I’m not at a good place right now. I’m at a place of thinking that being alive isn’t so great. Doesn’t mean I’m thinking about suicide. I’m not. I’m just feeling like my life is kind of pointless, will never change and is not worth living in this condition. I’m wishing I had the option of checking out but I know that I don’t have the option of checking out and I’m terrified because I know things need to change but I have this gut feeling they won’t and if they don’t then I am doomed one way or another.
I was supposed to start a 7-day fast about 7 days ago; but I went on a 7-day gorge-fest instead. I feel physically off-balance and out of sorts; and it’s not helping me in the mental and emotional department. Something about the summer season and being out here in the mid-west where I moved (temporarily) in 2012 is reminding me of a time in my childhood when I felt hopelessly lost, alone, confused and without structure–without family. I used to think about suicide then. It was a dark period that started when I was 8 going on 9 and lasted until I was 12 going on 13. When it ended I only entered another dark period and that has seemed to be how my life has always played out. And I always end up back at this point of feeling like there’s no solution–like I need to go ahead and jump off the life train.
I won’t say I’ve never or don’t ever think about suicide. Suicidal impulses are part and parcel of the life I’ve lived; but this is different. This isn’t about being depressed and wanting to die. This is about facing reality–understanding that there’s no point–that I am fighting a winless battle. It is about choosing not only to stop fighting but to remove myself from existence altogether in order to escape life’s ever-jabbing fist; because as long as you are alive life will engage you in battle whether or not you are a willing and participating combatant.
I’m not one to think that life just happens to me the way it has happened without any contribution on my part. I know it all comes down to who I am and the choices that I have made and continue to make. And I guess that’s why I sometimes imagine that the only option for release, or escape if you will, is to check out. Because this is who I am. And if the problem lies in who I am, and if I am who I am and there’s no becoming someone other than who I am, then the problem cannot be fixed. And if the problem cannot be fixed then I have to accept to live this way until I die and I just don’t know if I want to accept to live this way until I die.
Moments Later…
After sitting and pondering my feelings and re-reading my words I am asking myself two questions:
- What is “the problem”. You say “And if the problem lies in who I am” — what is the problem exactly?
- What “way” are you living that you fear you will have to accept so that “the problem” stops being a problem or at least becomes something with which you can live?
I guess “the problem” refers to whatever it is inside of me that contributed to me making a mess of my life and contributes to my inability to fix that mess. What made me so afraid, so mentally and emotionally weak, so passive?
- What is it inside of me that has made it impossible for me to function normally in society throughout my entire life?
- What is it inside of me that makes me chose to crawl under rocks and try to live my life in hiding under those rocks?
- What is it inside of me that makes me so afraid of people and afraid of life?
And this “way” of living is basically having nothing and being nothing. Having no stability. Always being on the verge of some type of crisis. Essentially having no life.
I don’t know what to do about myself. I don’t know what to do with myself. And sometimes the frustration is such that I feel like the answer is to cause myself to cease to exist. But I think I’ll just go to bed for now and maybe try again tomorrow to start a fast and try to reset myself and just keep trying to blog my way out of my present hole. They say take what you have and make the most of it. When what you have is nothing you pretty much have to become a magician. I am trying to take nothing and make the most of nothing; but what is the most of nothing? Seems to me that the most of nothing is nothing. So if at the end of the day what’s going to come of this is nothing, why bother right? But it’s either I keep trying to turn my nothing into something or I give up and accept nothing for what remains of my life.
