I find myself thinking again. I do a lot of that these days. Whether it's right thinking I cannot really say. Whether it's logical, I can't really say. While I do try to be objective, I am well aware I tend to fall short. Everything is colored by the lens of my feelings. Rational? Bah. So I can only go with what I feel and what I am. I find within myself those contradictions that would be quite comedic (If they weren't me). However, being things are what they are, I must at last be as true to myself as I can be. I guess one can take all of these ramblings with whatever grain of salt they want to. It's just me, what I think, feel, and see. I am the sum of a lot of things, you know. This fun house ride of a life had nether been the best nor the worst a human being has ever had to live. But you know? I have always hated it when people try to say things like "Cheer up. People have it worse than you". How is that supposed to make me feel better? It sounds like a sadistic point of view if you ask me. The suffering and despair of another human being is absolutely nothing to be happy about. And what if these folks said, "Feel bad because people have it better than you." Comparison is a road that only leads to the darkest abyss. Besides I want to wish all my fellow human beings with good hearts and love towards one another all the happiness they can find in this existence. The tears and pain of somebody else will never bring me joy. The happiness, love, and belonging of yet another will never bring me down. I want happiness for all of us. This is what I honestly believe in my heart. It may sound corny as all get out, but this is truly how I feel.
Now, I have been going through quite a few struggles myself, and I know I'm not the only one. I just can't be. A lot of mornings, I have had a difficult time extricating myself from the deep tranquility of sleep. The physical part of this struggle, no doubt, a lot of people would understand. But it is so much more than that. I often wonder is sleep is a sort of mini-death. So long as the dreams are either nice or non-existent, It is a peace I can never truly have in the waking world. Sometimes coming back to reality can be quite a shock to the system. And look, I well understand the way life is. Getting up and going to make a living is something I have done for my entire adult life. I try to do all these things I am supposed to do. The problem is that lately the only things I feel I am working toward is old age and death. See, I have no problem with work and I understand one must deal with people. However, for me all this must mean something besides just getting through the day, paying all the bills, or basically survival. Survival is not living, my friends. I want to live, not merely survive. I want my work to mean something beyond the next paycheck, beyond the next set of bills I need to pay. I am just plain tired of it being the same thing over and over again and finding myself no closer to being where or who I truly want to be.
All these things, merely 6 1/2 months ago, I would just have picked up the phone and talked to the very one who would have understood. Now I find myself sending these very words out in to the vastness of the internet, where they will stay among the writings of so many others, along with so many other messages in bottles that have been cast into that binary sea. This battle I have been fighting with both depression and anxiety has been raging on for as long as I can remember. As a child, I did not understand what it was or why. As an adult, I am still trying to figure a lot of this chaos out. I have been a mess all my life, But I have found myself in so many situations where I have had to rise above it. When I suddenly found myself a single parent going on 14 years ago, I wanted to spend my days laying down and just crying myself to sleep. Yet, There was my kids who needed to be fed, needed help getting ready for school, needed me to be both mother and father to them. And so I did the absolute best I could. I have many kinds of memories of that time. There were our grocery trips with those three little ones in tow, a link of hands, and me telling them for us to be like the big ducks and little ducks crossing the pond in a row. (I was terrified of some of the crazies zooming through parking lots). I remember having a mini breakdown one morning, mad at myself for forgetting to wash their jeans the night before. I remember having to quit my decently paying surveying job (Because they wanted me to work out of town) and having to do a stint at Wal-Mart on a shift that was 4pm to 1am, where I would have to pick the boys up from my parents the following morning at 6am, put the older two on the bus, and keep my youngest who wasn't yet in school.. I was getting maybe 2 to 3 hours sleep at night. The world sure got hazy. I remember later that year, getting my youngest started in kindergarten. He will be a high school senior this year. I remember all the heavy drama of the divorce, dealing with courtrooms and cops, both called on me and sometimes when I was forced to call them, of how the ex would roam the isles of Wal-Mart with her new slime, just to get to me, of unwanted visits to my office and house later. Of all the unnecessary stress it added on when all I wanted was to move on and have peace. I lived in constant fear that I would have a complete breakdown. Somehow I made it through. My baby sister was so much support during that time. She would call and check on me. and was there if I ever needed to pick up the phone and vent.
Then came all the things from later years, It can be summed up by this particular scene from 2018 when I asked my lawyer's secretary to cut the hospital band off my arm because I had just gotten out from where my blood pressure had gone crazy, so I could go and talk to my lawyer about an upcoming wrongful suit filed by my ex, which had been delayed because that category 5 hurricane known as Michael had messed up my house and filled every road between there and town with a horizontal forest of downed trees. I mean how the Hell could I still be sane? Then came a month later when I broke my wrist while trying to clean up debris, and my father found out he had colon cancer, and on and on and on... And this is just a half ass summary that still leaves a lot of things out. Then there was the next year when I found myself with this internal crises, with a very similar feeling of having nothing to really look forward to, Of having some very dark thoughts of maybe just calling it a life, staved off by an internal promise to be truer to myself. Maybe some have noticed the outward effect of this, maybe some haven't. Maybe still others have seen, but don't know what it means. All I can say is that for the time, it saved me. Maybe outwardly that's all that matters. It gave me something to look forward to. It gave me something that even on my direst mornings I could think of and be happy, if even only a moment. I seriously doubt I could make anybody understand, and if I outright said it, you'd probably all think I am crazy. And maybe I am. Like I have said so many times, If I am insane I have earned it. Look at what I have been through! I cannot claim my life has been worse or better than others. After all, I happen to be me and only in these particular shoes. But what i can say with certainty is that it's been rough, folks. But anyway, with this mostly internal, slightly external change (Or simple recognition) of myself, I had found a way to go on, a reason to continue, something to think about in moments of darkness. The only thing is that I have sort of reached a bit of an impasse. Well, maybe not an impasse but a decision point. I cannot go further without passing the point of no return. Part of me is impatient. Part of me is terrified. You could say there's a 50-50 vote in the Jonathonian Senate and I've got to cast the tie breaker. If CSPAN could get into my brain, I think I'd run and hide. If only real life had save files. Have you ever been in a situation where you just might find out who your friends are (Or who they aren't)?
So, here I am today. Externally I am sort of adequate. I hold a job, I pay my bills, I do what I can for my kids, even though they're all technically grown. This old house is run down and needs a lot of work, but it is paid for and mine. I am a walking pile of contradictions. People get on my nerves, but I'm lonely sometimes. There is so very much I want so desperately to say, But I know I can't, at least not yet. I miss my baby sister so very much. I really feel that the bit of my soul that lived with her is now gone like her. I can only hope that there is a bit of her that maybe I keep alive. To be my sister's keeper would be one of the few reasons I have left to live. Though I really couldn't talk to my mother as I could talk to my sister, I miss her too. She never left me or my sisters, you know? She was always there. She drove me so crazy sometimes, but she was a good mother, and now I miss her like crazy. I have so much more I need to be doing, But I just feel so tired and old these days. A lot of times it has taken me a monumental effort just to get myself to make it to work each day, to fight that inviting call of silence, peace, and sleep, of nothingness, of no more pain. It doesn't matter whether I would be believed when I state the magnitude of courage and strength it takes me to get through some ordinary days, Or of the lengths I have had to go through internally to make myself believe it is still worthwhile. But it is true. To tell you the truth, I really don't know what I even want for the rest of my life. What would be my three wishes if a genie were to just poof into this room? Of those the only one I am certain of would be classified information. Maybe my second wish would be to be rich enough to pick up stakes and move to a nice place where I could just completely start over. Maybe a nice beach, a lawn chair, umbrella drinks, the sound of the birds and the surf, and all the time in this world. Unrealistic for a worker ant like me. I honestly feel like I have long ago did my time, but the world and reality just do not agree. I still can kinda smile when I close my eyes and picture myself with with the above wishes granted. Just myself, the beach, that chair, and that drink. And if one could see the picture I have in my head, particularly me... Well that picture would be worth all the words I have already said, and fill in all the blanks for all the other words I wish I could say, but can't just yet if ever. Yes, it's complicated. But it is also so simple. When you stand at the precipice, balancing on that edge, at the very first unreversible step, wanting so much to move forward, yet so very terrified. I am not making very much sense, am I? Maybe someday. Just not now. Not with so much else going on. Maybe I daydream too much, spending my day with my head in the clouds. As Alice Johnson in Nightmare 4 said, "When it's all you have, you kinda become an expert". (Have I ever said just how much her character reminds me of my baby sister? Especially at the end when she kicks Freddy's butt all over the lot?) When it is all you have, it sort of becomes you.
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