i wonder why everything is such a struggle for me. i am tired, you know. i think i’ve had enough. i’m 39 and i am a loner that is alone, don’t even have someone else to want to live for or feel guilted into living for. parents dead, no family, no siblings, no spouse, no children, no friends, no job, no energy, no hope. i pretend that i live a life that i want or at least something approximating it. in other words, i lie. i make things sound good, far better than they are, even to myself. most of the time i pretend that i believe the lies i create and this make believe sustains me. but there are moments, moments like this entire evening, when the facade has cracked and the truth of my self is leaking out everywhere and as hard as i try i can’t reel myself back in fast enough to stop the hemmoraging. at the end of this process i am empty. then what i do is examine the stains of self that surround me, seeking to grasp something solid to hold on to – maybe a pattern or a trace element or some inorganic matter that has been slowly poisoning me . but i don’t see anything familiar here tonight. i’ve leached out my poisons and they infect the sheets i lie on like bleach stains across tie-died cotton. i reside in the external trappings of reasonable success. i reside in the internal prison of unloved self. i don’t know why i am here . what i mean to say is that i don’t seem to serve any useful purpose. for myself or others. i can’t find the meaning that i know i need to have in my life, need to have in order to have a reason to go on. i can’t help but feel, deep down in the core of my being, that i am nothing more than a horrible and horrifying mistake. why? why do i think so poorly of myself? i suspect it may have something to do with the fact that i learned last year that i was possibly conceived during an act of rape – since hearing this, whenever i feel depressed or very anxious, i think back to it and find that learning this seems to have validated all the negative things i’ve ever felt about myself. i was flawed from the moment of conception. i am inherently defective. i am not loveable. i am ugly.