How I Got Here

I’ve made too many mistakes. My life is like a painting that’s been painted over again and again, so much that the errors, the repulsive missteps can’t be hidden anymore. It’s just a big, hot mess. I never knew what Selective Service was until I was too old to register. I waited to start college too late in life. That’s how I found out. I was filing for aid and discovered a problem that I would eventually realize would keep me from ever attending college. I can never get federal aid. My credit has never been good enough to qualify for private loans. So, that’s it. I can never get a degree. I can never have a real job. I’ll always be poor. I’ve been working at the same grocery store for almost twenty years. I can still barely afford to feed myself and can’t afford to live without roommates, not even in a crap studio in a dangerous part of town. My health is failing. I’m weak, exhausted, and have chronic gastrointestinal problems.

There’s also the matter of not being equipped to pull myself up by my bootstraps, as they say, since my IQ is only 70. I’m just aware enough to be cognizant of my own stupidity. Others treat me accordingly, like an idiot. It’s odd that we show compassion to individuals with certain disabilities, but will delight in vocally belittling those with diminished intelligence. People I have called friends will make fun of me to my face because they think I can’t tell.

I’m also ugly and have terrible social skills. I once had someone who actually loved me for who I am, but I lost her and it was my fault. I should be happy for her. She is now married with a child on the way. She was my only love, my one. I won’t get anymore. It was an anomaly that I had the time with her that I did.

Considering these things, that I’m always going to be poor with no prospects, that I lost my one and only chance at love or companionship, and that the life is slowly leaking from my body– I can’t help but wonder why I’m still here. I think about suicide everyday, several times a day. I’m afraid of messing up and living through it. I’m afraid of pain. I wish I wasn’t a coward. This is the kind of thing you’d expect from somone young, like, eighteen or nineteen. You hear stories like this and upon learning the teller is so young, you want to scoff, pat them on the head, and say, “oh, it gets better. You’ll see.” The thing is, it never did get better. I tried to just go through the motions. I’ve felt for a while now, however, that I’m living on borrowed time. Maybe I was supposed to die years ago. Maybe I was never supposed to be here and I’m some kind of an abomination. I’m like a zombie or automata, just walking along with no purpose, no point. I’m almost forty years old and I’ve accomplished nothing whatsoever in life. I feel the clock ticking louder every passing year and I just want it to stop.