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 12th 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.
