[bexter]

So by now (for those suffering through all of this verbiage), it should be clear that I am feeling some cross between apathy and wanting to kill myself (too unmotivated to carry out any dire plans right now). The other day I promised to call my friend and tell on myself if I know I am in really serious trouble. If I am capable of suicide in any event, I know I'm not capable of it on the heels of talking to anyone I care about; I don't want to leave that kind of crap in my wake. But I don't know how solid my promise to call her is.

The thoughts are there. They come, they go, like poisonous moths circling and flitting in the night.

As I noted, I really try not to be combative with my friend, but "combative" can take many forms, including remaining composed on the surface but offering unruly opinions and sheer resistance. This is what happened when I talked to my friend on the phone last night, and for her this is probably no less frustrating than having to listen to outright raging. She can and does just cut me off when the conversation becomes nothing more than me shouting about the deficiencies of others, she can't just let purely personal stuff pass without commenting at length.

I hear a lot more than just scolding and attempts to force change for the sake of do-gooderism from her when the subject of suicide comes up--I'm not so walled off from others' emotions (well, she's a special case, I admit) that I don't pick up on the tension, increased speech cadence, and fear in her voice when she's describing how you would react if I killed myself. She said she would hate me for the rest of her life and threw in all the usual nonsense about "cowardice" and so on. She's not demonstrative by nature (even over the phone), but I hear all of that and I know you she is 100 percent serious about what she is saying even if I'm not even close to being 100 percent accepting of it. It's kind of a helpless spot to be in, listening to her tone and pitch edge toward plaintiveness and desperation and being unable to honestly agree with many of her premises.

The reality is that the issue of me wanting to die is going to come up again--and in the near future, possibly without abatement. There's no point in pretending otherwise. I may get doses of good news in the days to come, but I won't be "in a good place" for a long time regardless of what happens, and I may well experience very sharp, sudden moments involving genuinely self-destructive impulses. In these times I'll have to weigh the potential cost of saying nothing alarming against the potential benefits of revealing my feelings and perhaps my intentions. I do think of specific ways to end things, and I admit to being 99% beyond any fear of pain and regret in my last seconds.

I tried to tell her the root of the problem: that I have no workable escape from a person I need to trash. I feel physically repulsive: old, fat, scarred, ugly, and unfit, as well as possessing zero grip on life and very little belief that trying to change will result in anything meaningful or represents a worthy aim for a person of my standing, history, and inclinations. l've failed. I'm a drinking, puking, spending machine with no discipline at all, constant insomnia, no goals to speak of, little concern for my own family. I have a distinct sense of detachment from the world, of belonging in the hell that isn't there just for who and what I am, no matter what the origins of that. My aspirations about being a writer have boiled down to posts like this, and I couldn't care less. It's hard to believe there was a time when I didn't feel this way.

Even if I thought I could "recover," I've just passed some point of no return. I know that many don't believe that life works that way, but it does, because no one gets to decide how many chances anyone else is entitled to. They can holler platitudes and take pointless jobs as counselors and try to insist people take drugs and go to groups, but that's not going to happen with me anymore, not until I can collect myself in other ways. I'm sick of "recovery" being front and center. It's a failed enterprise as it only reminds me of all of the damned idiocy and destruction I've perpetrated over time. The last thing I need is the company of other chronic losers. I have no confidence that I could hold a job at this point, but that may change soon, and all I care about is leaving this city and getting the money-monkeys off my back. I'm not ever going to be "happy"--that's not uncommon, so piss on it--but I might escape the relentless inner turmoil sometime. Might. And wouldn't that be nice, to care more about things like taking my dog for a walk than about the next bottle of vodka and not have to be conscious of the choice.

And that basically sums up why I argue with those who claim that suicide is selfish. Maybe at some abstract, overly religious level it is, but people in my life had sure as hell better at least understand why I so often see it as the lesser of many evils.

I hate being like this. Not the feelings so much as the words and actions (and lack thereof) they inspire and how these in turn affect my friend and a small cadre other people. I may be pissed off and under various sorts of weather, but for all my faults I am not oblivious or beyond empathy and I may not really be an ogre--my attitude is a predictable result of being something no one aspires to be, a walking and talking puddle of sewage. And maybe self-pity is better than feeling nothing at all, because if I'm crying, which I have been doing here and there while writing this despite the deadening effect of oodles of Depakote, maybe I care about myself a little, possibly enough to soldier on for a little while at least. But mostly I just feel sorry for myself for depriving myself of the many pleasures that lie in wait for everyone. As mind-blowing and blood-curdling as it is that I never got to PA this summer (I actually grimace and squeeze my eyes shut against the thought when it hits me out of the blue), it's worse, in a flatlining kind of way, to think it's just never gonna happen, and that I couldn't present myself before the person the better part of my mind is in love with.

I have tried hard to keep this from being either a verbal rage-fest of a self-parodic woe-is-me thing, but there's very little room in between those, so I'll just have to live, for now, with the result.

[Direction]

I'm not real good with keeping focused on longer posts...two things did catch my attention...

Yes the thoughts of suicide can and are unrelenting...always present...painful to push them out....sometimes sucked in...

"puddle of sewage"...mine is a "big fake"...no aspires to be either...my guess our glasses are not seeing clearly our mind lies to us...