Internal Conflict

I would consider myself to be an intelligent person. I’ve always sought to understand how and why things are and gravitated towards reading challenging books at a young age. In Middle School I was reading books like The Count of Monte Cristo and Watership Down. By Highschool I was obsessed with authors like Alan Moore, Ray Bradbury, George Owell and Auldous Huxley. Now I’ve been clinging to Ayn Rand like she’s my own mother. It’s because of these people and the books they wrote that I’ve been instilled with a deep sense of morality and individualism. They kept me going long after I couldn’t and taught me what it means to be a decent human being in a maddening world.

But… Even though I know that life is important, that it’s something to be cherished and valued and should never be sold or taken or given away, I still desire to die. Moore taught me the importance of my integrity but I’ve still widdled it away to dust. Bradbury taught me the importance of thinking for myself but I can think of nothing but my own suffering. Rand taught me the importance of my own individual self but I still want to destroy it.

I know deep in my heart that all life is precious, even mine, and that I shouldn’t desire to end it just because of the lot I’ve been handed. I know all these things but still none of it helps. For all my intelligence and wisdom and philosophies, I’m just the same as every other sad, lonely, depressed, conformed, beat down, and hopeless human being on the planet.

What is even the point of living?

Orwell might say it is to leave the world a better place than it was when you came into it. I use to think this was true – I use to refuse to die until it was so – but there is only so much I can do alone. There’s too much apathy in the air, stagnant, choking. Regardless of what I do, the word will turn, for better or worse.

The world needs more people like me, or so I’ve been told. Rational, thinking, minds such as mine shouldn’t be destroyed. The future needs them. But what everyone fails to realize is that with great awareness comes great pain. Intelligence is a curse. Consciousness is pain. The world is filthy and may never be cleansed. Certainly not by me or you or our children and theirs to come for many generations.

We’re damned if we live and damned if we die so what are we suppose to do? I’m stuck between two dark alternatives, gazing into an abyss that gazes also with no idea of how to proceed.

Maybe when I finally die… Maybe I’ll know then.

Tara