And that’s not something I say easily, because normally, intellectually, I am usually pretty fearless and open to things which might be sad or harsh or strange or terrible or terrifying.

So it takes a lot to make me wish I had never, ever read something. Even something as brutal as The Cold Equations is something that, while it has a serious emotional toll attached to it every time I read it, I am still glad I read it. It’s a profoundly important work.

But I really, really wish I had never read this story that starts right here.

I link to it for reference, but please be warned, it’s incredibly sad and depressing. Make sure your heart is warm enough to survive the chill.

As for me…. I fucking hate the webcomic creator for telling the story and I fucking hate the world of dropping it out of the blue into my brain when my defenses were down and making me feel like I feel right now. It’s not fair. I have been feeling pretty good lately, and have been watching things which were new to me and enjoying them and feeling a little warmly towards the world, and now… this.

God, why did it have to be a fox?

I would retell the story in brief here, but I just can’t handle it emotionally, so I am sorry, but you are going to have to go read it. I am sorry that it’s so sad and if it makes you feel bad too, I am really, really sorry.

But it’s like it was written expressly to destroy me emotionally. I feel a deep connection with foxes, and often, things which involve foxes have an especially strong effect on me. To this day, I can never watch Disney’s The Fox And The Hound again because all that stuff about childhood and friendship and conflict and being different would be hard enough to take, but put a fox in there… and it is just too damned intense, and hits far too close to home.

So to have such a sad story revolve around a fox of a (hopefully fictional, but I can’t bring myself to check because if it’s not fictional, it will kill me to know this really happens in this horrible cold cruel world) breed called the Japanese Glacier Fox… jesus fucking Christ, why would the world do this to me?

Because god damn it…. I am that poor little fox. It’s me, it’s me, it’s me. My life went fine while I was still in the den, before school. But then I went to school, and something I could not even slightly begin to understand (bullying, and all it implied) burned out a very important part of me and left me helpless and dependent and abandoned and alone and confused and lost, lost, lost, so god damned lost.

And so help me god, I want to go down to the sea and sit very still and let it takes me away, because I can’t cope and I never will and maybe next time I will have eyes.

I’m just so broken inside, and everything is so damned hard, and there is always too many possibilities and so much pain and I am always so god damned scared deep down inside and there is no place anywhere that I can run to get away from it and I am trapped and I am dying and I am alone.. really, deeply, alone.

And the ocean….. it had to be a fox AND the ocean. I grew up a few blocks from the Atlantic. I feel a deep connection to the ocean. Usually it calms me just to be near it.

But to just surrender to it, have it wash me and my filth and my horribleness and my taint away for good, take me away from this world where I don’t work and I don’t fit and I don’t know how to do anything and I can’t even do the the things it would take to get better and I am probably not even going to make it to fifty because I am so fat and unhealthy and disgusting…. to end that, to rid the world of me and leave it clean so I am no longer a burden or an embarrassment or a drain on people’s time and attention and good willl…

To take myself out of the equation so that at last, the world can heave a sigh of relief and say “thank goodness, I thought he’d never leave… ” and drown in the ocean, the only thing big enough to wash away all that I am and remain clean, because even a profound shitbag pathetic joke of a person like me is just a tiny drop in a sea of pure calm water…

To spare my loved ones from the burden of having to care for and clean up after my helpless self…

I am terrified by how good that sounds to me right now.

This is way worse than the spider, and he was a real creature. Here I am, crying my eyes out and feeling suicidal over a cartoon fox.

God, I hope the Japanese Glacier Fox isn’t real.

I can only hope that, despite how I feel right now, I will make it through all this and come out stronger and cleaner and that this was just the trigger I needed to release a profound catharsis deep from my soul, and when the flood ends and the waters recede, this will have turned out to be just what I needed.

Sometimes, the best thing life can do for you is to slip through your defenses and make you deal with things.

But right now, I feel like the best that I can hope for is that the ocean doesn’t want me today.

I am going to go lie down and try to get my shit together. I have a friend coming over soon. I think I will be OK. I did not want this, but maybe I needed it.

But fuck… a fox… childhood…. the ocean…. what are the fucking odds?