I find myself on the edge of a decision, and asking myself if the decision has already been made. (It has, which does not mean I cannot reverse it with effort.) I'm asking myself if I want to reverse it. And asking myself why, at this point in life, I would be reverting back to patterns I enacted as a sixteen year old and have managed to abandon for most of my adult life. It has everything to do with the feelings that go with risk-taking; someone my age is ideally well past seeking this kind of adrenaline rush. Risk-taking made sense when I was sixteen because I truly felt I had nothing to lose, and in many ways I did not (except my life, which I did not particularly value). At eighteen I once climbed out the window of a moving car into the window of another moving car on the highway.
I don't take these kinds of physical risks anymore, but I still crave that feeling, that rush of adrenaline that leaves you shaking and elated. And I wonder why I do, and why other people do not seem to share that hunger. And I think about the ways I intentionally feed that hunger that seem safer and more socially acceptable, like heating my coffee until it intentionally burns the tip of my tongue, like running until my heart hurts, like biting my lip until I taste blood. Like most hungers, it grows when I feed it instead of quieting down.
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