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| "Did he have any last words?" |
I haven't burned down the house — there's still time! — but also I haven't completed every job I assigned myself.
Being in a suddenly quiet house always takes a little bit of adjustment, like when I come home from work and it's feels like I've stepped into a furnace because no one’s been around with the AC on all day.
The heat is part of the reason, besides my inherent laziness, why I haven’t completed as many (mostly outdoor) chores as I’d have liked, and it’s also what’s been causing me periodic panic attacks.
I have a heart condition of some sort — a murmur, I think. My cardiologist says my heart sometimes skips a beat, and it's nothing to worry about. But occasionally I can feel something in my chest that the non-cardiologists would call "weird" or "not right," like the muscle is pumping extra hard or out of synch. I never feel any pain in my arm, or see spots, or taste pennies, or whatever other symptoms of heart attack / stroke / cholera / et cetera are supposed to manifest, so I don’t worry too much about it.
But the heat wave has either affected my heart more, or it's made me more aware of its eccentricities, especially at night. And when I go to bed, alone, in an empty dark house, and I can feel my heart doing whatever it wants to do, while I'm in that half-awake state that combined with the darkness and loneliness results in magnified, often exaggerated thoughts, I worry.
I worry that I won't wake up.
