Is It The Medication?

I wonder if the antidepressant I am on has strangled my creativity and disposed of the corpse. I know that one side effect of my medication is lethargy. I am well aware of the lack of physical energy I have dealt with since I started taking this drug, but I only thought about the mental aspect today. Perhaps my sluggishness has extended to my brain.

That is very depressing, if it's true. Depressing, because I can't stop taking the drug. I tried once - I went four months without it - and could not sleep. I was hoping that the sleeplessness was merely a withdrawal symptom, and after a month or two, my sleep would return to normal. No such fucking luck. Four and a half months after going off my antidepressant, I had to go back on it, not because I was depressed (my life was going OK at that point), but because I could only sleep when I was completely exhausted, and even then only for a few hours. So unfortunately, quitting the medication is not an option.

I guess that means my ability to write is gone for good. How very sad. I wasn't good at it, though I had my moments of brilliance, but at least I could do it. Now I've got nothing, and I seriously think it may be the drug that's doing it to me.

I feel dead inside, dark and hollow and empty. If I am dead inside, if my ability to write is gone, then why should I bother with being alive? If I'm not here to write, then why am I here at all? And no, this blog doesn't count as writing, because it is not fiction. It is all too true. How sad. How very sad.

I'm Sick Of Being Alive

Here's a list of reasons I'm sick of being alive. I give you this list for no reason, other than the darkness of which I am the heart.

My feet and my knees hurt. All the time.
I have no car.
My ex-wife wants $1500 from me, and I have no idea how I'm going to get it.
My allergies are killing me.
I hate spring.
I have a loser job.
Apparently, I subconsciously want my loser job.
I try, but I can't stop being a selfish jerk.
Someday soon, my daughter will figure out what a chump I am.
I can't sleep well. I haven't slept well for months.
I'm tired all the time.
I know I should shut up and quit whining, but I'm addicted to whining.
I'm a coward.
I'm afraid of failure, but I'm terrified of success.
Most of my old high school friends are married. Nobody but me is divorced.
I know it's stating the obvious, given the content of this blog, but I'm a very bad writer.
I'm getting old, and aging sucks.
My other blogs suck worse than this one.
I don't have enough money.
I'm angry about a lot of things, and there's not a goddamned thing I can do about any of them.
I hate my medication, but I can't stop taking it because I can't sleep without it.
The rest of my life is going to be like this, only with steadily deteriorating physical health.
I'm sick of thinking up lists like this all the time.

What a blog I have! I suck out loud. I leave you with a bit of Shakespeare's MacBeth.

"Out, out, brief candle! Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Women Make Me Hate Myself

"I see the girls walk by, dressed in their summer clothes. I have to turn my head until my darkness goes."

- The Rolling Stones, "Paint It Black"

I was in the grocery store today, and I saw Amber again. She is an achingly beautiful young woman - about 20 or so - who is a cashier at the store I usually shop at. She's friendly, too, and sometimes I can make her laugh. I want her so bad that the desire just crushes my heart and rends my soul open like a meat cleaver.

Of course, she's not the only young woman I want. There are several different places I frequent - the LCBO, the Beer Store - and there are other equally attractive young women that fill me with aching desire and painful, unfulfilled lust. When I see women like Amber, I go off the rails and into the Canyon of Depression.

On the surface, the pain is just the pain of wanting what I cannot have. I feel that pain as soon as I set eyes on Amber (or any other unattainable woman, of which there are plenty). But the real pain begins later, when I realize that I don't even desire their companionship or a relationship or what's in their heads or their hearts. I just want their bodies. I just want to fuck them, and that makes me hate myself.

I hate myself for being so shallow, for lusting pointlessly after women I cannot have, for thinking about sex every waking hour, but most of all, for believing the illusion that having one of those pretty young things will make me happy. Sex cannot make me happy for more than an hour or two. Yet I want it, and nothing more. I am a monster, a fiend in the night, and I despise myself.

I know how vampires feel about mirrors. They avoid mirrors because they can't stand to look at what they'll see in the glass. Neither can I.

Living In The Past

"Now my memories they haunt me, they haunt me like a curse. Is a dream a lie that don't come true, or is it something worse?"

- Bruce Springsteen, "The River".

I spend a lot of time in the past. I think about the good times, I think about the bad times, and I think about all of the mistakes I made, the opportunities missed, the roads not taken. Most of all, I think about how the best years of my life are behind me. I think about the past a lot, because it beats thinking about the present or the future. My present sucks, and my future is as dark as a moonless night.

I tried to tell my daughter today about the importance of enjoying her life right now. She's nine, and nine is a perfect age. I remember being nine. The time when I was nine, ten and eleven were great years. I was old enough to have some independence - summer days spent out in parks with friends, away from grownups - but young enough that I was still free of big worries. My daughter is at that age now, before puberty and high school and all the angst, insecurity, anger and hopelessness that comes with being a teenager. I wanted to tell her how much I cherish the memories of being her age, but it backfired, and I came across as a man who was sad, sad that a great time in my life was gone.

She's smart. She sees through what I'm saying to the feelings beneath. I tried to tell her a few months ago that I had no hard feelings about divorcing her mother, and how sometimes things don't work out between people, and how sometimes it's for the best. She saw through my words and saw what I was trying to hide - a man who is depressed because all of his relationships fail and he's alone. She cried, because she hates to see me sad. I wish I could explain to her that I'm always sad, but there's no point.

I look back into the past, because it's all I have. From age 9 to 11, I was happy, and I took those endless summers with my friends for granted, summers that seemed eternal, when school was a thousand Augusts away. It all went off the rails in junior high. In grade 8, when I was 13, I attempted suicide for the first time. Suicide dominated my thoughts all through high school. College was great, and I was happy for two years. I had forgotten what being happy was like, and it was wonderful and intoxicating. I had lots of fun, I made new friends, I had my first girlfriend; college life was great. I wish I could have those two years back. I wish I could live them out again. Such days will never come again, at least not for me, so I think back to the past. It's all I have.

It's better to live in the present, to hold on to the few moments of joy that do come my way. And there are a few. But mostly, it's cold and miserable and dark in my life, with almost no prospects for improvement in the future. So I go through my favorite memories, holding them up to my mind's eye like faded photographs, and try to live in the past, if only for a few moments. It's sad, and I feel bad that my daughter can see my sadness. I try so hard to hide it from her.

I am an old man in a dark attic, looking at an ancient, faded scrapbook by the feeble light of a candle. I search for comfort, but my memories haunt me, the ghosts of better times that shall not return.

Anger

Underneath the mostly placid, solid surface of the Earth is a great boiling, convecting expanse of magma, rock so hot that it is molten. Over the last few weeks, I have realized that I am like that. I have a dark, sad, but mostly placid exterior, but underneath the crust of despair is a red-hot, molten sea of rage.

My psychiatrist says that suicide is ultimately an act of intense rage turned inwards. Deep down, where I seldom look and dislike going, I am very angry. There is a lot of toxic, unexpressed anger, and it burns me like lava. It sears and scars my soul.

Above all, I am angry at my father, for the way he treated me and continues to treat me, for the times he hung me out to dry, but mostly for the fact that I want revenge for his wrongdoing and cannot have it.

I dislike that about myself - the desire for revenge, the desire to make him suffer - and I spend a lot of time obsessing over my despair, in part to avoid looking at my anger.

I don't know what to do about my anger. I want revenge. That seems the only thing that could satisfy it, but I'm not sure it would solve anything. I hate that, and I hate the fact that I subconsciously still allow my father to define me. Thinking about how angry I am makes me intensely depressed. I am going to go and drink now, because that's what I do.

I am reminded of the words of William Shakespeare. "If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?"

God, I hate myself right now.