I’m not really sure how to begin this, or I guess, really, how to say any of this.

My name is John, and my middle name is Ira.  I’m 25 years old, and I feel utterly hopeless. I just stayed up all night, debating whether or not I would have the balls to do it. Now it is Saturday morning, and I am a fucking COWARD. I’ve never felt as sad, or alone or I fucking hate to admit this, misunderstood in my whole entire life.

I guess if worst comes to worst, there’s a secret, ashamed part of me that wants someone, anyone, I cared about, or who reciprocated that care for me, to see this. Or to be able to see this, if anyone chose to look for answers.

I am, as I type this, very tired, it is right now Saturday morning, and I have not slept since I woke up Friday morning, so I doubt I have the presence of mind or the strength of will or discipline to tell my whole story here.

Just typing “to type my whole story” makes me feel literally ill in a way I can’t describe, except for shame for some feeling of importance in someone’s life.

I’ll go back as far and briefly as I can. For me it all really started around 13 or 14 when my parents divorced. Forced into a deeper level of poverty than I had become accustomed to, I watched my mother struggle to cope to raise my brother and I, who are 13 months apart. So I’ve felt like a burden since then I guess. After a string of new “dad”s, one, we called him Stauch, beat her so badly that I still have nightmares about it. He was actually MY (and Mom’s, I believe, looking back) favorite boyfriend of my Mother’s. Terrible alcoholic, and blatant about it, but always very nice to us. More importantly, to her. One night I came home late for my Mom’s curfew to find our home ransacked as if we’d been robbed. Little porcelain figurines of Native Americans smashed everywhere, dishes, glass cups, all shrapnel all throughout the house. Back and front doors wide open, and I heard HIS two dogs barking about the neighborhood. I saw him first. Stumbling down the street, crying, falling down drunk. He said it RIGHT to my fucking face what he did. “I couldn’t hurt her like she hurt me, so I had to hurt her somehow, Your Mom’s a whore, she deserved it, ect.” Then and there he could have payed, but I froze. I was 14, but I’d been trained and conditioned my  whole life to operate under just such extreme circumstances. More on that soon. After I saw him, I saw her. On the shoulders of a family friend, and Training Brother. He forced Stauch away with threats of police, and we carried my Mom inside. Her whole face was drooping. The bone was no longer holding the muscle. My most vivid memory is of her crawling to the bathroom (she would not let me carry her after the stairs) and vomiting up blood and teeth. 3 hours for any medical/police help to arrive, I sat with her and held her hair as she wretched. He walked free, ultimately, after a lengthy trial, and then an even lengthier series of PFA hearings, just a fine and AA, which he never finished. Until the PFA was filed he was harassing us, driving his car into our garbage on the street, breaking our front window, parking his car outside her work.

My point for this is, I still have nightmares about it. I still see her puking her teeth up. And the various phases of recunstructive surgery. If I had just come fucking home on time, I could have stopped him. At age 14 I was a second-degree black belt in White Dragon Shaolin and Northern Eagle Claw Kung Fu, Ying Jow Pai is the Chinese name. I actually was the youngest and hardest trained black belt for my age group in the history of my Master’s schools. I could have killed him.

He told me to my FACE what he did, I froze. In court, MY testimony could have put him away, but I again just couldn’t face it.

To this day, I stay awake for days on end to avoid hearing the fucking click clack of her teeth in that bowl.

Not just her face, but morphing into the faces of those I’ve loved and lost since then.

This is all only one facet, and why I’m right now so tired. I am so, so tired. And I am so, so sad.

Since then life has been a blur. Drugs, sex, friends, the general badass rock and roll outlaw lifestyle.

Best times of my life actually. I’ve taken almost every drug to its absolute limit with no adverse affects save withdrawal from alcohol at age 16 and nicotine at various times throughout. I’ve done extensive “physical” research into all drugs of addiction, in all manners of administration, with no recourse like withdrawal from opiates or even phsycological withdrawal from cocaine, which I attribute my mental Martial Arts training to. Ironic, I see that.

The past few years, since 2012 have been the worst. I ended a 3 year relationship with one of the best girls I’d ever known, and simultaneously ended my best friendship ever, with my friend. His girlfriend of almost 10 years and I had professed our love the whole time to each other, suddenly, then BAM, my relationship was over. It was on its way out anyway, would have happened regardless. My girlfriend and my best friend’s girlfriend were best friends. We were a best friend foursome. Like I said, I ended mine, she didn’t. I essentially lost three of the best human beings I have ever known in one span of 24 hours, forever.

Several attempts have been made for reconciliation. After that, it was a year long spiral of the most intense drug abuse with heroin, cocaine, ANY and ALL hallucinogens, Beuponorphine, and all other “hard” drugs, still with no adverse withdrawal symptoms, after MONTHS of daily, intense use. In March of ’13 I moved to my Dad’s in Philly and turned my life around.

WHOLE new Human. It was just around the end of the previous summer when everything began to die inside me again, in spite of everything going amazing. I had the BEST job I ever had, best pay, doing shit I learned to love, forklift ops, I had just accquired my first car and was about to move into my first home in the ‘burbs of Norristown, when I realized doing so might mean a lonely life filled only with work and an empty apartment. My WHOLE LIFE had been back home (Wilkes-Barre, PA) everyone I ever knew, but also everything I THOUGHT I wanted to get away from. This feeling of intense emptiness continued and led me into the badlands of inner city philly for debauchery I had not partaken in in almost a year.

I am VERY tireed, now. Basically, this feeling continued, until the beginning of 14, in January, when I reconnected with an old friend from back home. She and I began talking through Fakebook, and then texting. It was like, BOOM. We had never actually hung out in the past, but had mad mutual friends and always saw/ran into each other. I fell for her instantly. And fucking HARD.

Like NOTHING before, ever. Needless to say, of course, she promptly broke my heart to peices after I drove home one weekend through a snowstorm on the highway to see her. She fucked me for a weekend then I went back to philly for work. I guess she got what she wanted, then BAM. In a matter of two weeks, back to strangers. I HATE admitting this, but that REALLY fucked me up.

Around this time, an ice storm hit Montgomery county in -20 degree cold. Which led to a STUPID argument with my Father, who I’ve had immense tension with since the divorce, which exploded into a bridge burning fight at work via text.

The argument started at 1pm, he had the locks changed, in our apartment building by 430. In complete darkness and FREEZING cold, he changed those locks in less than 4 hours.

After this, I was in my car for about 2 months. I used EVERY ounce of will power to remain living, homeless, in a vast foreign (to me) city, just to hold my job long enough to leave on good terms and find a job back home using them as a reference.

My job in Philly LOVED me, I was one of the best they’d had, they would always tell me.

I’m still welcome back.

Anyway, Now I’m home, in my mother’s house. Unemployed, and again, at 25 yrs old, a fucking burden. My brother seems to be a lsot cause to depression and addiction, has been living here the whole time, but now with me here also, we barely have enough to eat. I had a job here the day I moved home, but since have been laid off.

I went through more shit with this recent female, who broke my heart, over this summer. I am ashamed of how fast and hard I fell for her, and how hurt and fucking ANGRY and used I feel still, all these months later. Granted, she did lead me on twice since then.

Let me clarify, I do NOT engage in casual sex with females, that shit without emotions depresses me greatly, I feel less lonely waiting for the “right” one, or ones, when they come.

After Jen, my 3 year relationship, I had not even approached a girl until this past January, and she approached and dinitiated everything.

The MAIN deficit I feel, despite all this, is the loss of the OTHER girl that my feelings for helped end my relationship. Let’s call her….”A”. She was a friend to me on a level I had never known, even while Joe was suppsoed to be my “best friend”.

She understood me in ways noone else ever has, and I, her. Now, I mean NOTHING to her. All those years, all those hours long convos too deep for our language to articulate. Just gone. Meaningless. Not to me, but to her.

I shouldn’t compare my most recent heartbreak to her, it’s not fair, or respectful to her as a person, but the love for the most recent girl was different. So much deeper, and more…selfless than I had ever known.

It’s A’s friendship that creates the deepest void within me though.

Since 2012, I’ve alienated almost all my other close friendships. I’ve always had a very small, tight circle, but it keeps getting smaller. I SWEAR not all of them are my fault, which hurts so bad.

I feel so guilty.

Worthlessly guilty. I hurt my best friends, my girlfriend at the time, who then became one of my best friends and alienated ME once she foudn a new circle sufficient in support enough to abandond my version of moral support.

In all of this, I mean ONLY to itterate that these feelings and thoughts of not wanting to live do not stem totally from childish “love” problems, rather, the loss of the friendships and connections of the soul deep enough TO bring about love.

I feel more alone right now than I ever, ever have.

Before I end this, I just want to say, I am NOT yet convinced I am brave enough to end this all, or that I should.

I feel absolutely worthless. Guilty for hurting my closest circles, and still guilty for letting that shit happen to my Mom.

25 and still seeing her vomit up her teeth almost every time I sleep long enough to dream, which is not often.

I want to say, I do not believe TOTALLY that I’m a peice of shit:

I am a poet, and a writer, at least I like to think I am good at it. I have a way with words, that can move people in pretty profound ways. I am an empath, and a pretty nice guy all around. I have once even actually saved a life before-literally. Smelling smoke walking home one night YEARS ago, I knocked on all the doors of the street, and the house in question was supposed to be empty as the owner was on vacation. If I had not RAN home to get my moms phone (I didn’t have one at the time) he would have choked and burned to death on his kitchen floor. I called 911 and they saved him in the knick of time, literally. The news and police wanted me to speak to the cameras, but fuck that, that wasn’t why I did that, to be on the fucking news, so I dipped the second they turned their backs. Knowing he now lives is enough. I only say this to portray that I believe I am a good person. I can list for hours as I’m sure MANY humans can, the countless sacrifices, real, true sacrifices, I have made for the benefit of loved ones and strangers.

I am also a musician. I LOVE playing guitar, and have gotten quite good at it in the past few years, when I felt so shitty there was no other medium or outlet, as the written word is too painful as of yet to describe any of this in anything I’d ever put my name on.

One of my dreams is to be able to articulate my feelings through music, and MAYBE have someone, even just one person hear it one day, and feel like someone somewhere understands them. Which is one of my true desires for my own life.

I lvoe life, over all. I love getting high with my friends. I’m not as crazy on drugs or reckless, now, but these past months have been worse than the past year.

I don’t know if any of this makes any sense and I’m sorry to waste anyone’s time.

All I can say right now is I am in a LOT of pain, man. Guilt too.

I feel hopeless and alone. During a bad bout of sadness, I let my hygeine go for almost a year and now I have fucked up looking teeth to show for it. I already have had bad self esteem issues, and I wonder if maybe my appearance had something to do with this latest heartbreak, as this girl had SWORN to me face to face she believed we were soulmates. HA, stupid of me, I know.

I can still see some reasons to live. I just want to help people. Anyone. Maybe then my life will have had some meaning.

I think constantly about resuming my training to reach black level three, as my Sifu told me when my parents divorced he understood my pain (my parent were both instructors at my Kung Fu school, it was my whole family life for the first 1/2 of my life) an that I am welcome back whenever I want. If I never quit I would almost certainly be a Sifu myself now. I was trained my whole life, in a very brutal way, from kindergarden. My parents paid extra for the “true shaolin training”, and I believe I am STRONG because of it.

I don’t want to die.

I want to LIVE because life and the people in it are beautiful. I just feel ultimately, unworthy or life. Of the people in it.

I don’t knwo what to do. I’ve been through countless therapists since the divorce, and especially since the attempted murder, as I call it, because fuck the courts I was THERE i SAW it, I know what he did.

I don’t trust therapists, or modern psychatric medicine. I know my grammar is slipping, please bear with me, as I said before, I am very tired.

I try to believe that the people left who say they care and would not be able to recover from my suicide mean hat they say, but man, I don’t know.

Two weeks ago, I cut two chords off of two busted TVs in my old room and learned from Youtube to make a good, sturdy noose. It’s now strung up in the corner of my room, on a steam pipe pole from the floor to the ceiling, I’ve already measured my own weight vs the heigh and length of the drop, I know I’m dead-on, pardon the pun.

Just one little sweep kick of the chair under me and…ya know. I’ve been staring at this noose for two weeks now.

I will say, despite all this, the sun is up again right now as I type this and that makes me proud, makes me feel STRONG again. Like when I took my second black belt test. Like when I lived out of my car in a fucking polar vortex in the big city ALONE with noone I knew or trusted, just to resign on good terms.

But then at night….it gets so bad.

IDK. I’m not asking for help. Or advice. Or insight.

I know ultimately I’ma  peice of shit. I won’t post any pics or show my face because I have my stupid face. In my eyes, I am ugly.

I just want anyone left in my life who cares to be able to, if desired, TRY to find some semblance of understanding should I sometime soon have the strength or find the weakness to hang myself in such a way that my vertebrate breaks, causing instant black out and oblivious suffocation.

If anyone wants to, or even fucking cares, I want them to MAYBE be able to see this somehow.

So, worst case scenario, if you know me and love me, and are now reading this. I am so, so sorry. I tried to make you see or understand how much hurt I feel, what it feels like to never be able to get a full nights rest because I was a fucking ***** back in the day and let that shit happen to my mom. I tried to reach out.

I blame noone for the lack of being able to do so.

Whoeevr even ever sees this, thank you. I love you. And I am truly, truly sorry.

Maybe one day you can come to understand that I was looking down the barrel of the rest of a lifetime of agony.

Much love,

John. </3