I didn't work out today. I felt far too depressed. On the flip side, though, I stepped on the scale, and it turns out I don't weigh as much as I'd feared. So that's a relief.
I didn't do any work on my novel, though, which kind of makes me feel like shit.
I am very depressed right now, because I am now 36 years old and can see nothing worthwhile in front of me for the rest of my life. All the worthwhile stuff has already happened.
I have very, very simple needs. I want a decent, long-term job. I want a decent house that I can afford, in a decent area. I want kids. And I want a wife that makes me say to myself every morning, "damn, I can't believe I was lucky enough to marry HER." I can't see any possibility for any of those things in my future.
Instead, here's what I see: Bouncing around for several decades from one shitty, low-paying job to another, never able to save up a comfortable little nest egg, always a couple of paychecks away from living on the street. Years of renting, never accumulating enough money to settle down. One or maybe two kids, if I'm lucky. Marriage doesn't seem like it's in the cards for me right now (my little brother feels the same way about his own life, so hell, maybe it's genetic). But if I finally do take the plunge, odds are that I'll grab some mildly cute girl that I don't feel any strong love for, just so I can have kids. And then I'll probably spend the rest of my life being a nice gentleman to her while secretly hating her guts and wishing she would die, or just leave me, and leave the kids with me... :(
I understand that life is all about compromises, and that sometimes you just have to accept that you can't have everything you'd like. Well, hey, I can live with that. But there are compromises, and then there are compromises, and while I don't expect total perfection from any woman I meet, I expect her to be pretty enough to hold my attention for the next several decades while I sleep beside her every night.
Basically, I feel like even the modest, realistic dreams I have always had for myself are beyond my grasp, and that makes me very angry and very sad.
Ergo: Why should I go on? Every morning when I wake up, I look at my worthless face in the bathroom mirror, and I try to remind myself that this could be the day when it all changes. THIS DAY could be the day when, for whatever reason, the path that I should travel next to finally deliver me to the dull middle-class life I crave will finally open. But it never happens, never comes close to happening. I am still miserable.
So I think it's time to set a goal for myself. In twelve short months, I will be 37 years old. I am announcing now, for all the open, bustling life of the Internet to know, that on that date, if I am not at least on my way to some semblance of lifelong happiness, I will give up and end it all. I will go to the store and buy a gun and finally snuff out my worthless, worthless life. Until then, I intend to work very, very hard to achieve a level of success, but if I can't pull it off by my self-imposed deadline, I will just end the pain. I don't deserve to feel this way, and I refuse to put up with it for another several decades while awaiting some stupid, normal, mortal fate. If God won't help me, or won't unlock this prison by His own means, well — to paraphrase Socrates, I'll unlock the door to my private prison and run away by myself. Every slave holds within his own hands the power to cancel his own captivity.
Yes, I know that it is written, "thou shalt not test the Lord thy God." Well, I'm sorry: I feel far too lonely and empty right now to heed that. I am far too broken. If God loves me as one of His children, if it is not His desire that I should suffer, He will do something. He will do it within the next year. Because I can assure you that 52 more weeks of what I am feeling now will exceed the physical capabilities of my weak flesh to cope. If God exists, and if He cares, he'll reach out His hand and help me right now, in my time of need. If He just wants to remain arrogant and aloof behind the high walls of His Heaven, He will not see me debase myself before Him. He will not see me pay for a "privilege" that feels like a punishment.
I have drawn now my final line. I am deadly serious about it: May 27, 2012. I admit it — I'm frightened of eternal damnation. That is one of the things that keeps me from taking this next, awful step. But just as a torturer understands there is a certain point past which no human can endure — a point when they will scream out anything in order survive — I expect a loving God to understand that there is a point where the pain becomes so great that any abstract fear of an afterlife of punishment simply loses its power. The sufferer will do anything, anything, to make the pain stop — even spitting in the face of God Himself.
So, yeah: I'm "tempting" the Lord. I'm "testing" Him. I am not asking for every last one of my dreams to come true — I'm asking, praying for Him to provide me with the things I need to survive, nothing more. Surviving, for me, means not looking forward to a life of gray nothingness. A God who can't deliver that is either weak and worthless, or He simply doesn't hear the cries of His suffering children. In either case, I can't envision God having enough power or principle to consign His failed creations to an eternity of flames. And if that is the case, there is no reason to fear Him, and thus, no reason to obey Him. All that is left is the sterile mandate of the "pleasure principle." Right now, that principle commands me to end my life. And right now, I'm ignoring it, because I believe there is a God in Heaven who has greater things planned for me.
But I can't continue that forever, and if there is a God in Heaven, He knows it. And either He loves me and will rescue me, or He is weak and uncaring, and is content to throw my limp body to the wolves. I can fight wolves and defeat them — I have before, many times. But I can't spend my whole life fighting them. If that is Almighty God's plan for my life — to fight the wolves for all my life, without rest — then I will no longer participate. I will lie down, and present the beasts with my soft neck to rip out. If this great Lord God I have always followed doesn't stop me well short of that point, then He is worthless, and death is to be desired, even lusted after. It will be just like going to sleep, only with no more distressing dreams, and no more gnawing worries about tomorrow. Just cool, comfortable darkness — forever.
But for now, that's a year away. I will stay smiling, pleasant, diligent. I honestly believe in the idea that hard, consistent work is ultimately rewarded! And I'll keep working toward that.
But if it doesn't happen, even slightly, within the next year — well, I'll know the score. And the ultimate choice just won't be a choice at all. Like standing in a burning building with no accessible windows and only one working door, there will be only one solitary path to escape. And like any reasonable person, well ... I'll take that chance. Wouldn't you? :(
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