Okay, so I just feel like saying
something here. I haven't written in a while, so I'm probably going
to be scraping the bottom of the barrel for things to say. Today at
work I had a rather surreal moment where I was doing stocking. Being
a cog in the jumbling retail machine, I was putting out Easter
merchandise while Santa Baby was playing over the speaker system.
The only thought I had at that moment was “If the cognitive
dissonance was any stronger, I would be able to bend time with my
mind.” But right, let's talk about suicide. That seems
appropriate for this time of the year, doesn't it? Might seem a bit
of a dark subject, so let's brighten it up with something. Like
kittens. Except instead you're thinking of suicidal kittens and I've
now just injected the most horrifying and depressing imagery possible
into your head. Alright, nevermind. But stay with me, there's more
to this.
I have a tremendous talent of being
incapable of understanding the effect I have on people, the aura of
subdued apathy and depression I seem to emit. I'm desensitized to a
lot of the things that have occurred in my life and whatever bleak
outcomes they'll have, but I tend to forget that the average person
is not. So if I nonchalantly bring up that I'm going to be alone on
Christmas, that's a bit depressing to the listener. If I bring up
that I haven't seen my mother in what's going on seven years because
she's an alcoholic that's become consumed by addiction, then that's
extremely depressing to the listener. If I bring up how starting
from my birthday that the following week is probably the hardest week
of the year for me because on top of shitty birthdays and
divorce/poor person-related events that I tried to commit suicide a
week before Christmas a decade or so ago, that isn't depressing to
the listener because at that point they've probably left. Whoops.
Now let's talk about my mother. Let's
get the crass, blunt comment out of the way first: I don't care about
the fate of this woman. There are two reasons it's relevant, though.
The first is that it will give closure to everybody if this woman
died. Ever have those moments? Let's draw some parallels here with
far more trivial situations that in no way bare similar weight but
can still warrant comparison. Little Billy has a crush on Amanda at
school. Every day he wonders how she feels about him, if he has a
shot at getting into her pants, if it can work, when would be the
right “friend moving into SO” time period to ask, all of that.
But instead he doesn't do anything, he just goes home and masturbates
and never gains any resolution on the topic and never brings it up
with her for a long time. Then when he finally does, the cunt shoots
her down and Little Billy is heartbroken. But despite the pain of
having his heart broken, he doesn't have to worry about that stupid
shit anymore and the realizes that he's still in school and can wait
until college to get some pus—okay this is getting derailed, but
the point is that even with a grim resolution, the feelings of
ambiguity, concern, doubt, and questions are answered, that's not
taking your time up anymore. You can stop stressing over the outcome
of shit if it just happens, and even if it ends poorly it's done.
Closure is the word that's important
here, which is the second point. I will seek closure for what has
transpired in my life from her. I don't expect her to accept
responsibility, I don't expect to forgive her, I don't expect it to
motivate her to fix her life. That is none of my business. It
shouldn't have to be. But people carry baggage that they didn't
deserve to be burdened with, and I'm giving it back to the person who
made me stuck with it. They can either carry it with me or let it
crush them to death. With all the skeletons I've kept in my closet
over the years, can you realistically expect a broken person who
can't even fix things under normal circumstances pull themselves
together when they've been given an immeasurable amount of guilt,
hatred, and regret to deal with? Probably not. If my mom is
anything like me, then she won't. I know I don't have the
constitution to carry this shit; I've been trying for half of my life
and it's already almost killed me several times. It's been said that
what doesn't kill you makes yourself stronger. To somebody who's
struggled with and attempted suicide many times in his life, what
that means is that he's going to try a bit harder the next time he
considers it until he gets to the point that he succeeds.
In a lot of fundamental ways, people
don't change. But that doesn't mean they can't. My mother did not
change, and it's killing her for it, slowly and agonizingly in a
fucked-up, twisted way of karmic retribution. Hell, most people in
my family have not changed, and if they did, it's long after the
damage was done. My uncle managed to save himself from drug and
alcohol addiction, but his clock is ticking and his time is close to
being up. It's easy to be wrapped up in embittered cynicism and say
that people don't change, but most of the time those people either
haven't been gripped with the disease of depression, or that they're
unaware that it's the demon that's killing them. What I have is a
disease. I have no choice but to change. It's a cancer of the soul,
the ever-present hollow noise, the ever-looming cloud that needs to
be parted. Adapt or die, that's the ultimatum here.
And my brother holds this philosophy
and told me to prove him wrong or he'll have a good laugh that he was
right, which by proxy that means “stay alive” because he'll be
right if I drop dead and smother out this pointless existence on my
own terms, and he'll have a tough crowd to crack some jokes at.
Well, that's not true, I'm not having a funeral, I don't understand
that shit. If people want to pay respects to me, they can do it on
their own time. Don't have a gathering around my corpse and think
that does anything, I've moved out of that house already. The hell
do you expect me to do, shake your hand and nod approvingly because
somebody has their hand up my ass puppeteering me beneath the coffin?
Okay, what I'm trying to tell you
folks is... I don't know, go fuck yourself and YOLO or some shit.
People die, several of them by their own volition. People will fuck
up their own lives irreparably and things will never get fixed, and
the only closure you'll get is the knowledge of them failing
completely, learn to live with it. But that advice is to the people
watching. To the person living that, cling onto that tiny hope that
you can change what kind of ugly, selfish, useless fuck-up you are
and turn things around, even if the time and effort required will be
what kills you.
Because if you're anything like me,
you will always hate yourself. But learn to hate yourself enough to
want to change, but not enough to think that things can't be turned
around.
Merry fucking Christmas, you
unfortunate and hopeless pricks.
