Why is it

Why do I always feel everyone is better than me? Anyone. And anyone's life is better than mine. It's not true, except it's how I feel. That is true. Always true. And never lets me forget. Never.

I Don't Know

My brother was a one to two pack a day smoker from when he was 17. He drank a pint or more of hard liquor a day, more on weekends and holidays. He was what you call a funcitoning alcoholic. He could drink and still maintain a senior level job. He drank and smoked because of his addiction for them and to get away from the pressue.

It was how he handled the family pressure, mostly Dad. I didn't become addicted to either, smoked once at 12 and quit. I never become addicted to alcohol or drugs, even though I like marijuana and a few other casual drugs. I never got hooked, even when I fell into deeper depression periods.

I don't know why. Even now I still don't drink. I can't really because of hemochromotosis my Dad had and doctors said I probably have it too. But I still like a drink of good sippin' whiskey or a Guiness now and then, but I hate the hangover and headaches for two-plus days.

My addiction is simply to do nothing. Is that an addiction? Being so mentally and physically tired I don't do anything and hate even trying? I don't know, but it's what I do, my addiction. Why will always be the unanswered question. Why I haven't sunk into alcohol, drugs or anything destructive. Or even food.

It's a GOK, God only knows. Maybe one day I'll know too.

Some Days

Some days the best I can do is exist. Doing anything is optional. And going anywhere is only a thought. Soon forgotten. The only thing I look forward to is the end of the day, to sleep and lose the memory of nothing done. And hope tomorrow will be different.

Can I?

Some days I'm so physically and mentally tired I ask myself, "Can I die now?" I have no intention to die by my own hand, been there, almost done that twice, something I'm not interested in a third time charm. But there are moments in some days I wouldn't fight it if death was standing before telling me it's my time.

The drugs I take for a condition are crashing my mind and body. Food is my enemy so much I fear eating anything but know I have to eat. My hands and feet are forever problems with the cold. The TMJ is slowly taking a toll on the left side of my face. I can't tolerate statin drugs for my cholesterol and the blockage in my pulmonary artery.

The Dysthymia is taken all my motivation for life and I fear the drugs and their side effects more than the condition. Some days I take 2 or 3 naps because I can't stay awake from all the problems. Some days I take naps because it's better than anything else to do. Most nights I don't sleep through the night and always hate waking up, knowing it's the same life.

I know there are people with far worse conditions and problems who fight to live and enjoy what life they have. But all said, some days I'm still tired and wouldn't fight death if it came. I would ask it, "Can I die now?"

Naps

Naps are almost a daily occurrence with me know, much due to the medication I'm taking. And everytime I wake up there's always a moment I look around the apartment and realize that if I die nothing would change, only all my stuff would belong to someone else. Life, as with everyone who dies, goes on. There are no exceptions. And what changes fades into history, to be forgotten. So sometimes I wonder why I still keep waking up from my nap.

Life

I was enjoying life. As late as a few years ago.
Then I was living life. Enjoyment was infrequent and fleeting.
Then I was surviving. Living was an occasional momentary thought.
Then I was existing. Just being and nothing more.
Then I asked myself what's next? What's lower?
I'm waiting for the answer.

Conversations with the night

I've often said some of my best personal and private conversations are with my head in the pillow, the back of it when I lying there in the darkness wondering about life and things and my face when I'm sleeping and don't want to wake up to see the light let alone meet the day.

To that end one of my favorite songs is Youngblood's "Darkness Darkness" with the following lyrics.

Darkness, Darkness
Be my pillow
Take my head
And let me sleep
In the coolness of your shadow
In the silence of your deep

Darkness, Darkness
Hide my yearning
For the things I cannot be
Keep my mind from constant turning
Toward the things I cannot see now
Things I cannot see now
Things I cannot see

Darkness, darkness,
Long and lonesome,
Ease the day that brings me pain.
I have felt the edge of sadness,
I have known the depth of fear.
Darkness, darkness, be my blanket,
Cover me with the endless night,
Take away, take away the pain of knowing,
Fill the emptiness of right now,
Emptiness of right now, now, now
Emptiness of ri-ight now.

Darkness, darkness, be my pillow,
Take my hand, and let me sleep.
In the coolness of your shadow,
In the silence, the silence of your deep.
Darkness, darkness, be my blanket,
Cover me with the endless night,
Take away, take away the pain of knowing
Fill the emptiness of right now,
Emptiness of right now now now
Emptiness of right....
Oh yeah Oh yeah
Emptiness, emptiness
Oh yeah

That pretty much sums it up at times. And the best version of it is sung by Richie Havens.

A Different Well

I've often spoken or written about my episodes of depression, actually double depression with Dysthymia, of first falling and then being in a deep well surrounded by total darkness where the light at the top of the well has long disappeared into infinite distance, and about the time and method it takes to climb out where I can get out of the well in the world again.

This time, however, it's a different well. This time the fall has been slow and long, probaby over the last year, and maybe longer, and the onset and fall has been incremental, falling ever so slowly I haven't noticed beyond a slow change of being less excited about what I'm doing and how well I'm feeling. Until I arrived near the bottom to discover I've fallen.

And this time it's not a deep, dark well but a glass one. One I watched myself fall in the world. Normally falling is done in isolation, a mental darkness where you lose sight of the world around you. This one I life and work in the world. I existed and exist in it, seeing it as I fall.

And then sitting on the bottom watching the world around me I can live and work it, but not much is getting done beyond existing. Beside me sits the tools to free myself, to break the glass and be free, but I don't have the motitvation to pick them up let alone use them. I sit just looking out and then looking at the tools.

The only words that seem to make sense are, "I am tired." I know part of this is physical, and I'm angry specialists seem to be indifferent to what seems to me are obvious signs something is wrong. I can read about the symptoms on legitimate Websites. I can show the evidence to them. And they say, "Everything is normal. It's just your imagination."

It's worn me down and some days out living with it and hating not finding a professonal to listen and help. It's treatable and probably curable to have a normal life again, one I had 2-3 years ago. As I've written food is my enemy and eating something feared. Every meal, every day.

I also know two drugs I'm taking for a condition (nearly 5 years now) have devasted part of me. They're essential for what I want to do and be, but it's come at a price my body has paid and is paying. The old damned if you do and damned if you don't, something which will be lifelong.

Add to that with the economy and trying to get my small, personal business off the ground I've almost exhausted the funds I had saved for the business and for some future surgeries. No thanks to President Obama, but much of it by myself. I knew better and thought I could manage the money better, but I didn't.

So now I sit on the bottom of the well seeing and knowing the world I have and live in is, for the most part, of my own making. One I don't like anymore and myself I don't like and some days hate. But in truth not all of it but much of it. And while the future looks reasonably good, it's not what I had planned or expected.

It is what it is as I know it now. And all the answer I have don't work. And now I need to find new answers. The tools will wait until I'm ready to leave the glass well. I can hope, and most days that's all I have left within myself.

Some days

Some days when I wake up and sit on the edge of my bed in the predawn darkness looking out at the day I don't want to do anything except exist, and like the darkness outside fighting against the oncoming light of day, even existing is a struggle.