The Foolishness of Living 05/2007

I've heard it said that you have to hit bottom before you can come back up. Well, the night I wrote this came pretty close to bottom. Not quite, but close. And just because I'm not there today doesn't mean that for a little while, this wasn't the truest thing I could pull out of my soul. Some nights feel as though they will never end... too many things here burrow deep into my darkest fears to say they're completely untrue. And yet somehow, the night always does end. Perhaps an eternity later, but it does. And when it does, all these ugly things I wrote & felt that might make people want to feel pity or disgust, distance themselves from something broken seem ethereal, unreal, not myself. This is not, on the balance of my life, who I am. It is a dangerous darkess that it would be hypcritical to deny, but it is not how I have spent even a fraction of my lifetime. We are all a mass of contradictions, a melee of emotion, a conglomeration of things that ought to make no sense when you put them together. But somehow, they do. They are "Human". And sometimes being human isn't all that pretty. Here. If you're going to revere me for being strong, then do it knowing how far wrong you can be. And yeah... I'm hiding it deep in history on purpose. If you found this through anything other than sheer chance, you've got too much damn time on your hands.

There is no future worth having. I see no joy.. I see no love.. I see no days ahead with enough sunshine anywhere in the world to warm me again. I see days filled with meaningless nothings and long nights where the darkness stretches endless and friendless and cold and alone. My daughter gives me no true joy, for there is noone to share her with. There is noone to share the frustrations & the challenges... noone with whom to share the triumph of her very existence. Noone to end a day with, sharing warmth and tiny tales, talking over little problems and laughing at miniscule joys. Noone to turn hard work into play. My body ages and withers and all the fruits granted humans therein wither with the passing days, uncelebrated. It doesn't matter if I spend my day in laughter or in tears, in the end there is noone to share them with. Noone to turn back the coldness of utter indifference. "Home is that place where when you have to go there, they have to take you in" -- there is no home. There will never be a home other than my own skin, my own soul, and what a dark & sorry place that has become to call home. I carry pain like a hard stone just under my breastbone, and walk thinking at any moment it will double me over. That it will pull me as surely as a muscle cramp into a tiny ball of agony unable to move. That I will not be able to find a dark corner in which to cry these tears, that I will spill them here in public - over the vegetables at the grocery store, the brass kettle at the antique store, gas station, mailbox, school... I see years ahead of me, dry as dust on a forgotten shelf. Each day breathing only because the body hasn't sense enough to know the soul has given up, and because the soul is too cowardly to command the body to die. My parents anchor me to this world, because I understand the agonies they have already endured, simply by being parents, and I cannot purposefully send that sort of sorrow and doubt and regret and pain into their hearts... while they alone live, I stay. They are the only people in the world whose love I can ever trust, and even there I shy away from truly working to know them as people, because I am afraid that like everyone else in all the world, if I begin to know them too deeply I will find them just as unable to truly and fully love me as all the rest of humanity. I would rather keep the child's sure naive certainty of a parent's love than risk the deeper knowing of them as people: the fear of losing it is far too great. They hold me here, chained to each breath.. .but if today, this minute, they were no longer, I would cease these utter nothings and leave this world that has nothing in it for me. I would run from the beating of my own heart as though the hounds of Hell pursued me. I would hope and pray there is no afterlife, no Heaven, no Hell, no reincarnation, but that it would be Oblivion to greet me when the last breath was done. I am lonely. I am alone. I am unwanted. I am worthless. I have nothing anyone wants for long. I think I find a love that circles round and round and brings joy to all, only building hope and security for all of us with every go 'round, and I am wrong. I am always wrong. I am always wrong. In the end, I bring nothing but sorrow to those I love, and do it by the very fact of loving them. Those I love, I cannot love less. Those I do not, I cannot love more. And neither of those is ever the right thing... is ever good enough... it is never enough. Nothing is ever enough. Nothing is ever right for very long... the years of my life spin by faster and faster and have become a few brief moments of real, golden happiness surrounded by forevers of bitterness and sorrow and unfulfilled longing. A life which began with such promise, such power & strength & beauty... has become such a sorrid comedy of always being wrong. The world.. Fate.. dangles hope in front of me like a small boy dangling a string in front of a kitten... who watches, waits, waits, and finally believing it is truly to stay within reach, pounces, batting out a paw to catch the elusive string... only to have the boy jerk it away. Laughing. Fate laughs at me, and it is not a kind laughter. Fate mocks me. I am a wrong thing. I should not be.
~~2007