End Guaranteed but deferred

Glad to have found this site, as I need to express some things about my state of mind at a forum where no friends are and no one will attempt to make everything better by saying “hey don’t be depressed you’re a good guy” and “things’ll get better just you wait”. It so easy to write that, and so useless to read.

Less than a week after a great (or so I thought) NYE party, where I normally rejuvenate myself from holiday depression by hosting friends and fireworks, i find myself totally UNenthused about life and thinking constantly about how pointless and useless it is and wishing I was in a position to kill myself quickly and quietly.

But I can’t.. all i can do is plan, and wait.

The only reason NOT to give up is that to do so would destroy my sister as well as burden her with the house and the duties associated with a  dead brother with no surviving relatives.

Two years ago, I decided it was time to commit suicide, but felt I needed to let my sister know – not so she could stop me but because I wanted her to know rather than wonder or worry that she could have done something. Her reaction (should i have expected otherwise???) was terrible, and I made her a promise I deeply regret, not to kill myself while she was alive.

But two years of wearing the “everything’s OK mask” while nothing has changed in my heart or soul feels like twenty. I have to play this game for another 20, 30 years? I don’t think i can, sometimes. But I will do what i can to not make her life worse.

So I plan.. buy your own cremation.. give away belongings… and try to plan how to do it without the insurance company denying benefits, injuring anyone else, or leaving a hideous corpse.

NYE was a classic. I honestly thought that it had been a great night and I had been a great host, but learned 3 days later that a person i owe everything to – that i never want to hurt – was badly hurt by things i said and did that – by my gauging at the time – were comic. This isn’t a case of “I don’t remember saying that” but a case of “seriously? that was offensive? You’ve known me how long and you think that I was expressing dislike for you?”

And that just kicks me right back to the core of my need to exit: I don’t get this world, I don’t understand how I affect people, I miscommunicate my emotions severely and I can’t not offend people. My curse is simple: when happy with myself and comfortable with my personality, I don’t police my remarks or worry obsessively how people will react – and then of course there’s always someone who will react badly. I’ve lost every job I ever had by simply being myself at work and forgetting that not everyone likes me. I find myself in a horrible position where i actually have to force myself into a depressed state by focusing on my failures, because only that will get me to stop being gregarious and risking offense. Then of course everybody wants to know, why so glum? Why so quiet. Uh, because, if I act myself, you’ll fire me?

This week the depression hangs on my shoulders like a thick wet fur coat, taking a full inch or more off my height. I have to adjust the rear view mirror because I have compressed myself into such a state. Yet it’s a comfortable, familiar old coat and I belong in it. It’s not like that fake, thin “Oh I’m happy now” coat they’ve made me wear. the coat with no protection against the pains and tribulations of this world. The coat that evaporates into nothingness if i dare look at the world and my life HONESTLY. the Emperor’s new Coat. How I hate it.

Here in the pit is where I belong, because it is REAL. It’s simply an honest view of myself. I was always selfish and whiny. That alone isn’t a great reason to check out. But at age 40, I totally failed as a human being by letting my Mother suffer and die in a nursing home. I made the decisions to not move home to take care of her, to rarely visit, and to not rush to her side when she got sicker. She died alone and frightened and I am the only one to blame. For that alone I deserve to rot in hell. Luckily for me there is no hell beyond this Earth, and no God to judge me.

I do not have anything remotely resembling a bad life. But I know i will die broke and alone on the street if i don’t take matters into my own hands and end it BEFORE the inevitable loss of income, home, last shreds of sanity. There’s NOTHING to look forward to and what used to ease the pain seems stupid, selfish and boring.

I see people daily in terrible situations and they move on. Most folks would say I’m a coward to not want to tough out the bad times ahead. Maybe so. I could care less. What good is courage in that situation? Who benefits from my toughing out a hellish existence? NO ONE. I have no children, I have no relatives beyond my sister, I have friends and a year later I will be forgotten which is as it should be. Human life is cheap. I don’t consider it a miracle or a gift from god or any of that “higher purpose” stuff. We’re meat bags. That’s all. But we have this huge fantasy structure of beliefs that help us pretend the world isn’t a shithole and that humankind is not basically evil and disgusting. It’s too big an artifice for me to carry around any more.

Well i could go on forever.. and since my suicide is guaranteed but yet at least a decade away, I’ll be back to whine more..