Would they, as having children does for so many, transform me into a fighter, into someone willing to work to care / to care to work?
I know it is, and I know it from experience, though not first-hand, A Very Selfish Thing To Do.
[IT]
However, I know from things I’ve been through that you are equipped to handle it.
Might it not make you stronger? I couldn’t find anything or any relationship (you all did fine) that I could connect to in order to strengthen my desire to BE.
I have found that my here / now sense has been in a decline. I’m sure I helped, but I am also sure that the mechanisms (chemistry / Karma / something humans have not learned via science nor religion to define) were pre-determined to work against any cures.
When I was approximately 14 (15, 16?), I went on an anorexic/bulimic stint. I was angry my mother was marrying someone we both later agreed upon was horrid. No, I’m not blaming my mom. It was just something I still identify with. I always hated throwing up b/c I knew it was bad for my teeth.
Around that same time, after they had been at home together for a little while, I broke my personal ban on consuming alcohol. I never drank at parties; I thought drunk people acted stupidly. However, something snapped, as best I can describe, and one afternoon after I had finished (the same day I started, I think) a library book about some sea voyage (it was a great little novel with lots of detail), I smoked the butt-end of a leftover cigarette in the house from an ashtray, and I concocted at least five mixed drinks, based on picked-up knowledge of what goes with what: Rum and Coke. Gin and Kool-aid. Kaluha and milk. What I didn’t know, of course, was chemistry.
Yes, I got pretty sick.
I held out on other things friends in later life did (until college, I never got drunk again, let alone in public).
It didn’t matter.
There are traits of personality that mean, “You won’t want to have fun in healthy ways such as through exercise and sport.” I am not good at sports.
Traits will tend to push you towards trying things that are mostly effective in their ability to make you sleep soundly.
That becomes the goal: dreamless sleep.
You have read parts and pieces of my nightmares via Facebook.
So, that is the goal.
To sleep, perchance not to dream.
And you, all of you whom I have genuinely loved, you have to believe that that’s true.
I know so well how this is a selfish, mean act. But most of us believe in the Self. We believe in the right to abortion, to euthanasia, to self-directed existence.
[No, I am not on the verge of ______; this is a poetic exercise.]
I have found that being self-directed, for me, has always been trumped by outside forces that no amount of (feeble) meditation can overcome.
I am a weak person. I don’t believe in the God of the Torah, Bible or Quran. I don’t.
That’s not what I’m afraid of.
And if I become nothing, well, that’s o.k., because I wasn’t doing anything much on Earth, and I did not see any change coming soon or ever.
[No, I am not on the verge of ______; this is a poetic exercise; this was not written today.]
I know what I know, and, believe me, I’m as confused about my lack of action and prospects as anyone.
My family will remember how I loathed mediocrity, how I hated “boring” conversations that did not feed my brain. I regret I was not able to be that food for anyone.
Yes, I know I am a good listener.
I am very good at listening, and I have a keen sense of empathy.
Not so much for action.
And listening takes its toll, as you might imagine.
And I work for someone who can’t type. And I’ve banged this out in approximately 15 minutes.
And I mean it.
And I’m sad.
And I live in a house that is greater than 80 percent of the world’s people’s homes, and yet it holds me back and upsets me and makes me anxious to the point of high blood pressure and death.