Why does surviving feel like dying?

Having to do dishes has killed my faith in god.

My high school incentivized debate to the highest degree. One could even make the argument (ha ha) that it was the entire selling point of the institution.

Send your kids to public school and they’ll be shanked. Send your kids to prep school and they’ll grow into words-of-affirmation-seeking junkies that go wireless bungee jumping when they meet their first setback. Send your kids here and we’ll make them amphibious. Slippery to the touch. Skin shedders with forked/silver tongues. They’ll be able to talk their way into or out of any problem. They’ll be lawyers. Or malignant gaslighting narcissists. Or if you’re lucky, both! Why don’t I work in marketing anymore? I’m so good at it. 

Anyways, we were twice a week called into our seminar, where we were sat in a circle and told to yell at each other. It was a philosophical cock fight. And the best part was you didn’t even have to believe the things you said. Everyone was an advocate for a different devil. Mine was Thomas Hobbes. I remember drilling The Leviathan in between classes so that I might better champion an end to human morality. During my junior year a few friends and I had set a determination or maybe it was an experiment. Could we argue well enough and long enough to make our Seminar Professor abandon his god? His Greek Orthodox God? We never quite got there. 

I remember asking him though. Can you point to any one thing in particular that shows evidence of god? He rolled up his sleeve and showed us a cut he’d earned while working on his home renovation. (He and his wife were going from mid-century modern to modern.) 

“This cut,” he told us, “Is evidence of intelligent design.” 

We looked closely. It looked like an average cut. 

“A few days ago, my arm was open and bleeding. My cells have stitched themselves together. Soon the cut will fade. Gone completely. My cells, my body, every organic life form reaches towards health. Towards life. Everything aspires to renewal.”

What a stumper that was. How to argue with determinism at the microscopic level. We wanted him to look into the sky with a telescope and realize he was dirt. But in his mind God was making himself known through a simple process that we’d learned about two classrooms away in biology: Mitosis. He struck us down that day. (And every day that followed.) A decade later I sliced into my pointer finger while cutting shallots and I remembered the grand finale of his argument. Everything aspires to renewal. Then I had to do dishes. I felt a certain sourness. It certainly doesn’t feel that way. In your late twenties, living alone, with rent due every month, it feels like everything aspires to destruction. That you are the one sole vanguard keeping your life from sliding into oblivion. Am I getting too abstract? Let me lay it out for you. 

I have to wash my face twice a day to prevent acne. In the morning I follow up with an anti-aging serum, moisturizer, and sunscreen. At night I follow up with a retinol, and a night cream. If I fail to do these things I will spot, or wither, or age and people will notice. After skincare I brush my teeth and floss with a water pick. If I fail to do this the chompers I paid a couple thousand bucks to have rearranged will yellow and decay and the rot will creep into my gums where it will kill me. My swan dive, the finale of my morning routine, is a Degree 48 hour antiperspirant, and two sprays of Le Labo cologne. If I fail to apply the antiperspirant it will affect my personal relationships and the distance at which people are willing to interact with me. If I fail to apply the cologne I’ll seem a little less charming. Cornier. 

After the Patrick Bateman routine is over, I have to take pills. Synthroid and Liothyronine for my missing thyroid, and a steroid for my failing adrenal glands. If I go long enough without any of these medications my body will plump and I’ll grow cold. My partner warned me the other day about a potential pharmacist's strike, so I have three months worth of pills squirreled away in my second bathroom.

I try to eat less than 2,000 calories a day while reaching at least 150 grams of protein. I’m on what’s called a cut and with any luck (and perfectly proportioned macronutrients) I’ll be 165 pounds by January. That’s the weight that I like to film at. Is the diet essential?  No but the food is. And if I go without eating for too many hours I find myself getting dizzy and having hypothetical arguments while driving. Rail thin and irritated or pudgy and gregarious? Which way western man? This food has to come from somewhere though. I take bi-weekly trips to the grocery store and cook the majority of meals. Dishes are done with as much immediacy as I can muster.

My water intake is the simplest part of my routine, and I find that ironic or miraculous or noteworthy or something. I drink one gallon of water a day from an equivalently sized hydro flask. It comes out of my fridge. I pay the city twice a year for it. One day we’ll all kill each other for it.

My car takes twelve gallons of gas, and runs at an average of 35 miles per. I have to change the oil every 7,500 miles, the tires every 60,000, and the wiper fluid every six months. 

My floors need to be vacuumed once every four days or they show dust. They have to be mopped once a week or I can’t stand to walk on them. Counters are done every three days. Bathrooms every month. Paper towels are replaced every two months. Toilet paper every three months. Conditioner quarterly. Shampoo yearly. Toothpaste, face wash, serums, etc. They run out irregularly, but I do find that I am always replacing something. I am always pushing back. Begging my life, my floors, my car to stay upkept. To resist the urge to fall apart. Everything aspires to destruction. God is not real because if I have to do dishes every fucking day, lest I be destroyed. Unto dust. 

And yet… the shallot incident was three days ago, and my pointer finger has healed. Folded over, neatly. This is the one piece of evidence that I cannot refute. All the years later, my (begrudging) belief is that it’s all a matter of perspective. (Novel, I know.) I see my life as one giant resistance against decay. My professor saw his life as one giant victory over it. 

Were I to stand naked under the sun without a photoprotective ointment to shield me would I be destroyed? Or renewed? I see violence in it. Because I’m a sourpuss. 

Although every once in a while I’m able to glimpse the good news. Every once in a while the light will hit a pile of dishes just right and I’ll see something else. This isn’t merely a chore, destroying my sink. It’s a mountain. It’s an ecosystem. It’s a youth hostel for the luckiest bacteria in town. Hallelujah. 

Worries if not,

Kyle

P.S. Upon reading this article to my co-writer (Joseph Johnston) over the phone he told me that I am not so different from a single cell myself. Splitting myself into pieces just to survive. People often ask what the benefit of a co-writer is. As exhibited here they can often show you the point you’ve been tripping over for hours.