A local woman crawled into bed last night, defeated and exhausted by nothing more than the thousand small indignities faced by any human being on the planet on any given day, when she was suddenly struck by the horrifying realization that she was going to have to get out of bed and do all of this shit again tomorrow. All of it.

The local woman closed her eyes, momentarily overwhelmed by the prospect of facing a task as simple as putting on a pair of shoes or feeding herself breakfast or listening to another human being just exist even one more goddamn time, much less the thought of doing it in and out, day after day, until she died.

“God,” she thought to herself, “and then I have to do the dishes, too,” and the prospect of a lifetime of dishes — even taken one day or even one meal at a time — was like the threat of murder to her heart. How could something as relatively simple as scrubbing soap over a handful of plates and cups and forks feel so spiritually defeating?

“They’ll just keep coming, the dishes,” she realized. “There will always be a dish to wash, every day of my life. And even if I don’t wash them that day, they’ll still be there. The house will get dirty, and then I’ll have to clean it. It will rain, and I’ll have to close the windows, and then it will get hot out, and I’ll have to open the windows, and I’m worried I’m sitting too much and that I’m alienated from nature in a profound and meaningful way but there’s nothing I can actually do about that because what am I going to do, move to…to ancient Carthaginia and become a farmer?”

“This isn’t an actual problem,” this woman tried to tell herself. “The fact that I have to…do things to exist, that isn’t an actual problem.”

“Which, oh God,” she realized, “means there’s no actual solution.”

As of press time, the woman was seized with the unshakeable realization that no matter when she fell asleep tonight, she’d still have to coax her stupid brain into shutting off and relaxing long enough to fall asleep again tomorrow.

[Image via The Dali]