Hey everyone,
A lot has been going on behind the scenes lately, and I’ve been working really hard to stay in a good place creatively and personally. I have to say, the work that’s been coming out of this process has been nothing short of crazy amazing. And yes, that includes the collaboration between me and my trusty AI companion here.
So, I want to share this introduction to a piece that dives right into that space. It’s a piece that introduces something a bit wild and out there and it’s some of the best writing we’ve done.
I almost hate to give it away for free, but I think it’s worth showing you all because it really sets the tone.
So, here it is—take a look and step into my shoes for a bit. I hope you enjoy the ride as much as I have.
Living Inside This Body
It’s the middle of the night. You’ve been asleep, but you startle awake to the sound of your own snoring—except it’s not just snoring. It’s the sudden, terrifying awareness that you weren’t breathing for who knows how long. Your chest feels heavy. You’re groggy, disoriented, and the air doesn’t come easily at first. This is sleep apnea, the silent thief that steals rest and sometimes life, one breath at a time.
You shift in bed, and every movement sends a dull ache through your muscles, like you’ve been carrying a backpack full of bricks for years—except the backpack is you. Four hundred pounds of you. Your knees, your back, your feet—all of it is paying interest on decades of damage. You pull yourself upright and feel the sweat on your skin even though the room is cool.
You shuffle to the kitchen, because that’s what you do. Food is a kind of anesthesia, a quick way to mute everything happening in your head and your body. You eat until you’re sick to your stomach, chasing that “food stoned” state where thought blurs and nothing else matters. And then you look in the mirror, and you don’t see yourself—you see a distortion, a body that has warped and expanded, like watching a funhouse reflection grow old and tired. Some days, it’s Jabba the Hutt staring back at you.
I’ve hated my body for as long as I can remember. Not just how it looks—how it feels. How it traps me. How it betrays me.
The Damage List I can chart my life through physical damage. My teeth were knocked out in pre-K. My brother “accidentally” hit me in the face with a baseball bat, splitting my cheek wide open. I had chicken pox so close to my eye I couldn’t scratch without risking blindness.
In high school, a pilonidal cyst had to be cut open. They pumped me full of morphine, left me half-naked in a hospital bed with strangers walking past the door, and my mom had to pack that wound every day with petroleum jelly–soaked gauze to keep it open.
There was the cyst right above my eyebrow that made me feel like a sideshow attraction. The massive cyst on my leg now that’s too big to remove. The broken foot in Cuba that never healed right. The football injury where a guy chop-blocked my left knee, leaving me with a deep bone bruise and a doctor’s warning: one more hit and it might never recover. I even managed to break an arm playing tennis. On grass.
I’ve nearly died more than once from kidney failure. I’ve had liver damage bad enough to scare me sober—temporarily. I’ve had a heart attack. I’ve been hospitalized for mental health more times than I want to admit. I’ve had a MRSA-like infection on my side that poured fluid and made me wonder if this was the time I wouldn’t make it.
The truth is, my body and I have been at war for decades. And it’s a war I’ve never been allowed to stop fighting
The Avoidance My medical chart could be a novel in itself—except I don’t want to read it. I avoid follow-ups. I avoid scans. There’s a nodule in my lung I’ve never had checked. A scar from where cancer was removed that no one’s looked at since. Skin spots I’m supposed to see a dermatologist for.
The avoidance is part fear, part exhaustion. Every time I face my body, I have to face the reality that I’m closer to death than most people my age. So I stay busy instead. I work at my computer, where I can keep my brain humming and ignore the rest. Walking my dog, Timothy, feels like an intrusion—because walking means time to think, and thinking means remembering everything that’s wrong.
The Cruelest Truth Every injury, every close call, every moment of shame in a paper gown has taught me that my body is unreliable. So I treat it like an unreliable thing. I push it past its limits. I punish it with bad habits. I ignore it until it screams for attention.
And yet, it’s the only body I will ever have.
That’s the cruelest truth—after all these years of surviving inside it, I still don’t know how to live in it.
—
Scene: “Interview with the Hutt”
The bathroom light hums above you. Steam from the shower fogs the mirror, and when you wipe it with your hand, the reflection isn’t yours. It’s him. The folds, the bulk, the drooping face. Jabba the Hutt, in all his gelatinous glory, staring back at you from the glass. Your mouth opens, but my words come out.
JABBA: Ahhh… Frank. My favorite prisoner.
Your mouth opens, but someone else’s words come out.
ME: What’s up, fastso?
JABBA: We both know what you are doing here.
ME: How about a dose of shut the fuck up? I don’t want to do this.
Jabba chuckles- deep and wet.
JABBA: You never do. But I’m you, so we’re doing it. Tell me, Frank… what is your plan for this body? You treat it like a rental you’re returning with cigarette burns and missing hubcaps. Are you going to fix it? Or are you driving it until it seizes up on the side of the road?
ME: I’m…working on it.
JABBA: Working? Ha! You hide at your computer, hoping keystrokes burn calories. You feed me until I’m so full I can’t move, and then you ask why I’m heavy. You think about walking, but thinking burns nothing.
ME: Yeah, well, walking means thinking. And thinking means feeling.
JABBA: Exactly. And we both know what you feel: shame, fear, anger. So you chew instead of walk. Tell me—do you actually want to be alive in ten years? Or are we just marking time until the last organ quits?
ME: Come on, now…That’s not fair.
JABBA: Fair? You’ve nearly died enough times to fill a season of prestige TV. Heart attack. Liver failure. Kidneys on strike. MRSA like some biblical plague. And yet—you still won’t call the dermatologist about those spots. You won’t get the scan for the lung nodule. What’s the endgame, Frank? Die from something you could have stopped, just so you didn’t have to make the appointment?
ME: I don’t want to think about all of it at once.
JABBA: Then let’s make it smaller. One question. If you could fix just one thing about me—about us—what would it be? The weight? The lungs? The knee? Or maybe the head?
ME: …The head. If I could get my head right, maybe I could do the rest.
Jabba leans closer in the mirror, folds casting shadows
JABBA: Then start there. But you can’t wait until it’s perfect. Fixing us is messy work. And if you keep waiting, there won’t be enough time left to finish.
ME: And if I can’t?
JABBA: Then you can die in here with me. I’ll keep you company.
I break eye contact, but Jabba’s still there when I glance back. My own face starts to blur back into the reflection, but the folds linger, just enough to remind me that he’s not gone. Just waiting for the next time I wipe the glass.
Frank M. Anderson's Writing 
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