Checkmate vs Stalemate

It isn’t checkmate yet,

Although, a lot of moves are no longer possible.

Previously used tricks to get me back to a happy place,

Whether crutches or prescribed wisdom,

Just don’t have their effect,

Or worse, carry within them a worse problem than the original affliction.

Case in point:

I used to drink to dull the pain of my thoughts,

I did so in moderation, but it was an insidious addiction that always led to saturation.

It gave me health issues, which increased my level of depression.

I had relied on it for years, to the detriment of my liver and other previously unknown and

Underappreciated bodily systems.

So, after it got acute I had to quit.

Check.

I had other moves.

I had quit smoking weed for health reasons, too. A good case of
bronchopneumonia left

Me unable to ride my bike for a while.

Bike riding was my one satisfying joy at the time.

I could get good exercise, fresh air and eventually my mind would get
out the way of my

Having a good time.

So I made the choice to abandon my lifelong crutch, marijuana,
because it just made sense.

Now, an eye condition keeps me from enjoying much bike riding.

Or much of anything.

Check.

The weed also exacerbates this condition.

Check.

As does watching too much TV,
Eating too much comfort food,
Cleaning my filthy house,
Getting too much sun, or humidty.

Check. Check. Check. Check. Check.

I’m running out of moves.

I am doing a lateral crab dance with death.

If I do nothing, I’ll deteriorate and he’ll win.

If I do the wrong types of things, like, umm, everything I’ve tried
up to this point,

I’ll go down one of many paths which have levels of suffering
which make them very

Unpromising, to say the least.

So, I do a little of this, a tiny bit of that.

And I think of my dying wife every day.

She ran out of moves.

And she was the consummate advocate of playing the game
until the end.

When we would play Monopoly, I could always see the point
in the game where it was

A tedious, unwinnable torture.

Not her.

I saw her lose the longest, most torturous game a person could
ever conceive of.

She had everything stripped away from her that she loved.

And in the end she clung to only breathing.

For two days. Just breathing.

And she didn’t want to give that up.

But she had to, because she was out of moves.

I’m not there yet.

It’s a stalemate, and I see already that I can’t win.

And the game is soured because of that.