I’ll never do it of course, of that I’m sure. ‘Why’ is the question I don’t know the answer to. Most of the time I am so miserable that the only thing keeping me going is the obligation to those around me, as to not cause them trouble or any undue stress. Well, that and I am far too big a coward to ever have the balls to take my own life. Say what you will about people who kill themselves, that shit takes stones.
And then there’s always booze right? What problem has ever been created by mankind that couldn’t be solved with alcohol? I am sure there have been occasions, but none that come readily enough to mind to make the argument in beer’s favor any less compelling. If nothing else the hangover which ultimately proceeds a heavy night of drinking is a way of externalizing the pain inside:
By putting a name to it
By labeling it
By giving the amount of pain and duration of its run more tangible values
I’m dying, I know that now, perhaps I always knew it. Not in the immediate sense, mind you, at least not that I know of, but the feeling is different than before. When I was younger the passage of time felt like growing, felt like progress. Every day seemed to draw me closer to that ultimate “place” I was suppose to arrive and from then on would live happily ever after in a big house with a nice car and a loyal wife.
But not anymore
Now the passage of time feels like father time dragging quicker and quicker to my mortal end. I feel the hope inside of me shrivel, I feel the years that I have yet to live weighing me down like an anchor, or cement shoes before I’m thrown into some watery grave. The usual response you will get in return is always the same, spouted from the mouths of people who memorize cute little quips of encouragement to bark back at the earnestly sick and depressed when they don’t want to take the time to actually understand the pain another person is feeling.
You’re still young
Somehow the assertion that the years I have left far outweigh those I have lived is supposed to magically slap me back into some sense of permanent optimism. When I wake up and think of all the days I might have left, I think only of all the days in the future I will spend alone. How many more times will my heart be broken, and how every time it happens I will be older, less marketable, less acceptable, less appealing. I watch my market value slowly lose value while my self esteem makes its one last death spasm and collapses, bloody, bruised, and utterly defeated on the hospital floor, swimming in a pool of its own blood and feces. Yea, now I feel MUCH better, buddy, you really brightened my day.
You would think that in my current state of awareness, that my feeling of near rock bottom as far as morale is concerned would somehow spur me into a “I don’t give a fuck” view of everyday life. That I would take risks, that I would do anything and everything to stop the march of all my emotions off the plank and into despair. No, I sit and I smile and I make nice because that’s what I am trained to do, that’s what I was bred to do. Never show pain, never let down your guard. Suck it up, take it like a man, time heals everything, blah blah blah fucking blah. I have dreams almost every night, and when I have dreams lately, one or several of my ex girlfriends are always there. Sometimes it’s to break up with me all over again, or perhaps more cruelly, to make amends and confess their undying love for yours truly.
Yea, but then I wake up, and the crushing weight of reality at that very moment when my body, my heart, my soul, realizes that everything it had just been told was a lie, an elaborate, well acted and executed lie. Not only that, but the perpetrator of the lie was exactly the person it was designed to hurt. I’m a masochist even in my sleep. So I am afraid to sleep, because the crushed feeling when this happens, it is sometimes enough to really bring me to tears. Not that bullshit healing tears either, that’s weeping. That’s crying with a purpose. I mean I sit there, nearly 25 and male, mot so much as giving any emotional credibility to the tears, but just staring blankly ahead and letting hot, painful tears fall idly down my face until they are either soaked up by my blanket or mat down the hair on my forearms as I sit up.
Pathetic picture isn’t it?
I live this, I live it and then I try to call it normal
I call it healthy
I tell people that I am ok
That I’m doing much better
I think what’s worse is that they believe me. Whether it is because I am the best actor on the planet, or their own blind egocentric scaled down view of who I am as a complete entity, I do not know, and frankly I do not care, the result is the same.
Even now as I am writing, I look at the words I have written and I feel next to nothing, just a numbed out shell of a person with a smile tattooed over the scowl that he wears inside. The best I am going to feel every day is the second I wake up, after that it’s all down hill. The only reason I ever even leave my house is to try and escape the more and more frequent anxiety attacks where the walls of my room seem to echo the sound of either my heart breaking or the music I am playing which is probably as depressing and antisocial as I am. I drown out my fear in alcohol, I dress my insecurities with vanity, my appetite ranges from ravenous to completely nonexistent by the week which I am pretty sure is not healthy or “normal”.
I have a job now at least with some benefits and a steady paycheck. Of course it doesn’t pay as much as college boys are supposed to, and most of my time is spent allowing in mind-crushing boredom to the point that I almost wish someone would have an episode for my entertainment, a thought that I immediately push away, but that’s the funny thing about thoughts, one you’ve thought it, you can’t take it back, you can’t unthink. You walk away feeling just as dirty as you would if you had reached out and actually made the thought happen.
The same goes for suicide. If you had asked me, hell if you ask me right now, I would tell you I am very against it, and I am. But the problem with the feelings I have every day is that you can’t unthink them. I might be having a bad day and all the sudden the picture pops in my head of me holding a gun to my temple and pulling the trigger. I see myself downing an entire pill bottle, chasing it with half a bottle of vodka and calling it a night. I don’t do it, but I think it, and sometimes I think it loudly.
I need help, and I need it soon
This isn’t living, it’s just existing
Just because you’re breathing and your heart is beating doesn’t make you alive
And I want to be happy
Really happy
But I’m not
Not at all
