Well this is it. Today is my 50th birthday. I have officially been alive on Planet Earth for half a freaking century. And have precious little to show for it.
Speaking of which, let’s get this trash fire burning.
Let’s start with my litany of self-loathing : Here I am, 50 years old, and I have never :
- …had a full time job
- …supported myself financially
- …lived on my own
- ..been in a relatiohip
- …been in love
- …had any serious dates
- …been much of anywhere
- ..done much of anything besides play video games
..and so forth and so on.
And when I look back at all my wasted years – almoit all 30 years of my adult life so far, the prime years of my life – what I feel the most is grief.
Like a part of me, a very big part, has died and can never come back. All my best years poured down the drain by mental illness and moral cowardice and all the rest.
Mine is a classic case of failure to launch, and I am still lying there on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, forgotten and disused.
So consider this blog post to be, in part, a funeral. Today we lay to rest all the Michael John Bertrands who might have been had my soul not been crushed when my parents took me and my brother David out of college.
That hurt me so bad that it’s been 27 years and I still haven’t recovered.
So fare thee well in Fiddler’s Green, all the Michaels that might have been. We hardly knew ye even as possibilities, ;et alone realities.
I could have been so many things. A therapist. A comedian. A science fiction writer. A television writer. Pretty much any kind of writer besides technical.
And don’t give me that, “you could till do all those things! You’re not dead yet! All you have to do i pick which dream to follow then work incredibly hard towards that one dream and then some day, you can find out you don’t really like it after all!
Not that I’m bitter.
Besides, we are here to bury the past, not plan the future. Today we gather to remember all the good men that might have been but are now gone forever.
I wish I could have saved you all, other Michaels. I wish I had been strong enough and wise enough and sane enough to pull my head out of my ass, get my shit together, and actually focus on getting myself out of this hellhole once and for all.
I wish that now, too. But all I can do is keep banging my head against the wall of my insanity until it crumbles.
So fire up the bagpipes, boys. It’s time to put this old boy to rest.
May pretty flowers bloom where you lay, old friend. And may you oon find the strength to come out of your warren and stop hiding.
Frustrated with myself
Well, while I am venting my negatives, I might a well do the most recent ones.
I am pissed off at myelf for suandering this day. Your 50th birthday is supoed to be a big deal that you celebrate with a big party or at the very leat have some guests over o you can do the whole cake and candle thing.
Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday oh fuck it.
But I have done jack hit to celebrate my big 5 0. No celebration, no special treat for myself, no birthday cards. I haven’t even logged on to Tapestries to oak up all the birthday attention from my friends.
And why have I not done these things? Because I am too much of a limp noodle to arrange any of it, let alone carry it out.
Making this day special for myself would have required the eact kind of focus and drive that I find so very hard to summon up.
So I did what I always do : another thrilling day of video games and sleep.
Really living the high life over here. If you can call this living.
Or a life.
And I am so damned tired of being like this, all wimpy and passive and unable to do even the simplest of thing for myself.
Like I was saying to Doctor Costin today, I don’t want to be this way. I want to be trong and happy and healthy and connected with the rest of humanity.
I want to be a part of things, not always apart from things.
But there is something deeply and fundamentally broken in me that keeps me from being able to do much of anything on my own initiative.
For example, the one birthday thing that happened today was a phone call from my mother, and obviously she initiated that.
Hell, I haven’t even been able to come up with any ideas as to what the hell I want for my birthday. Not a single god damned thing.
Why? Because I am completely incapable of knowing what I want. Or need, for that matter. That’ how low my vitality ha ebbed.
I can’t even bring myelf to want things. Wanting takes too much energy.
So now I feel like I have failed my friends and myself by not being able to come up with anything, even though they asked almost a week ago.
Even just writing this section of the blog entry for today has exhausted me. What I really need right now is a long nap, but because I only got around to eating/blogging at fucking 10 pm, I will only have like half an hour before midnight rolls around and it’s time to be social with Le Gang.
And I feel like crap. I was hoping food would perk me up, but nope. it just transformed feeling ill and hungry to feeling ill and full.
In short, happy fucking birthday to me.
I just wish I’d been alive to see it.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.