The last worthless blog post that you'll have to read

PS: Read John Pavlovitz. He writes about what matters much better than I. He's who I wanted to be I guess.

I am home sick with a migraine.

Probably caused by stress.

But that’s not why I’m writing this.

I’ve been hit with depression since I returned home from my vacation on Wednesday that has gradually become more severe. I think that the severity is due to the stark differences from spending four days in Manhattan truly enjoying myself and the reality of coming back to work in a place that is like a real haunted house – one I can’t escape and keep telling myself that I should be grateful to work for in light of how much they pay me for so little work I actually do.

I used to work in jobs where I felt I made a difference but lost them all because I couldn’t control the emotions caused by a condition I didn’t even know I had.

But that’s all over now and I finally accept that.

Circumstances have forced me to accept that.

You know, I could go on like I usually do in these boring screeds but in this case let me TRY to be mercifully brief for all seven readers.

My skills are deteriorating. I can’t stand the world I live in anymore. I have overburdened my wife with my illness. I hate myself. I can’t take the fact that I could have been much more than what I turned out to be if I had been able to master my illness earlier in life. Some people can live with that, I can’t.

Nobody really wants to hear anyone whine. Trust me, this will be the last one.

When one door closes, another one opens. But what if it doesn’t? How do you force the door? After over 30 years of being an ‘escape artist’ in life, the door is closed.

I’m tired of being told about attitude and outlook and re-invention and ‘finding your muse’ and all that hippy-dippity self-help crap that makes its purveyors tons of money while leaving more frustration in its wake among the people who bought the snake oil. Live in my head for an hour and tell me how possible all of it is. When your brain reminds you of every regrettable thing you’ve done your whole life and what a shit you are for doing it, it’s hard to see out of that fog.

The fog – the forgetting of words, keys, names that keeps getting worse. A once sharp mind struggling to put coherent sentences together. Blanking out in the middle of a thought or task. Looking at words written just ten minutes before and finding them unrecognizable.

Fuck it, I’m overwriting again. I won’t explain myself to anyone anymore. No one can understand and I don’t give a shit anymore if they do or not.

What I really wanted, all I really wanted, was someone to talk to. I’m a two-time failure with support groups; I won’t go into why. I’ve had 30 shrinks. I’ve taken boatloads of pills. But all of those could have been bested by having someone, anyone, who understands all of this to talk to. Not even someone with bipolar/anxiety/depression but someone who would just be willing to listen.

I’ve tried.  Believe me, I’ve tried. On Facebook, someone sneezes and 40 of their friends rush to comfort them. I know, being a guy, it’s much harder. As a man, emotionally and physically, I’ve been a failure. The guys I went to school with and those I have met along the way couldn’t understand a person like me. Ergo, most of my friends have been female. But still there is a big gulf of understanding. Sometimes they listen but after a while, I get the sense that most of them wonder when I’m going to get my shit together and start pretending to be happy and successful – like everyone on Facebook does. Except me of course.

My posts the last day or two have hinted at my deteriorating state. I’m going to go back and erase them. It really is an embarrassment to bleed all over a semi-public forum if you’re a guy. I have to admit that as it went on, the posts were kind of an experiment – would anyone read between the lines and wonder if I was in some trouble (I am) and reach out.

Well if someone had, I would not be writing this.

I’m done.

I have a function on the 12^th that requires me to be on Facebook at least until then. After that, I need to suck it up, be strong, and separate myself from posting and replying. I’m not cut out for this. It’s too much of an emotional roller coaster and people like me shouldn’t play the game because, eventually, we’ll always lose. I can’t pretend to present a smiling happy successful face to the world when it really doesn’t exist. And everyone has problems and mine are no greater or lesser or worth the trouble for anyone else to acknowledge.

I read other people’s lives in their Facebook pages and wonder what cosmic crimes I committed that I couldn’t have that – that even when I stumbled there would be people who would reach out – first online, then in real life. We all still have phones in those computers.

But again, I’m whining and I know it. And I’m going long and I don’t care. Since I was a little kid it’s been this way. I can remember the first day at school each year at Notre Dame Elementary when I was so excited to think that maybe this year would be different – this year I could make real friends and be accepted into the group. I would sit there on the first day trying to catch someone’s eye to talk to. But they were too busy talking amongst themselves about the vacations they took and the things they did during the summer that my parents could never afford. And I would feel this invisible wall descend around me between me and everyone else. And it hurt. Every year. And it hurt like hell.

I know I’m not attractive. I was always the fat kid with the funny last name and the intelligence that even my own mother warned me was going to be threatening to others.

I’m tired of trying to be someone I’m not to fit in. I’ve tried to be other people so many times that I really don’t know who I am.  I’m tired of trying to lose weight, meet the right people and get involved in outside activities, clubs and groups only to crash and burn every time because of some facet of my personality or illness.

I know now, it is best for me to be alone and wait.

I’m lonely but I’ll just have to get over it. At some point it will end and I will be grateful for it.

There will be no more vacations. If I must work where I am, then I need to be there to not only protect my job but not to let myself think that it will get any better. This is your life – adjust; until it becomes too much which it will at some point.

So that’s it. I used to be a writer but now I can’t write for shit. I used to be on radio now no one wants to hear me. My time has come and gone. The mental health organizations want young good-looking faces for their writing and speaking staffs. No one cares about middle aged white guys with mental issues until we become a statistic – ‘my God, look at the rates of suicide spiking for this group!

‘Well, having been on top for so long on the backs of others, they’re just getting what they deserve.’

I’ve never felt on top of anything.

As I wrote above, I have nothing to say that hasn’t been said about my condition by others who can now write circles around me. It was a decent ride; I had a lot of luck but I don’t see the worth in wasting my time writing something that no one really wants to read. I don’t feel like wasting any more time struggling to be fit or sociable when my long track record of failure in those areas is a testament to futility.

This is the last entry of the last blog. The last worthless effort to be heard and understood – and, really believe me, to try to find others like me – to write for all of us old guys who have felt the pangs of suicidal ideation but kept going trying to find peace in a world that really wishes we’d just shut up and hang ourselves already.

I’ve just looked at the word counter on the bottom of the screen – 1,400 words of undiluted bullshit. 

So I’ll stop here.