Closure.

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.