Monthly Archives: January 2013

by

Alone

Not exactly a new realization, but one that’s been making its impact felt strongly of late.

I can’t work alone.

This is crippling for someone who wants to be an entrepreneur and operate a small business with an absentee business partner. And it’s pretty crippling for its extended implications upon the rest of my life.

Really, I can’t do anything alone . I’m inept, a basketcase. I can’t work, I can’t play, I can’t create, I can’t “have fun” — none of these things even make sense without other people. Zen koan cliches be damned, I can’t clap with one hand. For me, other people are part of the definition of an enjoyable, productive life. In isolation, life is simply existence, and a painful one at that. An agony that perpetually distracts me from everything I try to do. The pain of being alone and the distraction it causes are getting worse as I get older.

You can’t tell me to “learn to enjoy being alone”, in the same way that you can’t tell a person to learn to enjoy having their hand pulverized in a wood chipper. I can’t focus on a single train of thought when I’m alone — my productivity leaps a thousand-fold when collaborating with others. With no opportunity to create that context for myself, my current livelihood is in jeopardy.

And the problem is self-perpetuating. Loneliness makes me miserable and desperate. My misery and desperation make me unapproachable. So it has been for my entire adult life.

There is no solution.

 

by

Shadow in the corner

Another night at a social event. Another crowd of people, another thick sonic cloud of conversations from which I am challenged to distill anything meaningful, even when being addressed directly. Another hour of sitting in a corner, punctuated by occasional greetings, exchange of pleasantries, and attentions refocused elsewhere. Another drink, and another; they get more lubricated as I remain sober, and the wall forms. I’m not allowed on the other side of that wall.

by

An Open Letter to a Friend

I may seem to be an asshole when you try to do something funny and don’t get the reaction you intended. Please try to understand the background.

When I’m alone, often the only thing that occupies my mind is my death — the circumstances, how I’d do it, what I need to do to prepare for it, and my often high sense of urgency and desperation, and frustration that I can’t get what I want without hurting people I care about. I am frustrated that I must continue to suffer by remaining alive, to provide some kind of comfort to people I don’t even see every day due to our society’s immature ideas about death and suffering.

So when you appear and do something zany, can you understand why sometimes I cannot smile?

by

No shopping list

Anyone else ever go to the grocery store only to realize after walking around the aisles for half an hour, that they just can’t bring themselves to want anything enough to buy it — leading to a sudden collision with the pointlessness of existence? Just me?

Oh.

by

Praefatio

A message to those who have stumbled here randomly and are wondering who I am, what this site is and why I’m writing it: in fact, you’ve found me in exactly the same condition, with the same questions.

I have no intent on revealing my identity here, though it wouldn’t take a genius to figure it out and I’m taking no special measures to hide it. I’m a middle-age white guy living in central Texas trying to make something of myself, and dealing with a lifelong depression and my increasingly strained relationship with my own sanity.

This site is intended at this point to be a more-or-less private record of what little of my inner monologue survives long enough to be written down, a record of my struggles with my mental state and outlook on life, and some evidence of my existence that will remain when I am gone, at least until someone notices that I haven’t paid my internet hosting bill.

I’m putting this out on the web for no particular reason beyond convenient access to it from wherever I am. I expect to have no audience for what I write here, except for myself and the spambots who I’m sure will be more than happy to contribute their computer-generated praise of my posts, and their helpful links to porn sites and marital aid accessories.

One thing I have found is that when I’m in my darkest moments, there is literally no one in the world that I can talk to. There are people who have offered to listen when I need to talk, etc, something to which any depressed person can certainly relate. But of course, no one is really prepared for the burden they place upon themselves with such an offer, and I’ve found it corrosive to the few relationships I have to exercise their patience with my complaints. I’ve tried professional help, I’ve tried drugs and other therapies, some of which I’m sure I’ll eventually discuss here. At this point it’s become pretty clear that I’m completely on my own to either get through this, let it take me down, or keep me bound in mediocrity by the struggle for the rest of my days.

So perhaps this diary will be my confidante, the place where I can dump the sewage and detritus of my mind’s self-directed warfare, and maybe some of my better moments as well.