heartlessviking

quel dommage means; “what a pity” usually in a snarky way, it seems like I enjoy a fair amount of sayings in French, but don’t have the ambition to learn most of it.

I’m the source of the majority of my own misery, and I know it, and have known it for most of my life. Knowing the location of the problem doesn’t do a thing if there are no available remedies, or if the cure is worse.

I keep getting presented with this sham cure for my dissatisfaction; to become satisfied with things as they are now. Is that really how a match is won? To quit? I couldn’t live with myself under such circumstances.

Yet, I sold out, I shook hands with demonic forces and was given sanctuary away from the pressures and demands of “reality.” It’s that cognitive dissonance that causes agony; I’m a paid up rebel, a rebel without the convictions to keep at it full time. I feel hollow, a shell that satisfies the demands the world has. Inside, agony, turmoil, and an insatiable hunger for something more. Outside; your friendly neighborhood high functioning junky. I’ve had dark circles under my eyes for so long that there is nothing I can do about it outside of surgery. I wish that someone had told me that where I was going was a path to this face, because I thought you had to do meth and be homeless for a bit to look as used up as I do.

Sometimes I feel as if I am falling, that unsettling feeling of your stomach dropping out, and uncontrollable plummeting ever downwards. Yet, I never hit anything. Like time is a dimension in which I am always descending, deeper, until the pressure way down there so deep gets to me to the point my heart or kidneys stop.

I keep trying to make my peace with this situation. I am home bound for another two weeks, and the time by myself to brood is my worst enemy. Despite technically making more than I ever have, I remain stretched financially. Meanwhile, for the last several nights I have been haunted by dreams of the last woman I loved before I met my now wife. What am I supposed to do with that? Of course she was and is a wonderful and lovely woman. It didn’t work, I moved on, and there’s no point digging up those old bones. Or so I say, clearly I don’t believe, since some part of me keeps bringing up romantic/erotic dreams…. I was 24 at the time I knew her, far less drugged, in better situation physically at the very least.

I was lighter at least three events that constitute major trauma under the formal definition. It’s so far in my past that given the lack of accurate records, I might as well be talking about a mythical event. Ah, regardless I did journal at the time. I walked away from the relationship, because I didn’t know what I wanted. Perhaps that’s the trauma; lack of certainty cost me so much that I went forward trying to be excessively certain, truth is I just became better at lying to myself, and committing to a path in words then backing it with action if not enthusiasm.

I keep trying to stop shaking, or to fix my indigestion. Every time I come to the point of nearly dealing with how I have let myself and others down, I start shaking. This week I am constantly hungry, and only the pain in my stomach slows my progress with eating. Can’t win for trying, that’s me. Not that I deserve compassion or pity, I fully possess the connections for a better, life, one where I seek out material wealth instead of the love of others. Money is damn easy compared to the hard path I chose. Not that I’m overflowing with that either. Probably I merely want another path to be better, to justify the depravity of my current situation. If there was a moral, a teachable moment, it would make this sorrowful narrative worthy of telling.

My story won’t be told. I will continue to give and not be noticed, to influence and be forgotten just as quickly. When I’m gone, there will be no elevated emotions of any kind. That’s the effective exit; “What ever happened to that person?” Response; “Oh yes, that old sod. I have no idea where he went, I didn’t notice him leaving.”

Sometimes in the deepest winter or the hottest summer I will walk, improperly dressed preferably, with the hope that the elements will be kind and end it for me. I’ve yet to even get hypothermia or heat stroke from that. I only get either of those when I’m working on a non self destructive task. Ah, time is a cruel and bereft thing to inflict on a thing with the awareness of it. There was a tribe once that only ever spoke in the present tense. They lacked words for “yesterday”, “tomorrow”, “Past”, “future.” Imagine, what a blessed condition that would be; only now, no regrets, no aspirations, only the moment that a person is in. Maybe it’s miserable, how am I to know? I only read about it, never met anyone of this singular tribe.

I was going to be melodramatic about the whole thing, extend my description to include others. The fact is, I don’t have a clue what is going on with the rest of our species. I have ideas, but it can’t be proven, proof is the biggest act of faith and delusion of all.

I can’t prove that I was born any different than any other human larva. I was a hyperactive kid, a little introverted, who had the misfortune of being born into a society that needs something to be wrong with people that don’t enthusiastically engage with it. So, thanks to hours of therapy and the finest pharmaceuticals known to man in the 1990s, I was tweaked and hurt until I believed as well as anyone else that I didn’t fit, I couldn’t fit, and there was nothing about fitting that would be good for me.

Which brings me around to dopamine, the worst enemy you probably don’t know that you ever had. See, we in the west idolize success. We worship at the altar of productivity, and slave at the dream of perfection. Why? Because there has to be some meaning, we have to follow as we are conditioned, and we are conditioned from birth to push, and try, and strive. Yet we’ve never been happy with how hard a human can push themselves. Thus, we started playing with poisons. We discovered that some poisons in small quantities could make us feel really interesting, not need sleep, or sleep better. We’ve got a chemical for everything, including if we want to hallucinate.

All these things played on the chemicals that were already in the brain, but humanity is so much better at producing it in others. We hurt each other, and then when we really want to cause pain, we lift others back up again so that we don’t have to suffer alone. Selfish, or at least I am. I’ve dedicated my life to pulling more people into the painful net of what made me the way I am.

Because it’s the only way the pain can stop. See, I’ve experienced and I have seen that there are people that don’t hurt. They NEVER HAVE TO. Isn’t that special? Does it make your blood boil? It does mine. They dine on our suffering, they work us to death so that they can have fresh orange juice, and hot food on demand. Silly shit to torture others for, but humanity as I have already said escapes my capacity for reason.

So, when you see that hand reaching out for you, trying to pull you back in, remember that we’re all in the same bitter work; to force the face of the pain free in our pain, until they realize that no crime occurs in a vacuum, and the pain of one is the suffering of all.

We get that we’re all drawn here because there is no effective management system for our problems right? It’s a cosmic Fuck-up, and me talking to you is only one outcome.

Supposedly I’m “essential”, I’ve spent this whole week training for a job that I only ever somewhat wanted. This is my plan C or D, I had other ideas. Granted, assuming that anyone gave a damn implies a coherent consciousness that is concerned with my well being. That’s a pretty big faith leap is what I’m saying. Everyone hurts, we’re all only barely holding on, that is those of us who manage to.

This training I’ve been doing, it seems to have collected the largest amount of compassionate people who want to make a difference I’ve ever seen in one place. Not just the lip service ones that pretend for an hour a week at church. These people _Care_, and it is so adorable I could cry. They really think they’re going to save anyone. Granted, every now and then I do manage to save anyone. Statistically I save no one, and only 0.00005% of the people I work with have a prayer of living a full functional life. I traded a life where I killed 0.0005% of the people I ever met, for this. Does it matter? Will that miniscule percentage thank me? I think I’m doing it for my ego. If I was honest, I’d work out how to rob banks. There are horrible people making huge piles of resources, and no one will weep if a morally ambiguous person were to liberate some of it.

One of the reasons that I utterly fail even at at paranoia is that these are the anti social thoughts that I certainly make no secret of. One day I’ll fail to talk myself out of it, and likely as not no one will ever know. I am nothing, nobody, just a hallucination of a decent human being, a blip in a cosmic history of cruelty.

I have a few things that seem to be constantly in my path. It isn’t like a person, more of an energy, if you believe in such nonsense. It’s kind of the concept of/person of God. It’s like in that movie “Harvey”, the guy has this invisible white rabbit following him around, with non-specific abilities and a non-specific supernatural origin.  That’s what it is like for this 32 year old Christian, 26 years into the practice. I’m not even sure if I’m allowed to call myself that, because there is no church or faith body in the world that feels like home, at least that I’ve found. The point is; I’m not at all certain if it is only in my head or not. There are times I think it is just a bit of an illusion brought on by my religious upbringing, religious surroundings, and trauma/stress. Then there are times I wonder if it is a real thing. I’ve been trying to act like it doesn’t make a difference which it is, but it makes a difference.

The reason it makes a difference is that either I have this; “Vision from God”, or I have a persistent manic delusion. Not going to be specific, because the one constant about suspected delusions is shame….. the point is I’ve been bargaining/praying/trying to free myself of it for nine and a half years. I don’t see that I’m any closer to it happening, and while it remains possible (painfully so), it also remains out of reach.

Bit of lyrics that accurately describe my feelings about the whole thing;

“I’ve got a friend that lives with me,
My friend’s name is Nobody.
Nobody plays with me, Nobody loves me.
I’ve got a friend that you can’t see.
My friend’s name is Nobody.
Nobody listens, Nobody cares.”

Then nearer the end of the song;

“Nobody sure gets me in trouble.
For Nobody, I take a lot of blame.
But if Nobody’s gonna be my friend,
I sure wish he’d get another name.”

it occurs to me that there is actually a very clear reason I rarely talk about specifics; If it happens as an outcome of me asking for it, in what way would it be supernatural? I have this whole irritant about people crediting God when there are other potential causes; If you are praying to God for a job, and at the same time putting out applications, who is to say which is the source of your eventual success? The same goes for relationships, or sobriety.

Earlier on I was able to write about my frustration in my dopamine/manic state, and I read back on those and realize it’s just the other side of the same coin. Once I realized it was a dopamine overload, I started trying to cut down my nicotine and caffeine intake, and to eat more regularly. The point is that when they pulled me down in the hospital they went way overboard with anti psychotics, starving myself of dopamine is just as effective to restoring a more level view.

Things are fine, I don’t know why I can’t accept that. Today I woke up more with the state of mind; “Yes, it sucks, but what are the other options?” I certainly say this often enough to other hopeless people. The fact is that hope is a wonderful lie that we get to buy into for awhile. Yet, sure as all bills come due, we must come to terms with that it isn’t getting better.

We just pull people out of the ditch to get them participating again. We don’t care about the quality of that participation. We don’t provide input on what type of participation might be good. It’s just an imperative “Participate.” That’s what we’re all rebelling against. Then again, I’ve most certainly arrived. I’m not prominent, I’m barely observed, and my job is as simple as I’ve ever heard of. I could be dead for as much difference as I think I make, but they pay me for it, pretty decent medical too. The hours aren’t great, but realistically I’ve yet to find a job with good hours.

I trained in masonry a long time ago, and abandoned it because I realized there wasn’t much call for artistic masonry. There’s a huge need for people to set up corners (journeymen), and build uniform walls (linemen), but making cool fireplaces? Doing literal irreplaceable art on the side of buildings? That’s just the sort of things people used to do in the past. See, I imagine that somewhere in the past they decided to get rid of the concept of romance and beauty. It was probably at some point in the Reagan administration; “You know what is expensive? Quality. Let’s do away with that. Fuck that. Let’s make everything pointless.” And boy over the next twenty years we really ran with that.

Then along comes my generation, wanting things to have purpose or a point. Man, did we miss the boat about what this whole world is about now. It’s about stuff. It’s about money. It’s about seeing how many people you can get away with sleeping with while having a committed relationship to just one. So, being immune to all those forces is a pretty awesome reward, given that context. I…. just wanted more.

I kind of picture my end as being in this state, the calm one where I am able to level and consider that nothing matters, and that’s the way it was, and that’s the way it is going to be. Then I calmly set up my exit, woosh, gone, no more of this philosopher in a land without philosophy. One day. Not today, but eventually. Dying of natural causes would be a real treat, you know? Because EVERYTHING I’ve ever wanted I had to get for myself. There’s no path to any of the things I want right now, or I should say none that is better than the current piss poor excuse for a life I’m living.

Whatever, I’ll get good at lying to myself one of these days. This is the second time (tomorrow) that I’ll be going into a therapist saying; “Teach me to better lie to myself.” It seems like this should be something they are trained better on. It’s one of the reasons I don’t want to be a therapist, because I have never been taught a fool proof way to lie to self. I’m the fool, who keeps noodling out of the nice little nest of safe lies and ends up asking inconvenient questions.

I don’t think I’m smart. I’m a fucking idiot, because what intellect I have is selective. I can understand Java code, but I can’t understand why 90% of humanity can’t give a straight or honest answer to simple questions. I can feel myself desiring to go over the brink, and I grab my own shirt and pull back to where everybody else is; the agreed on perception, a collective dream that you all know as “reality”

There are treatments I would like to try, but no idea of the intervening steps. Just so, there is a lifestyle I think that would push me to this edge less often, but the between me and it; a vast void. I feel like a widow, pacing my widows walk, thinking of what I long for, knowing that I may never find it. Water does seem to be at the heart of every “world is brutal” metaphor. Yet, water is required, and I don’t think that being unfathomable is an essential quality of other people.

I bang on, and I cry out against the nonsense of it all. Then I find others, who have but a tiny glimpse of the whole that I see. The waste, degradation, in contrast to what could be, the ever present and persistent well being. See, glory is not an apt goal, because it can only be glorious in comparison to the suffering we live through day to day. What is most sought is to be so well that our problems are petty, that we struggle against annoyances, instead of against the yawning void of human misery.

Here I am, staring at the enormity of it. Knowing that a dent is the most I will ever make. Wondering if it matters at all. I could retreat into my own delusional fairy tale world, and be done with the miserable preoccupation of my companions. Yet, pain is the sobering thing, that thing which makes it all real to me. A world without pain? Utter agony of a different kind all together.

Head in the clouds, but neck and body feel six feet under. I’m hoping getting a new therapist will help, but I have been for 24 years searching for just one person who can understand well enough to get why I feel unsettled about the whole thing; everything I see represents opportunity, and the force I have to deny myself simply to be cogent and sensible is immense.

Then I have others tell me how glorious it must be, to have all the time and intellectual resources which they long for. Bless them, they don’t know. When I was told that knowledge was the source of all sadness, I underestimated the magnitude of pain. I underestimated, assumed that when I knew enough I would also know enough to set corrective action into motion. I don’t. I still feel like a child, lost and alone, grasping for meaning.

I’ve been running, for a long time, even this, in all of it’s apparent trying to deal, it’s running. As long as I must deny myself, I’m running from what I really want.

So here I am, drinking decaf coffee, looking at my vape like it owes me money, trying not to break down.

Not thinking I’m succeeding really, I tried to talk myself out of writing this, and here we are. I have no valid reason, merely hopes crushed and frustration. Yet, as I drove home earlier, I seriously thought about closing my eyes and ramming into a tree. It was delicious, just as a fantasy. I didn’t, obviously. More’s the pity. I keep digging deeper and deeper, hoping to find some ultimate evil behind all the nonsense, haven’t found it. If I could I would kill it, person, idea, whatever, anything can be obliterated.

There is no enemy, there is no item that can be brought into focus and attacked. People are just inept, incapable, utterly frustrating little bastards that make you think they could get around to being useful to others, but that’s just a clever ruse. Actually, it’s the opposite of a clever ruse; nothing intentional, intelligent, or contrived there. It is an unhelpful illusion. Just like love, and I suck at buying into the illusions.

I stopped posting here awhile ago, I thought things were getting better…… and even though they did for awhile, I feel utterly alone right now.

I finished my degree, got rejected at every grad school I applied, and went on more interviews than I have ever been on in my 15 year career. I’ve never worked this hard to get nothing back. I’ve never had a second interview and not gotten the job… Now my dreams are haunted by desire unfulfilled, hopes crushed.

Honestly, and I’ve had trouble discussing it; I wish I could get myself just a bit lower, just a bit more pain, so that I could do something about it. So that I could end this. One of these days I’m nearly certain I will…. I know just where to go, and just what to do such that I won’t be found.

I just…. don’t know how to function while being useless. I need to have something to show for putting up with the stuff I do on a daily basis. I guess that makes me a workaholic. What’s the fucking cure for that though? I can’t do the work I’m trained for, and I won’t be satisfied doing something else. Death isn’t much of an answer, but it’s more of one than I’ve been able to get out of dozens of employers. It’s not even the whole rotten world, just a select few rotten people mucking up for the rest of us. I try not to look at the things that upset me, but it just lingers in my heart, pain, frustration, that god awful desire to be useful….

I guess I’ll get through; just six more days and I can talk to my doctor; he’ll up the meds until I can’t feel again. Suppose that is my fate; on an endless drift through medications seeking that momentary freedom from pain, until they put enough poison in my that I die. I really am an addict; an addict to my own anger, ambition, and to the validation of others.

Where is the sober up program for that though? I’ve seen how they deal with meth, heroine, etc…. it’s a fucking revolving door, none of those patients get better, it’s just that enough of them die to make room for new patients.

What a piss poor excuse for a culture is this; trains people that it has no remote intention of using — instills work ethic that it has ever intention of discarding — inspires people just for them to fumble along futilely until it knocks them down again. I think that tomorrow I’m going to start trying to get wheels in motion to sell everything I have, move out to where I don’t have to look at or think about all the assholes who don’t give a damn about anyone else; then I’ll finally be normal; I won’t have to give a shit about anyone but myself. Clearly the world is happier for it.

This has been a rough month for me. It seems from the outside that I should be proud of what I’m doing, but I feel nothing but shame. I’m applying to graduate school and I was able to get my application into four different school. As of right now one has declined to interview me, and a second has outright rejected me. If I don’t get in there isn’t really work for me to do with my bachelors degree, which means that I’ve wasted the last three years of my life. For the last three years I’ve performed research and attained a GPA of 3.9. However due to my early mistakes my overall GPA is only 2.85. I didn’t do as well at the entrance exams as I hoped either. So even though I’ve put really hard work into this, it’s a waste. I don’t even know if I’ll ever be able to get into the career I want, their standards are so high.

I want to die. Really, that’s my next best option. I pulled myself together for that dream job, and that stupid thing is out of reach. I know it’s selfish, and I know that others think I live this charmed life, but on a day to day level I’m miserable. The only joy in my life for the past three years has been hoping to get into grad school and get to do the work I’ve trained for years for.

I guess I just don’t matter much on the larger scale. Any work I might do isn’t important enough to anyone to stand up for me. I don’t want to go to sleep because the nightmares will come back, but I have to sleep to function. I don’t even want to do any of this anymore, it’s all so pointless. That’s life though, one long trudge through pointless task after pointless task and then one day you get to be dead, the highest aspiration any of us can be assured of.

It’s been awhile since I was here, both literally and metaphorically. I’ve been so busy, which is a lie in a way, I had time to tend to things, it just wasn’t managed very well.

Now though, I am alone for awhile. My therapist quit, not on me but the organization that I was getting therapy through. The irony here is that I hired him 7 months ago to attempt to build a longer term therapy relationship with someone…. 7 months isn’t long term, I’ve had many therapy relationships last longer than that.

I’m still missing my best friend, or should I say former? I have no idea anymore. I dreamed about her last night, in the middle of a dream orgy and we were fighting… I guess that’s the way our story goes. Strange sexual tension and confused themes regarding the role she was supposed to play in my life. She doesn’t play any role in my life now, just another regret.

I keep moving forward, and am somewhat successful at that. My deadline this week that would have concluded today now will give me another five days to finish this project, which is great.

I’m struggling financially. It isn’t that I lack for food or essentials, it’s that I have a creditor breathing down my neck that I have no idea how to pay, as well as multiple projects that are on indefinite hold. I have things I need/want to do in the next few months, and I have no idea how I’ll end up pulling together the resources to do them. I’m very sick of being financially desperate, but there it is.

Thoughts of death come and go, as do thoughts on futility, failure and so on. I’m not terribly active on that score, because on some level I believe that better times are coming. In a year and a half I finish undergraduate university, hopefully two years from now I’ll be graduate school bound, preparing to move out of my home of ten years to a new city, new state and new job. It seems so close, and it also seems so far away. Sometimes I wonder if that finish line is actually there, if I’ll be able to get in, despite my successes I’m not sure that I’m smart enough, or qualified enough to get in.

All of these things spill out here, possibly never to be read or understood because at my core I am alone. I long for many things that I’m not even able to start chasing, and my freedom is about seven years away. All the while the winds howl outside, the country I love is as always divided and in danger, and the heat of summer attempts to chip away at my physical ability to cope.

I just take another step, not knowing where my path leads, hoping for better, ready for worse.

Today has been a roller coaster, by which I mean the last 36 hours awake have put many hard to deal with things. I was nearly overwelmed by a work project, and often times I had to stop and process some of the trauma of the past few months. Then I had my last session for awhile with this therapist, and that was emotional.

Now this. I had/have this dream of owning a particular piece of land. The problem thus far has been financing it, as well as some other practical limitations. I’m trying to have faith, put the thing in God’s court.

It’s like an old scar that itches, because I first had this vision of the property 9 years ago. There were times that I was frantic to make this thing happen, coming with all kinds of wild schemes just looking for something that could work. There was a time I was 100% confident that I was going to get there, now older and possibly wiser I’m not sure. I’ve got plenty of desires, chances are some aren’t going to work out. Simply by process of elimination, some things have to fail and some things have to succeed, right?

Anyway, just feeling lost, it’s been a tough couple of months.

I don’t know what sick part of me likes to look up my exes and fantasize about if I had made it work with them. It doesn’t happen with the ones I had several years with, most of them I’m glad to be rid of. It’s the ones that I dated for a few weeks, a few months at most. The ones that showed so much promise. They’re amazing people that for whatever reason it just didn’t work out with. I wonder if my life would be different if I had worked it out…. then I wonder what the point is….

I’m missing a deadline as I type this. It’s agonizing failure that I’m slowly against my will getting used to. Maybe it won’t have consequences, maybe it will…. I couldn’t have even done anything about this dang one. Last week I managed it, this week…. after three exams in four days I just can’t. My wits are worn down, I flubbed two out of three of the tests, still waiting on grades. I’m lonely…. it’s a small little hole I’ve managed to dig myself, no idea how to get out apart from waiting….

Everyone says the stuff will go away, but I’m not going to stop being busy until either I have a substantial amount of money or I’m dead. Taking bets on which one (hint, I’m going to die before I get to stop or rest.)

It seems like there should be some bright side. All I can think about is this stupid movie quote: “There’s one bright side to this; one day you’re going to die. When you end up in hell, at least it will be a step up from this place.”

Today we were reviewing a statistics question. The content of the question doesn’t matter, but the answer does. We were talking about solutions to problems, my favorite subject. I figured out that there had to be a solution to this problem, and my professor said: “That’s math over your head. It’s over my head.” The lady has a PhD in evolutionary psychology, and probably knows more about social psychology than I’ll figure out for another decade. Yet it’s this arrogance, over my head. You joking? I’m always at the same time in over my head and underwhelmed by the challenges presented to me. That’s fricken the life of a broke student.

It’s the life of a mentally ill person with intellectual ability to push through anyway. I’m in over my head, but I’m used to it. Right now I’m working on applying to grad school and others are saying “that graduate school might be too hard to get into.” I know it though, but why not try? Why does everyone around me avoid the difficult by pretending it is impossible. Very little is impossible. Impractical is usually the reason, but frankly the people making those judgement calls don’t have all the data.

Right now I’m standing when I feel like everyone thought I would fall. I kept working when it seemed like I should throw in the towel. In my head the big battle, the worst impossibility was already defeated. Everything else? Smaller problems than the ones I’ve already lived through. The terrors of my present are nothing compared to the nightmare of my past.

I’m working on a project on delusions, for a class I’m taking. For this class we have to assess the delusional state of a person, explain their symptoms and the source of the disorder.

It brings me to something close to my heart but that is hard to talk about. I’ve had delusions, and hallucinations, and further they happened while I was absolutely sober. There was no warning, just bang and the reality I knew was gone and I was talking to people that didn’t exist.

It occurs to me that this may all be a delusion, every moment from 2010 to present. Supposing there was some severe stressor; both parents dying violently, for example. Someone sick enough could conjure up an entirely different delusional narrative, and present it to themselves as fact. It might be so.

I have no evidence for this little hypothesis, but that makes it no less troubling. When I was delusional before I wasn’t very realistic about the difference between reality and un-reality.

I might imagine those parents still alive, and any help they provide would be entirely a construct of my mind, I might be effectively gaslighting myself. For a reality so horrible terrifies me to the core, more even than the possibility that it may be false. I could be sitting in an empty house, imagining the woman that loves me in the next room. I may have dreamed up people to like me, all to satisfy my own needs, to make myself hold on and not kill myself.

================

No way of knowing is there? This radical idea is mad in itself, and presenting to my potential delusions that I doubt their reality isn’t going to end well for me if they are real. I have to wait for evidence, for things that present as outlandish or foolish.

It’s a tough project, tougher than my project on suicide actually, if only because I have so many reasons to deny reality at the moment. I want to be connected, and such desire might motivate me to pretend. I’m not laughing as much as I was before, the bounce gone from my step as I determinedly march through my routine. The pain is there, denied, hidden, held back by years of careful planning.

Worse than all this, what if that dam breaks?

I cannot think of how I might cope, and thus I bolster the barrier and push through to the next moment.

I’m in so much submerged pain, and I’ve reach out to everyone, yet the people closest to me are making this the hardest day I have ever gotten through without a breakdown, without cracking completely open.

My best friend was on the verge of suicide, and I called people to help, now I’ll lose my home if I let her back in, my fiance is mad and somewhat blaming me… and I’m torn up more than I knew I could be.

I feel utterly alone, despite being surrounded by people that love me

I can’t cry, and I can’t come to terms with what happened today. I keep blaming myself, even though everyone else says I did what I was trained to do, what I was told to do. my heart is breaking, and I can’t feel it. Numb entirely the one time I want to feel, I want to cry and let go…… just so hard being strong when I want to be vulnerable. If these sleep meds don’t let me sleep I’ll be up with the crisis line all night, trying to stay alive….

I know, I know, protect myself… but dang it…. there’s nothing left of me in this hollow shell. All humanity was drained away doing the hardest thing I’ve ever done…. and I get the perspective of everyone involved, everyone but me….. I don’t get who on earth this guy is, some jerk who prefers an alive friend to her respect, to her kindness….. I feel so fucking selfish.

A mentor of mine said something pretty revolutionary to me; “Learning is pain, one cannot exist without the other.”

It upset me at the time because of the intimate relationship that I have with pain, and my job is essentially to remove pain from people’s lives, or at least bring it down to manage-able. So why do we hate pain so much, and if we hate it so much why do humans expend effort seeking out situations that cause them pain?

It’s been bothering me for awhile about people who have toxic families. Beyond a certain point family is a chosen relationship the same as any other. It seems like that’s remove-able pain. Knowing that, I still have family that pains me, but not on the level that I can stand to live without them. Why stay though, if the pain is so severe, if the family provides no support?

Early on I did take this strategy with my depression, out with toxic people. I had no energy for them. Yet slowly and surely pain crept back into my life, most of it created or sought out by me. Why do I do this? What’s the point?

There’s no way there is anyone in my face to face life that I can talk about this with, but it feels like it’s going to poison my heart if I don’t get it out.

I had a dream about being intimate with my best friend. In some ways it is expected, I used to be romantically attracted to her. On the other hand, it’s inappropriate. She’s living with me and my fiance for christ sake. I’ve been dealing with her being suicidal lately, being the shoulder to cry on and so on. I feel very responsible, and that seems like a positive thing.

I just can’t say anything, do anything about craving a certain kind of tenderness from her. She can’t give it to me. She shouldn’t give it to me, it isn’t her job.

None of this stops the hunger within me for it. There must be some part of my heart that thinks I could give her comfort if I held her, or more. See, can’t even say it in an anonomous way. That I desire.. THAT.

It’s also scary that I’m a professional caregiver. My job means taking care of mentally ill people, this is going to come up again. I was warned about this by an early mentor; being attracted to those I’m supposed to be helping. I have to learn professional distance, and it seems that I’m being taught how to tame my desires by being challenged by them.

It’s a challenge, one I want to rise to meet, but it’s also scary, isolating, and hard. These are things that provoke anxiety and a bit of depression within me. Which is why I’m writing about it. All married men are tempted, it’s part of the male experience in monogomous relationships. Usually that temptation has come to me from strangers, people I can avoid. Not this time…

I’m frustrated, which just makes the dogged arousal worse. I want to solve, be active in my angle of attack for this thing, and I can’t.

There is a part of me that could see giving in, and the other part horrified. I couldn’t forgive that in myself. It will be a struggle to forgive that temptation, which is more innocent than acting on it.

I’ve been trying to be kind to myself, but this really makes that nearly impossible. The line has to be somewhere, violating my base morals is worse than just being a wreck.

Does anyone else think about those that die with no effort? It’s sad, sure, but does it bother anyone else struggling with suicidal thoughts that there’s such a thing as an easy exit?

I mean, there isn’t an age exclusive set of people, it happens to a wide amount of people. One minute their living their lives, the next gone. Could be me or you any time. Wouldn’t it be pointless if we were ready to end it and cause so much more grief when we were around the corner from an easy exit?

I know that most of the time lately I’ve been feeling better, and it would be better if I didn’t spiral just because some of the depressed feelings are starting again…

Life is good at least by all measures that anyone else cares about. I’m working on a degree in a double major I like, I have shelter, lots of stuff that I wanted/want, people that care about me. It seems like I should feel blessed, and usually I do.

No matter what I do though I can’t run from that feeling deep down that I’ve sold out. Worse still I sold out for cheap. For some petty creature comforts I’m working on one of the most difficult projects in my life, because deep down I like to work. My dreams, there’s no direction and no hope to making that happen.

It’s like life itself is the enemy that I’m at war with. Every day I find a way to put on a smile and fight my best and hardest. At the end of the day I come home to an uneasy truce. Life gives me just the barest amount of what I desire, without ever satisfying those deep desires that I try to keep stuffed down.

Everyone else seems easily satisfied from my view. There’s no one I find common ground with.

This is a war with two potential ends. One way is that my ideas and plans somehow happen. The other is I die unfulfilled, with almost no one knowing how hard I struggled for something I could never have. For a long time I deluded myself that by some miracle the first one would happen… but lately my relationship with God makes me think that he’s just as satisfied with ordinary, and with the things that satisfy other men.

At times like this it seems like even God has abandoned my hopes, the deepest things that make me hold on and hope.

Yet, I try and find some joy somewhere. I try and laugh, because it’s all a big joke. It’s a joke that the world gives people hope when all it deals in those areas are pain and disappointment. It’s really quite funny, and most comedy does come from pain. My greatest comfort is that most of mankind is in horrible pain and the only reason that self awareness brings these things to the surface is that I delude myself into believing in a life without certain pains.

Like a starving man with a small amount of food, I try to imagine and pretend it is enough, and maybe someday it will be.