i know you're depressed
know you just don't want to deal
with me
with anyone
don't feel like you can
don't feel like you can take anymore
don't feel like you can handle it all
it's just too much
all these people who Love you
who mean so well
who want to be the one to save you
to play the hero
be the one to make you smile again
they have no idea
can't feel what it's like
they don't understand that
for all their good intentions
their affections are just another burden
their attempts at Love and comfort just a
complicated social dance
they're forcing on you
i know you want to feel better
know you would if you could
but all their attempts to help you
just make you feel like a burden
to the people you Love
the ones you least want to burden
and why can't they see that only makes it worse
to have to choose between
disappointing them
when their attempts at cheeriness inevitably fail
or lying to them
and pretending to feel better
when you don't
not really
just to spare their feelings
can't they see that you don't have the energy
to even be responsible for your own feelings right now
much less anyone else's
why can't they just leave you alone
alone
isolated
simplified
reduced
quiet
numb
trying to let the pain fade
disappear into nothing at all
so in the blessed silence left behind
the spark may return
just maybe
to fan the flames again
to build the heat
and warm you back to life
but only if you can first get away
away from all of us
and all our Love and affections
and our mountains of best intentions
only if you can reduce all the noise
and complications
and lay still in your shallow depression
i know you're depressed
i know how you feel
i know i can't help
i know i'd only weigh you down further
and make it harder for you to get up again
but i also know
that I Love you
and that you are not alone
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Only Grey...
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Gaze Deep Into My Navel And Despair...
How am I supposed to grow up?
I want to grow up. I really do. No, more than that, I need to. I need to grow the fuck up. I'm almost forty years old, but I still see myself as if I were twenty-five. That might sound appealing on some level, at first; "young at heart" and all that. And maybe it would be, if that's what I wanted for myself. But it isn't. I want to grow up. I need to grow up, because I can't keep living like I'm twenty-five. I'm not twenty-five anymore. I can't eat like a twenty-five year-old anymore. I can't move like a twenty-five year-old anymore. I can't party like a twenty-five year-old anymore. Fuck, I can't even sleep like a twenty-five year-old anymore. It all hurts me now in a way that it never did, and I can feel myself breaking down at an astonishing rate, as if the force of Entropy inside me were being fed by some radioaction of chemical combustion. Accelerated Decrepitude. But on the other hand, trying to live within my almost-forty means, while still feeling like a twenty-five year-old inside, is so monumentally depressing that I can't even fucking bother; I always just end up feeling like I already have one foot in the grave.
A twenty-five year-old trapped in a forty year-old body. How incredibly pathetic. How incredibly modern. How incredibly privileged.
But how am I supposed to grow up? I don't know. My observations tell me that for most people, this happens as a natural side-effect of breeding. That creating a child shifts all perspectives, and forces the new parent into a maturity that cannot be achieved through any other means. That makes sense to me. I can understand that.
But I'm never going to have any children. So what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to force myself to achieve a state that, for most people, requires quite possibly the single most life-altering event they will ever experience in order to achieve?
Sometimes I think, maybe I don't actually need to grow up? If I don't have any children, then what do I need to grow up for? Why do I feel this need anyways? I can only assume it is because I reflexively compare my life to the model my parents set for me. When I look at myself, and try to judge whether I'm doing well or not, I compare it to the life they lived. And I always feel myself coming up short.
They went to college. They got degrees. They worked hard. (My father still works harder than almost anyone else I know, and while my mother never worked as hard as he did, she still inarguably worked harder than I do now.) They bore and raised children. They owned houses, with yards and multiple floors and everything.
But I dropped out of college. I have no degrees, and probably never will. Yeah, I have a career that doesn't leave me wanting to kill myself, but I still hate it, just because it's work, and I hate work of any kind; I hate being forced to sell myself every day in order to sustain myself. I don't own a house. I own an absurdly tiny condo that I hate and will never be able to sell for as much as I paid for it. I am almost certain I will end up having to live in that tiny little box for the rest of my life, watching it deteriorate around me, with me - and that thought terrifies me on a regular basis.
And even these modest achievements - a well-paying job that I can sort of do well and tolerate, and a tiny little condo I'm trapped in like a prison cell - even these barely note-worthy accomplishments I never actually earned; I didn't work hard to achieve these things. I got this job because some well-meaning middle-aged women that I worked with took pity on me, and talked to their bosses, and told them they knew this kid they thought would do well as a programmer. And they were right - I am a good programmer. At least, I'm alright. But again, not because I try to be, or because I studied or worked hard or went to school or anything else. I just have a natural talent for logic and pattern recognition and symbology, and so I am a naturally decent programmer. I could be a great programmer if I wanted to be; if I tried to be and put forth the effort. But I don't. Because I don't care. I only want to put forth the minimum amount of effort to get by, and save the rest for indulging in my life's pleasures.
And it's a similar story with my "home." I didn't work hard and save money every day so that I could eventually put a down payment on my dream home. My grandfather died, and since my mother (his daughter) was already dead herself, the portion of his life's wealth that should have been hers (and he had worked hard all his life to achieve that wealth) came to me instead. And I used all of that money to buy the apartment I had been living in for almost a decade at that point. The biggest, most "adult" accomplishment of my life - becoming a home-owner - and it only happened because I was in a position to profit off of the deaths of two of my close family members. And so it has never felt like an accomplishment to me. It feels like blood money.
(It's true that I performed magick to get the job and the money and the apartment, but even taking the assumption that my magick worked doesn't help the situation any. Magick is a short-cut. It's easy compared to actually working hard to learn or to save money. And it's fun to do, and for that reason alone I wanted to do it, whether it worked or not. So even assuming that I came by these things through sorcery, it still doesn't feel like an accomplishment to me. It still doesn't feel like I really earned them. It feels like I cheated.)
And I will almost certainly never see that much money again in my lifetime. I can barely maintain a savings of more than a couple of thousand dollars at a time. I live paycheck-to-paycheck, even with my fairly significant salary. I've always been that way. If I have money, I want to spend it on making myself feel good right now, and I can't seem to deny myself comfort or happiness in the present, in order to save it for some undefined future. As I've written here before, I feel like the Grasshopper, fiddling away as the first snow begins to fall.
But why do I determine the value of my life by comparing it to my parents'? They were completely different people, living in a completely different time. And who wanted completely different things from their life than I want from mine. And I know this. But I still can't shake this feeling that I am somehow failing at life, because I seem to remember my parents being so much better off in their twenties than I am in my thirties; or will be in my forties. I just want to be happy, like anyone else. But I constantly and consistently feel that the things that make me happy aren't good for me. That they are self-indulgent, or immature, or masturbatory. That I am a bad person for living my life the way that I do. But trying to live my life any other way always leaves me just as miserable, if only in a different way.
I just want to spend my life relaxing in the bathhouse, playing games, reading, writing, watching TV and movies, sleeping, eating, drinking and getting high, and punctuating the whole thing with the occasional orgasm. That is really all I want from life.
And I feel like a worthless waste of a human being for feeling that way. I hate myself for feeling that way. But even so, I have no idea how to change it; I have no idea how to want anything else.
Okay, sure, I want other things. Bigger things. I want to have a big house with a yard and a basement and an attic. I want to be able to support myself through writing, or some other form of creative expression. (If only I could make a living playing games!) I want a sense of accomplishment. I want to feel like my life mattered, in any way. I want to feel a sense of confidence that when I'm gone, I will have made some mark on the world that is all my own; that I will leave behind something more than a pile of carbon dust. I do want all of these things. But when I think about them, and I envision the monumental amount of work it would take to even try to achieve any of them - with no guarantee of success! - I lose any hope I may have had about ever actually achieving them.
Because I know that I will never do that work. I just don't have it in me. Achieving anything of any real significance requires a single-minded devotion that I just don't have. Have never had.
Because deep-down, I don't want to be great. All I really want is to be comfortable. And I guess I am. So I should be happy, then, right? Then why do I feel this way? I just wish I could learn to be happy with what I have, instead of hating myself for not being able to be great.
I guess what it all really comes down to is this: I feel lazy, and I hate myself for being lazy, but I don't know how to make myself be anything else. And I hate myself for that, too.
+ + +
Or maybe I'm just depressed because winter is coming, and I'm all out of drugs, and I can feel both of these things gnawing at my bones.
I want to grow up. I really do. No, more than that, I need to. I need to grow the fuck up. I'm almost forty years old, but I still see myself as if I were twenty-five. That might sound appealing on some level, at first; "young at heart" and all that. And maybe it would be, if that's what I wanted for myself. But it isn't. I want to grow up. I need to grow up, because I can't keep living like I'm twenty-five. I'm not twenty-five anymore. I can't eat like a twenty-five year-old anymore. I can't move like a twenty-five year-old anymore. I can't party like a twenty-five year-old anymore. Fuck, I can't even sleep like a twenty-five year-old anymore. It all hurts me now in a way that it never did, and I can feel myself breaking down at an astonishing rate, as if the force of Entropy inside me were being fed by some radioaction of chemical combustion. Accelerated Decrepitude. But on the other hand, trying to live within my almost-forty means, while still feeling like a twenty-five year-old inside, is so monumentally depressing that I can't even fucking bother; I always just end up feeling like I already have one foot in the grave.
A twenty-five year-old trapped in a forty year-old body. How incredibly pathetic. How incredibly modern. How incredibly privileged.
But how am I supposed to grow up? I don't know. My observations tell me that for most people, this happens as a natural side-effect of breeding. That creating a child shifts all perspectives, and forces the new parent into a maturity that cannot be achieved through any other means. That makes sense to me. I can understand that.
But I'm never going to have any children. So what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to force myself to achieve a state that, for most people, requires quite possibly the single most life-altering event they will ever experience in order to achieve?
Sometimes I think, maybe I don't actually need to grow up? If I don't have any children, then what do I need to grow up for? Why do I feel this need anyways? I can only assume it is because I reflexively compare my life to the model my parents set for me. When I look at myself, and try to judge whether I'm doing well or not, I compare it to the life they lived. And I always feel myself coming up short.
They went to college. They got degrees. They worked hard. (My father still works harder than almost anyone else I know, and while my mother never worked as hard as he did, she still inarguably worked harder than I do now.) They bore and raised children. They owned houses, with yards and multiple floors and everything.
But I dropped out of college. I have no degrees, and probably never will. Yeah, I have a career that doesn't leave me wanting to kill myself, but I still hate it, just because it's work, and I hate work of any kind; I hate being forced to sell myself every day in order to sustain myself. I don't own a house. I own an absurdly tiny condo that I hate and will never be able to sell for as much as I paid for it. I am almost certain I will end up having to live in that tiny little box for the rest of my life, watching it deteriorate around me, with me - and that thought terrifies me on a regular basis.
And even these modest achievements - a well-paying job that I can sort of do well and tolerate, and a tiny little condo I'm trapped in like a prison cell - even these barely note-worthy accomplishments I never actually earned; I didn't work hard to achieve these things. I got this job because some well-meaning middle-aged women that I worked with took pity on me, and talked to their bosses, and told them they knew this kid they thought would do well as a programmer. And they were right - I am a good programmer. At least, I'm alright. But again, not because I try to be, or because I studied or worked hard or went to school or anything else. I just have a natural talent for logic and pattern recognition and symbology, and so I am a naturally decent programmer. I could be a great programmer if I wanted to be; if I tried to be and put forth the effort. But I don't. Because I don't care. I only want to put forth the minimum amount of effort to get by, and save the rest for indulging in my life's pleasures.
And it's a similar story with my "home." I didn't work hard and save money every day so that I could eventually put a down payment on my dream home. My grandfather died, and since my mother (his daughter) was already dead herself, the portion of his life's wealth that should have been hers (and he had worked hard all his life to achieve that wealth) came to me instead. And I used all of that money to buy the apartment I had been living in for almost a decade at that point. The biggest, most "adult" accomplishment of my life - becoming a home-owner - and it only happened because I was in a position to profit off of the deaths of two of my close family members. And so it has never felt like an accomplishment to me. It feels like blood money.
(It's true that I performed magick to get the job and the money and the apartment, but even taking the assumption that my magick worked doesn't help the situation any. Magick is a short-cut. It's easy compared to actually working hard to learn or to save money. And it's fun to do, and for that reason alone I wanted to do it, whether it worked or not. So even assuming that I came by these things through sorcery, it still doesn't feel like an accomplishment to me. It still doesn't feel like I really earned them. It feels like I cheated.)
And I will almost certainly never see that much money again in my lifetime. I can barely maintain a savings of more than a couple of thousand dollars at a time. I live paycheck-to-paycheck, even with my fairly significant salary. I've always been that way. If I have money, I want to spend it on making myself feel good right now, and I can't seem to deny myself comfort or happiness in the present, in order to save it for some undefined future. As I've written here before, I feel like the Grasshopper, fiddling away as the first snow begins to fall.
But why do I determine the value of my life by comparing it to my parents'? They were completely different people, living in a completely different time. And who wanted completely different things from their life than I want from mine. And I know this. But I still can't shake this feeling that I am somehow failing at life, because I seem to remember my parents being so much better off in their twenties than I am in my thirties; or will be in my forties. I just want to be happy, like anyone else. But I constantly and consistently feel that the things that make me happy aren't good for me. That they are self-indulgent, or immature, or masturbatory. That I am a bad person for living my life the way that I do. But trying to live my life any other way always leaves me just as miserable, if only in a different way.
I just want to spend my life relaxing in the bathhouse, playing games, reading, writing, watching TV and movies, sleeping, eating, drinking and getting high, and punctuating the whole thing with the occasional orgasm. That is really all I want from life.
And I feel like a worthless waste of a human being for feeling that way. I hate myself for feeling that way. But even so, I have no idea how to change it; I have no idea how to want anything else.
Okay, sure, I want other things. Bigger things. I want to have a big house with a yard and a basement and an attic. I want to be able to support myself through writing, or some other form of creative expression. (If only I could make a living playing games!) I want a sense of accomplishment. I want to feel like my life mattered, in any way. I want to feel a sense of confidence that when I'm gone, I will have made some mark on the world that is all my own; that I will leave behind something more than a pile of carbon dust. I do want all of these things. But when I think about them, and I envision the monumental amount of work it would take to even try to achieve any of them - with no guarantee of success! - I lose any hope I may have had about ever actually achieving them.
Because I know that I will never do that work. I just don't have it in me. Achieving anything of any real significance requires a single-minded devotion that I just don't have. Have never had.
Because deep-down, I don't want to be great. All I really want is to be comfortable. And I guess I am. So I should be happy, then, right? Then why do I feel this way? I just wish I could learn to be happy with what I have, instead of hating myself for not being able to be great.
I guess what it all really comes down to is this: I feel lazy, and I hate myself for being lazy, but I don't know how to make myself be anything else. And I hate myself for that, too.
+ + +
Or maybe I'm just depressed because winter is coming, and I'm all out of drugs, and I can feel both of these things gnawing at my bones.
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