Freaking Out

This morning, just before the sun rose, I woke up to make a trip to the bathroom. This is a normal thing. I stand up, a little disoriented from the fact that I've just opened my eyes for the first time in several hours. It's still fairly dark, but I know my way around the place well enough to not bump into dressers or bookshelves on my short walk to the bathroom. But this morning, something different happened. In my confused state of being, I stubbed my toe on a flip-flop that I had lazily tossed onto the floor at some point yesterday.

My disorientation caused me a moment of panic. In a matter of seconds, I went through a range of reactions that mostly involved freaking out and thinking that I was somehow going to die because I hit my foot on something I didn't immediately recognize. My pulse began to race and for a moment I lost balance. I entertained my worst fears there in the darkness of my living room. But then I realized that it was just a flip-flop. I wasn't going to fall down. I wasn't being attacked in my own home. I was going to live.

But this brings me to something that I think single people who live alone can admit they think about from time to time. What if something happens while I'm here all alone? For me, I'm in my apartment alone most of the time. I rarely get visitors and I've never had a surprise guest to just show up at my door. So what happens if I'm stepping out of the shower one day, slip on a wet spot on the floor, and crack my head on the toilet?

I suppose the upside is that I could possibly wake up with an image of the flux capacitor in my head, giving me the ability to one day fulfill that dream of time travel. The downside is that I could very possibly slip into some kind of coma. That being the case, no one would come to check on my until a couple weeks into the month when the property manager would finally investigate why I hadn't paid the rent.

Then again, I have some friends and family that may be concerned if they hadn't heard from me in a few days. Mostly, it would be people who would eventually notice that I hadn't posted anything on the blog in a while and hadn't updated my status on The Facebook.

Let me also say, I'm very careful when eating. I try not to watch anything terribly funny while chewing my food. I'd hate to start laughing and then begin choking on whatever I was attempting to swallow. I know it's possible to self-perform the Heimlich maneuver, but I don't have any chairs that would be the right height for that sort of thing. I should probably start liquefying my food. But then I risk drowning on liquefied chicken nuggets. And now I risk vomiting after reading what I just wrote.