…is how many days I’ve been circling our celestial body in the sky we call The Sun, give or take. Tried to figure out how many leap years I’ve had also.
It should be a major celebration turning 50, but I’m being nonchalant about the whole thing. People at work know that it’s coming up, if they don’t know the exact date. Im not hiding the fact, but also not celebrating it either.
I vaguely remember when I was…less depressed, I think I had a dream/goal of planning some kind of super celebration with others turning 50 this year. Obviously those plans have sublimated into the air. Or maybe the plans are being made without me. Maybe for the best; you never know which Joe you’ll get. You can’t plan an event with that kind of uncertainty.
I continue to try to find the answers or the solutions to the questions and issues that I’m not sure of. Occasionally anyway. At best, I just try to survive the day; to make it home so I can cry, sleep, and then numb my soul and mind with food or internet. To get back into bed and fight the thoughts until I pass out only to wake up minutes later, to start the cycle anew.
I’ve been told that I’m just lazy, and to just get over it. Maybe that is the problem, I’m too lazy, too insecure, too afraid. Or maybe it’s just the battle with my thoughts it’s all I can do to stay alive. To be able to sleep forever; a coward’s way out perhaps. The thoughts are there, but the gates and locks are still holding. But I’m not sure why. What’s the purpose for staying alive? To be a warning tale to show the kids; “eat your vegetables or you’ll be lonely just like Joe.”
If I was in The Netherlands, I could petition to euthanize myself due to long term untreatable depression (forgot to bookmark the article). I really should make an appointment with Kaiser and get a new psychiatrist. Restart the cycle of pill life and get on a new antidepressant, since the current pills are doing nothing. Although they could be the thing keeping me on the ledge. Too scared to jump but also too scared to climb out of the tree. Just stay steady until the fire department comes with their ladder to get me back to the ground. Do fire departments still rescue cats from trees anymore?
The goal is to find the answer to the question but I have to do it on my own. I know my friends can and would help me, but I have to do it on my own because I have to learn to pull myself up and out of the pit I dug for myself. And it’s the American way to be self sufficient, right. I am wrong to want someone to take care of me, to tell me what to do, what to eat, what to say. And yet, like a dog that caught the car, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. In fact I would probably be mad and strut around saying that didn’t need any help, like a child that wants to push the shopping cart that twice their size, with no help from Mommy or Daddy.
What is happiness? It’s such an abstract concept to me at this point. There are vague memories that float at the edges; ghosts just outside my propiatery vision. Ghosts of happiness, of joy, of peace, of love.
But they are blocked by the ideals that chain me. That I’m going to lose my job and my apartment. That’s why I got Vanessa; I figured I could live out of her and plug in to move around without having to worry about gas. Maybe Barry was on to something in suggesting a place in the slums of Vallejo. American slums anyway; not like a real slum in a third world country or anything. I could just stop taking the Ozempic and let the diabetes take over completely. Should be enough sugar in my piss to make an excellent 12-year, single barrel scotch if I start now. Aged to perfection.
Or I could just wait a few more months and let the 2nd Civil War take me. What is the saying, if you don’t believe in anything, you’ll fall for everything. Ok maybe that’s not the right saying. Trying to stay in the middle instead of choosing a side, I’ll be one of the firsts to be killed.
To see happiness again; to see love or hope or peace. Even shutting myself in a tub of very salty water with my ears plugged and in the dark depriving myself of senses, I only see the failures and loss. I see Teresa and wonder with an incel like passion what or where did I go wrong. Was I too clingy for the peace I felt around her? What did I say or do; or didn’t say or do. Why accept and move on when I can lash (self flagalate?) my mind with outlandish thoughts and theories that it has something to do with me being black and her being a police officer.
But there are even bigger thought whips and other mental torture devices I can use on myself. My failure from the bookstore and living in San Francisco. My failure in Seattle with my family. I could not hold everything together and it all came crashing down. Dad passing away and estranged from Mom. At least Eric was able to escape and find happiness.
After 18262 days, I just wonder what I have to show for it. At this point, just cold toes and the constant ringing of tinnitus in my head. And a slightly upset stomach ache. Lots of bridges some broken and unrepairable, some burnt to the ground, some standing but in dire need of maintenance. And some being rebuilt and shored up, even as I do my best to ignore the damage or take the pieces and build barricades to keep from coming to my side.
**sigh**. Is that enough thoughts out of my head to fall instantly to sleep. If I would have wrote this in my journal, probably enough to finish it. I said I would start a new one today regardless. Welp, here’s to another 365 days around the sun I guess. Will I find again the happiness and love I’ve supposedly have had before. Will it be another year of me self crucifying myself on the imaginary crosses in my head. Or will I finally find the peace in the eternal sleep that I think I crave.
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