Giving it up

This past month has been like a misplaced lent. I gave up gluten and dairy, followed by alcohol, followed by caffeine, followed by candy, followed by sleeping late, followed by... well, anyway. It's like a reverse If You Give a Mouse a Cookie scenario. It's the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie of the masochist set.

So what has all this deprivation done for me? Friends and strangers alike— especially and most understandably at work— look at me askance when they find out all the things that I am not allowing myself. "What's the point?" they ask. "Why would you even get up in the morning?"

I suppose that's a good question. I guess my take on it is, if you're getting up in the morning for gluten and dairy and caffeine and alcohol and anyone but yourself, you've got a problem.

I've been biking around a lot recently. Almost every day I ride past a memorial on the corner of H--- Ave. to a girl who died there in a biking accident recently. A month before that, a young man was killed in a bike accident farther downtown. Yesterday, as I rode down M--- Ave. to my night class, the whole street was blocked off, and there were fire trucks and a mangled bike and a crowd of curious onlookers. All I had to see was the bicycle and the impression of a body half covered by a paramedic blanket to know that I didn't need to see any more. I got off and walked my bike on the sidewalk for awhile, whispering Hail Marys like a crazy person according to my old flashing siren reflex. The boy on the fixed gear bike that I had been racing since the square rolled past me, helmetless, with a look of what I could only interpret as pity. He was right. I'm a wuss.


Maybe I'm giving so much up because I have been surrounded by death lately, and if you practice giving up the little things it makes the big ones easier. Or maybe I just want to look good in a bathing suit. For my next trick, I give up thinking too much.