My Body Wants to Live

I stand in front of the mirror, nude.
There are parts of me I still like—
but they only exist when I’m clothed.

I think I’m handsome.
I have more hair than most guys my age.
A youthful face, mostly.
Grays on my chin, at my temples, scattered in my hair like someone flicked them there by accident.
But even my dad never really went fully gray, so maybe I’ve got that going for me.

But then there’s the rest.

The man boobs.
The arms, once my favorite part of my body, now soft and heavy,
showing that I haven’t lifted with any consistency in months.

I’ve got the beginnings of skinny-guy abs.
That spot where the ribs taper before the gut begins.
Flat, not defined.
Then comes the gut—
the band of fat that wraps all the way around,
spilling into my back, my obliques.
A small back with no shape.
Long legs without muscle.
A flabby, shapeless ass.
And a dick I don’t remember ever being that small.

Call it low T.
Call it grief.
Call it a trauma response.
But I know this body.
I’ve seen flashes of what it’s capable of—
the 7:08 mile,
the sub-30 5K,
the scale flashing 180.
I remember him.
I remember being him.

I like to say he’s still in there.
Maybe I’m protecting him.
Maybe I’m lying.

I tell myself stories like:
“I don’t have the energy to write and work out in the same day.”
Or:
“If I run and lift, there’s no time left to create.”

Are those true? I don’t know.

I used to not write.
I used to not read.
I used to not care how I looked.
I just wore whatever was clean, acceptable, forgettable.
I didn’t want to stand out.
Didn’t think I could.

And the dream—to be a filmmaker, a writer—felt like a phase.
A fun exercise in my twenties.
Not a future.

Now I think I have to do what my dad did.
Get a job.
Stay.
Thirty years of doing just enough work to justify naps in the truck.

But that’s a kind of death.

And yeah, I’ve done the hustle.
Working two jobs.
Delivering sandwiches at night, office work in the day.
Still found the energy to run, to lift.
I thought maybe I’d do a triathlon.
I bought the bike.
Never found peace in the water.
Never found rhythm in the ride.

I think I spent my youth chasing things that weren’t meant to work out.
Busy, because Dana was busy.
Worthy, because someone had to be.

Now I’m trying to be worth it for myself.
But myself is a prick.

He expects perfection.
He expects transformation.
He expects the Adonis—
the man who walks into a room and every head turns.
The guy who goes back to his hometown with swagger,
the guy who stands at the Oscars and thanks his mom and dad for their sacrifices.

Because then—then—I’ll finally be worth it.

That’s the delusion.

The gap between who I am and who I think I need to be is so fucking wide
you could bury a life in there.

And maybe I already have.

I’m monstrously talented at moving the goalposts.
Always have been.

Still too invested in make-believe validation.
Still convinced that if I look just enough like Suga from BTS,
my wife will want me more.
Still chasing what “cool” means,
because deep down I still think I wasn’t allowed to have it back then.

But that’s all in my head.

And my body is dying.

Yeah, dying from the lack of movement.
But also dying in the Sylvia Plath, existential decay kind of way.

Because from the moment we’re born,
we begin dying.
And I’ve spent too many years
burning calories on self-loathing
and imagined slights
and spiraling assessments of my own worthlessness—
instead of just living inside the machine I was given.

My wife, the triathlete,
can work out for two hours and still keep going.
Me?
I write for two and I’m wrecked.

And maybe that’s fine.
Maybe we’re built different.

But this I know:

My body is dying.
My brain is killing it.
And my body—
my body still wants to live.