I have to write this down. I’m tired.
The only reason I am still around is because I made a promise to myself 18 years ago that I would see this through. I have brought up two girls, and one wife. I have tried to get them to be their own people, but they continue to lean on me, and I am starting to fall. Someday, I told myself, I would be able to be at peace. After the girls are on their own, and able to fend for themselves. For the past twenty years, my wife has degraded, not grown. Now in the afternoon of our lives, she is as lazy as a person can be, and it has rubbed off on my kids. I work long hours and make a lot of money, but whenever I talk about scaling back – getting a smaller house, the response is just “oh god – he’s at it again…”. They say they love me, they say they want to spend time with me, but any mention of me no longer providing as much is met with indifference at best.
For twenty years I have been a positive, hard-charging example to my children and the world. I’m in my mid 40’s and have the body of a twenty-five year old. I have a great education. I’m what people call ‘smart’. I have saved enough money for retirement. I have led by example, only to find that no-one is following. They just look at me and say “wow, I wish I could do that”, then let me go on. I’m out of gas and despondent that all my efforts were for nothing. I don’t now, nor have I ever cared about my body, my house, or my bank account. All I ever wanted was for my girls to have a better life than I did.
I have no friends. I never had time, and I never trusted people enough to make any. I have lost my faith in man, and never had any in what some call God. I took a job in hell for a year, and saw what man was made of. I gave my family a year to see if they could do without me, and they fell apart. There is a difference between needing someone and caring about them.
I’m tired of hearing that people care about me, but never seeing them show it. I work long hours, then come home to a kitchen that has food all over the counter and dirty laundry that I need to get done. I spend my weekends doing home improvement projects, laundry, and cleaning the huge house that I hate.
I have wanted to die for so many years that I can’t imagine things ever being even OK, much less good. I’m tired of smiling at everyone, and i am tired of breathing, eating, sex, shitting, working out, working, and writing.
Things will never get better, that was supposed to start happening now. Now I am just in the habit of breathing, and I want out. There is nothing left that I want except nothing. I want something for me finally, I want out. I’m done.
5 comments
If you want out (death), maybe its freedom and love you really want.
If you supply everything to your wifes and kids, they will never support themselves. You are enableing their behavior.
If you think you can handle a divorce, sit down with your wife and tell her why you fell you need to leave.
I would choose the divorce route first. Suicide is final, (for you anyway).
You know I was going through the same thing as you….busting my ass only to come home to a messy house with a wife that slept all day and spent the time awake on facebook. It hurt me a lot but I never said anything about it. Now i’m soon to be divorced and dying more and more everyday. Have you tried marriage counseling? God…I wish we would have years and year ago. I still ache every single day for my wife to come back. I’m pretty sure she never will. So this is why I’m here because here I can find a little bit of something to help me hold on just one more day. But my days are still numbered.
@caucajun32 – I recognize I am enabling them. That was why I gave them a year to try things on their own. “freedom and love”…I’m pretty dried up, all the freedom I want is silence. I have a ton of insurance. I figure maybe my wife and kids could at least end up happy, I see no path to happiness at this point. I’m just too tired.
@mwtele – No, not tried counseling. Just one more expense. And yes facebook is not my friend.
@sui_oldman: I’m not buying it. All these years you’ve been using your overblown sense of responsibility as a provider as an excuse for your lack of real emotional connections to other people. You say you’ve never trusted people enough to make friends with them. Sounds like you just don’t know how to be close to people. You say you raised your children by leading by example. Isn’t that another way of saying you were never really involved enough in their lives to help guide them in facing their own challenges? I’m not surprised they learned to be helpless and dependent. Maybe there was nothing they could do to truly get close to you, so they learned not to try. It’s the image you have of yourself as the big provider that’s been driving you on all these years, not something imposed on you by your wife or your kids. Although I’m sure they have their own issues.
And now you’ve come to a point in your life where the old distractions from your emotional isolation just aren’t working anymore – work, exercise, sex. So you turn to the ultimate escape: death. Same strategy, different tactic. You’re at a turning point in your life, my friend. Be honest. Stop pretending that the seemingly perfect life you’ve built on the outside means a damn and figure out how to get in touch with what matters to you.
@live free.
Nice pep talk and evaluation. You are spot on in points (work exercise), and a bit off in others (sex), but pretty good in general. Your primary miss is “never really involved enough in their lives”, I am, probably too much. The primary hit you have is “you just don’t know how to be close to people”. I don’t trust people. I know that. Believe me my life is not perfect, but I always modeled myself as a provider, and the one thing I wanted to provide above everything else was independence (not monetary) for my kids. Failure at that will be life failure for me. What matters to me is to help my kids be happy in this world, but it’s just not something I am good at myself. I get that I have next to no emotional contact with people. It makes logical sense to avoid trying to help others with something you have no skill in, so I have primarily helped them with intellectual challenges, because I could do that. What matters to me is their happiness, but I’ve no idea how to help them get something I know nothing about. I’m tired, and I want rest. What matters to me is my kids happiness, but I am a poor guide to that.