Well, I'm Not Dead Yet

I recently had the pleasure in psychology of pretending that I had written a book based on my life story.  Now, the original instructions were to pick a title and four of the chapter titles and then explain each.  So, doing what I do, I pretended to start writing a book where I'd write a small portion of each chapter and then move onto another one.  To me it described everything much better than saying, "I picked this title for my book because blah blah blah."  It's just what I do people...

So here we start with the explanation for my book title, or I guess the foreword you'd find inside the little cover jacket if you happened to be looking in there.  I bet there's also a nice little picture of me posing with my head resting on both my hands looking serenely off into the distance...majestic.

Well, I'm Not Dead Yet:
A Collection of Short Stories

What Have You Just Opened?

Some may say that the title of this book is morbid and sad.  I’m going to try and convince you otherwise. 

“Oh, he must be such a tortured soul to only be contemplating about his imminent death in his writing,” some might say as they glance by the cover on their weekly Barnes and Noble coffee run (we all know you’re just pretending to read).  “People need to write more about happy things, like the return of the Confederate states,” one Southern Jehovah’s witness might say.  “I heard she’s really tall,” could be the thoughts of Cindy, mother of 5, soccer mom, and driver of a mini-van.  Maybe the only reason you bought this book is because the shiny cover embossed on the front caught your eye and you just happened to open it.  I’m assuming your thoughts were something along the lines of, “If the insides are as good as the outside, then at least I won’t be reading shit about a vampire.”  Heaven forbid someone referred you to this book—Lord knows my mother didn’t. 

          

  “Why is this book about your death then?”  Well see, that’s the thing, it’s not; It’s about my life and the fact that I’m not dead.  Throughout my life I found myself repeating this phrase through most situations and time and time again, it’s fitting.  Can this apply to only bad situations?  Of course not.  This phrase is as ambiguous as that slutty girl you knew in high school, it just goes either way.  Through all the times, light and dark, I could always remind myself that my body was still breathing, whether I liked it or not.  Overall, it really means that if I’m going to still be alive, then I’m going to do something with it.  Through all the narcissism, pleasure, pride, guilt, fear, stress, and pain, I survived.

        

So here we go, down into the abyss, as to why I’m (surprisingly) not dead yet.