you won't have fresh milk."

Roughly wiping the sleep from my face, I accidentally squeeze my breasts ever slightly and squeal in pain; suddenly I'm doing a potty dance. When the delirium clears my eyes, I glance over at my dog, whose inhale is brief and exhale is visibly uncomfortable, every other breath accompanied by a tremble. She has never preferred to leave a mess inside for me to clean. Sigh.

"Come on, mami...let's go outside."

Just as they say a watched pot never boils, so too, an anticipated hour never, ever ends.

Much of my life had ticked away under the influence of tingly meditation sessions, where seconds and minutes and even hours were of no consequence at all. But looking forward is just as much a submission to time as is imposing a year on a milestone, and nothing makes you dread experiencing something you love like expecting it to happen in a fixed fashion.

In a way though, being aware of the finality to come is a sensation within itself, and though the goal is ultimately to expire, I thought I might have more moments of the esteemed “flashing” of my life before my eyes. Nothing yet. Perhaps in the last minute or so. Really, I might not ever know what the rush is all about--I experienced my life already, why would there be a flash? Memories don’t really make me want to live more, though many of them create a fondness and perhaps, a faint longing for that fondness. But the longing is not enough to leave me wanting more, for more of what? Of the same? There are so many ways to experience the spectrum of feelings that a full lifetime wouldn’t be nearly enough to know. Isn’t that also the very thing that fictional immortal beings grow weary of, the on and on-ness of being? That numbness defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?

Anyway. If I’ve learned anything at all from being here and nowhere else, it’s that having lived is just as great and non-great as living and as not living. The only thing I can’t remember doing is not living; even if I won’t ever remember it, I’ll have done it. And even if I go on to live again, even the best players feel refreshed after a reshuffle. I don’t know exactly when or where or from whom we learned to feel so attached to this life, as opposed to just living it. People always looked at me funny when I said suicide was a casual thought, that there was nothing morbid about it. They were always so committed to death being such a bad thing, like they needed it to be to enjoy life. Couldn’t one enjoy both?

I’m starting to think most newborns cry because death and its interims were too short, so enjoyable that they tantrum their way into life without any recollection of the beauty ahead. Like they can feel themselves coming down from the high. I’m through with this high, it isn’t distasteful, but it has grown stale. I appreciate it, but I’m ready to move on, as ready as I think I can be, honestly. I won’t tantrum into death; though I will admit, I’m pretty excited about it, which ironically may be the end of me.

Fifty-eight more minutes to go.