I went back into my blog to cross out all the hopeful things I had posted leading up to Election Day.
Gods. A nightmare.
My personal mood is stuck between Despair and Fatigue.
I've stopped playing a lot of video games. I've stopped watching television. I've stopped going to movies. I'm finding it harder to read any books now.
I don't think I will ever experience true joy in my life. The brief moments of any kind of happiness I experience end quick, and I have so few people in my life within reach to share that happiness. I know what it's like to be in love, but I also know what it's like to never share it, to never figure out relationships, to figure out other people, to be normal. The only thing I know about love is the shape of the void it makes in my life.
My writing interest is waning. My short story submissions keep getting rejected and I can't find any other places to submit my work. I'm at the point of "why bother?"
After having all my blog articles for the Royal Palm Literary Awards ignored for FWA, it's just piling onto my despair of spending all these years raging against the madness of motherfucking trump and changing none of it. For all the limited views, for all the brief bumps I get from Crooks & Liars traffic, it's not worth it, is it? Anything I write is meaningless against the fear and hatred that a majority of Americans revel in today.
My chronic depression eats away at me. My social anxiety makes it harder and harder to even try and find people near me I could find friendship, or comfort. And it's hard already being stuck in a Deep Red county in a damned Deep Red state to find people who share my world-view.
If this reads like self-pity or wallowing, it probably is. But I've got nothing else to offer right now.
This is all I am: a tired, aging, emotionally broken nobody.
1 comment:
I, for one, find your writing helpful in these uncertain times. I know getting motivated can be difficult when it's hard to see the point, and depression will lie to you and make that point seem impossible. Been there, wasted an obscene amount of time there.
By a great irony, my long time depression sort of disappeared after my stroke, and only occasionally do I feel its familiar numbness around the edges of my consciousness. The physical disability, though, still lingers, and it seems as if my efforts at recovery have years ago become just the work I have to do to remain as able as I have managed to get. After the smoke from the Creek Fire four ridges to the East of here messed with my balance, I backed off from my daily walks up to the Mill Pond and back, because I got stuck and unable to continue walking a couple of times, and when you're alone out here in the boonies, that's terrifying. The results of my latest labs have come back pre-diabetic. Nothing in my diet has changed since my last round of labs, so all it can really be is the lack of those daily walks.
So now it's not just to retain the mobility that I have eked out post-stroke, it's do I want to keep my hands and feet? I made it up and down the 29 stairs from here to the carport four times today, and tomorrow I will start up the road toward the Mill Pond. Will I make it all the way? Probably not. Will fighting my way back to the state where those daily walks weren't any big deal help expand my mobility? Nope, just stop it from shrinking in, and with any luck, stave off diabetes. Will I enjoy standing on the dam and watching the ducks and geese chase each other while the frogs cheer them on? You fucking bet I will. Is it a sure thing that I'll even make it there? Hell no, or I never would have stopped going every day. How do I feel about these developments? Terrified. That's where my head was at before the political world took a massive dump on everything I care about. I'm about to turn 64. Will I even still be around to see the unwinding of the mess headed our way?
Probably not if I don't start walking. Here I go. Wish me luck, I'm gonna need it.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
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