Dont Let Me Be Lonely It occurs to me by Claudia Rankine Lyrics

It occurs to me that forty could be half my life or it could be all my life. On the television I am told I don't want to look like I am forty. Forty means I might have seen something hard, something unpleasant, or something dead. I might have seen it and lived beyond it in time. Or I might have squinted my eyes too many times in order to see it, I might have turned my face to the sun in order to look away. I might have actually been alive. With injections of Botox, short for botulism toxin, it seems I can see or be seen without being seen; I can age without aging. I have the option of worrying without looking like I worry. Each day of this life I could bite or shake doubt as if to injure or kill without looking as if anything mattered to me. I could paralyze facial muscles that cause wrinkles. All those worry and frown lines would disappear. I could purchase paralysis. I could chose that. Eventually the paralysis would sink in, become a deepening personality that need not, like Enron's “distorting factors,” distort my appearance. I could be all that seems, or rather I could be all that I am – fictional. Ultimately I could face reality undisturbed by my own mortality.