Everything Is Funny...

Tue, May 21, 2002 01:37PM -0600

T minus 8 days 18 hours 23 minutes

I admit it. I actually really like the last post I made on this blog. I really think it captures the essence of my continued brokenhearted existence. (OK, yeah, brokenhearted is too melodramatic and pretty inaccurate. I feel more, I dunno, squish-hearted. Like I managed to drop my heart out of a second story window and it went splat like only a piece of meat can go splat, and sure it's bruised and messy and squishy, but it really didn't break or even splatter. Damaged but intact. Story of my life.) I like it so much that I tossed the last entry I made into the bit bucket, even though it took me over an hour to write, just so my index.html would be that last entry. (OK, I really didn't delete what I wrote last night. It's actually here but it really doesn't make a lot of sense. It is even more incoherent than my usual insomniac 2am ranting and raving, if you can believe that.) I like the other day's entry so much that I'm beginning to think of it as a piece of poetry.

Seriously, though, by writing it, I feel I have finally managed to articulate what I have felt to be completely wrong with life. It in fact explains why I haven't gotten over certain particular people despite the fact that incredible amounts of time have elapsed and insurmountable circumstances have arisen. Despite what some people think, it's not because I think there's an infinitesimal chance that things might go my way. (Although who am I kidding, it's not like the thought has never crossed my mind. But then I dream about being able to fly under my own power and of being able to travel through time, too. Any of these scenarios proably have roughly equal probability of occurring: almost but not quite zero.) It is the simple fact that I have equated the act of being rejected with the fact that I suck. And while I do indeed have outrageous self-esteem issues, let me tell you that it's impossible to go through life believing that you suck. Seriously. I tried it for a little while. Pretty soon, the urge to carve your own heart out with the nearest cutting implement becomes uncontrollable. As long as your executive system in your frontal lobe is roughly intact, in biologist-speak, continuously believing that you suck is "incompatible with life."

So, because I don't like believing that I suck (despite rapidly accumulating evidence that it may very well be the case), I hang on to impossible hopes. Unfortunately, this only makes me swing insanely between believing that things might very well work out if I can just figure out how, and believing that I truly do suck and I should just do the world a favor by obliterating myself in the least messy way possible. Undoubtedly, just like everything in the universe, the truth is probably somewhere in between.

And yet. And yet. Despite this painfully won wisdom, I still feel like I haven't learned a damn thing in these seven years of loneliness interspersed by intense episodes of depression. Seriously. Why don't I just give up? What's the use? At this juncture, it is easiest to believe that I will come up against this wall again and again, and that, for someone like me, I will never break through it. And yet I just cannot accept it. To believe that this is all there is, that I will have to wander the world pretty much on my own, maybe with a couple of friends here and there, but never to have someone I can count on to be beside me day after day. I tell you, this is what ashes taste like. It is quite a bitter thing to swallow. But I suppose I should just take the advice that they often give porn stars: If I just relax my throat, I suppose I'll be able to take it all the way in.

So. A new chapter begins. Or an old chapter, more likely. Same old shit. I just can't escape this feeling that everything I have to look forward to in this life is stuff that's happening to other people. All I've got is to live vicariously through the victories and successes of my friends and family. I mean, I'm almost like a beggar hoping something will fall off the table. For myself, I can't help but feel that this is it. From here until I die, this is how I'm going to feel. Anything I manage to accomplish will probably amuse me for a least a couple of days, but without anyone to share it with, it's pointless. It's like telling jokes when no one is around. What's the point of laughing at yourself?

I don't know. Mostly, I'm tired of disappointment. If it's never going to turn out right, why try? But if I stop trying, what's the point of going on?

Well right now, the only thing that keeps me going is that I know for a fact that there's a finite probability that the things I'm hoping for might somehow come true, despite these repeated rebuffals. Like I said, that finite probability might be so close to zero that even God wouldn't care about the difference, but it's really all I've got. I know it's stupid and irrational, but I don't know what else to do.

If only I could get some feedback somehow. If only someone could tell me what the hell is wrong with me. Hopefully in a constructive manner. In a way so I can at least make an attempt at fixing myself. Alternatively, if only someone could tell me that I'm doomed, there is no fixing this, all I've got to do is ride this thing out and wait until they finally stick me into the ground. But, most of all, hoping against all hope, if only someone, anyone just might tell me that I'm doing something right, even if it's a tiny little thing that no one cares about, and maybe then I can just stick to that.

Don't tell me to go into therapy. I mean, yeah, it's probably going to help simply because they'll prescribe me some SSRIs or TCAs or maybe even give me ECT and I'm pretty sure I do have some kind of Axis I diagnosis, but do I really have to pay someone for this kind of emotional reassurance that it seems like everyone else is able to get for free? Man. The prostitutes and the psychiatrists are gonna make a shitload of money off of me.

Bleh. Me and my fantasies. Fuck it.

e-mail: aswang@earthlink.net

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