It’s a very good question. What is it that I cling to so hard that is worth all the hating of myself for being a non-productive citizen?

I htink it must be frustratin talking. I have a lot of pent up ambition and will. All those urges that make younger people want to go out into the world and find their place in it and make a name for themselves run strong in me, but in my case they are crippled by my depression and therefore find no expression.

That has to be at least a large portion of it.

Logically, my lack of productivity is no different than a similar lack in someone who is blind, in a wheelchair, has cancer, or is paralyzed from the neck down.

And I certainly don’t think those people are terrible and should be ashamed of themselves Instead, I am glad they are still with us and want them to concentrate on having as good a life as they can.

And yet, on another level, I am jealous of them, because their handicaps are obvious. Nobody is going to ask a bedridden cancer patient why they don’t have a job.

And yet, many of those people get all the help and support they need in order to lead a mostly normal life.

 

 

So what’s so different about me?

Is it simply that they have the nerve to ask for what they need, and I am too shy to do it? Maybe they are more realistic about their illness. Perhaps that is because their handicaps are too obvious for denial and therefore they have to be pragmatic and realistic about what they need in order to function.

But then again, that same obviousness attracts nurturing. Lots of people want to help the obviously handicapped. They tend to suffer from too much help rather than not enough. And their problems have more obvious solutions.

Missing a leg? Artificial leg. Paralyzed from the neck down? Wheelchair you can control with your mouth. Weak heart? Pacemaker.

But there is no such thing as an emotional prosthesis for the weak of soul. There is no device that can make me functionally sane and no form of help from others that can make it so that I am not carrying all this bad juju around.

The drugs help. But they treat the symptoms, not the disease.

My illness is invisible. Both to others and, sometimes, myself. It must be invisible to me if I can both accept its existence yet also blame myself for its symptoms.

Perhaps the real villlain in this story is hope. Specifically, the hope that comes from feeling that I could be doing better. That all I have to do is get my shit together and “snap out of it” and I will be able to go join the world and have a normal life with a job and a husband and everything, just like that.

Well that’s not going to happen. I am sick. Broken. I need to fully accept that, and adjust my life expectations accordingly. It’s not that I will never make anything of myself. I can be one of those handicapped people with an almost normal life.

But I am not going to get there if I keep this toxic dream of “one day I will wake up and it will be over” alive.

Sometimes we have to murder our dearest dreams in order to truily be who we are.

So goodbye, you dirty little dream. I love you but you are holding me back, and everything that is holding me back must go.

Let me make it official : I hereby declare that I have a serious illness that is not going ot go away if I just find the right insight or make the right connection in my head. It will take many years and considerable effort to get better and it is by no means guaranteed.

I might as well face it : this might be as good as it gets. A life spent playing video games, chatting with the fuzzies, and masturbating. ^[1] No job, no spouse, no status, no respect, no “functioning”.

Just this, till the day I die.

It’s not what I want, of course, but I have to admit it’s a possibility. And as it’s a possibility, it behooves me to examine it and plan for it.

That is, after all, how us Taurus bulls deal with our fears. We plan.

And if that turns out to be the case, I guess I could live with it. Like I have said before, my life is not that bad right now. It might not match all of my dreams and ambitions, but it is pleasant and comfortable and I could do a lot worse.

A lot of dreams would die, though, and dreams are precious. Dreams give us hope for the future. Dreams gives us a reason to hang around.

Dreams give us hope.

So perhaps I should take my vision of a life exactly like this one till the day I die and use it like Scrooge’s vision of Xmas future : as something to work as hard as I can to keep from coming to pass.

It could work, as long as I don’t think too hard about it.

Story of my life, really.

What do you know? We’re back to my frustrated ambitions again. If only there was a way I could clear the clog in the line connection ambition to action. Then I could spend my days acting on my ambitions and maybe even getting somewhere in life.

But even if it got me nowhere, I would at least feel better about myself. Better to be a struggling writer than a limp nothing, right?

But still, there is that great mass of sadness and suppressed rage inside of me that turns my face to the wall and says “no”.

It needs to go.

And some day,it will.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.