“Young people can virtually assure that they and their families will avoid poverty if they follow three elementary rules for success – complete at least a high school education, work full time, and wait until age 21 and get married before having a baby. Based on an analysis of Census data, people who followed all three of these rules had only a 2 percent chance of being in poverty and a 72 percent chance of joining the middle class (defined as above $55,000 in 2010.” --Ron Haskins, Brookings Institution.

Except if you're a felon. Suicide rates are 8 times higher than the national average for males released from prison. I can't imagine why...and as for an education, that was already pointed out is an impossibility at this juncture, and for the foreseeable future. I know the walls of my prison intimately; I know every line of logic to try to escape the situation I find myself in, and I must conclude that the only way to "win" is to not play at all. If I must lose, I plan on losing spectacularly, with as much spite as I can muster because...*shrugs* Who cares? I'm not really a loss to society.

It is the quality of purpose that is lacking. Marriage as an institute is designed to give human beings a higher purpose: caring about someone other than self, and attempting to build each other up in all ways. To be completely independent is to be utterly alone; to be forced into such exile is to have all purpose removed and to become obsolete. I have no desire to simply engage myself in life because all I have done in my life is isolate and turn inward, and honestly, the company I thus keep is really getting boring and irritating to the point of wanting to divest myself of my life by any means necessary.

Not being married and not having kids means nothing; I have lost the drive to even bother anymore because all I do is obsess over the past. Why? Because nothing in my future shows promise of anything other than more of the same. The mere hope of normalcy is missing because I've long ago crossed the point of no return.

Also, I can't physically get to the Philippines because the last time I tried, I was turned around at customs, and I no longer have $3000 to throw away on another 48 hour flight to nowhere. Yeah, I've got a passport, but I might as well not for all the good it does me.

It's much worse than I've described. I can't bring myself to even want to pursue anyone anymore because I obsess over my exes and I'm haunted by their memories. Almost always recalled in such a way where I focus only on their good because in every instance, I can easily point at myself, and usually do so when I am pissed off enough to take that rage out on myself. It is always my fault. No, really. It usually is, 99% of the time. That's why I can't stand being in the same body with me.

There is also the fact that I am socially retarded because I missed out on formative years that people normally grow and learn to be around others. I was stuck from my own stupidity.

See, the more I point all this out, the more I just want to go Thelma & Louise and drive myself off a cliff somewhere. That self-loathing pulses with a black energy, and it's taking on a life of its own. It's harder and harder to control self-destructive impulses because I think to myself, who cares? I have no one or nothing left to live for other than myself, and I stridently reject such hedonism. I don't want it anymore. Only, it's too late. There's no coming back. It's like Jacob Marley and his chains he's forced to drag with him for all eternity. I obsess with achieving a sense of baseline normality, knowing I will never reach it, and there is no hope for doing so.

That is why I find that quote from the Green Mile so apropos: "We each owe a death, there are no exceptions, but oh, God, sometimes that Green Mile is so long."

Well, thanks for listening...