MY LIFE OF MENTAL MISERY
I wrote this article in August 2017 when I was having some difficulty with depression or despair.
I submitted a shorter version to the Cape Cod Times in June 2018 and it was published on June 27, 2018 under the title, Some Of Us Live Lives Of Mental Misery.
"Seventy years I have lived, seventy years man and boy, and never have I danced for joy."
William Butler Yeats
Life begins with randomness. Who your parents are, where you are born, live and raised, your relatives and neighbors, the schools you attend and the friends you make. From infancy to adulthood, by means of nature and nurture, DNA and Genes, we slowly become the person we are.
Life takes many turns in one's lifetime, moments of emotions, encounters and experiences that travel down many roads. Such moments can be brief or long lasting. The people in our life, lovers, family and friends, bring us both joy and sadness. All together they shape us into the personal world in which we live.
My life is one of sadness. My mind is a planet wildly out of orbit and the world I live in spins in endless mental mayhem and misery - caused mostly by self-inflicted stress, anxiety and needless worry. All of which darkens and deepens the depression and despair that I have had my entire life. Plus I am a prisoner of a mind that creates conversations of conflict with people that never come true, never take place, never happen - mental rampages with no conclusions.
I also have peaceful conversations with my dead grandfather, college girlfriend and cat. These are fleeting minutes of clarity and tranquility - a rare escape from craziness into calmness.
A simple fact: I pray more watching the nightly news, local and national, than I do in church. The tragedies and casualties, the human suffering from wars, disease, violence, famine, overdoses and terrorists, bring prayers from my heart. What brings tears to my eyes is the senseless cruelty and abuse to animals. Really, what has God wrought?
Another simple fact: Forget the seven deadly sins, there are deadlier sins. The three deadliest are stupidity, incompetence and laziness - I am intolerant of all people who possess them, whether just one or all three. I am surrounded by these people and they are everywhere - and these people are killing me daily. As Shakespeare wrote, "Hell is empty and all the devils are here."
A final fact: After years of debate, actually decades, I have come to the conclusion that my life is empty, worthless - as worthless as an empty Hershey wrapper floating in a gutter.
In everyone's life there are people who stay and people who go. In my life people go, sometimes slowly, sometimes without warning. The two true loves of my life, my grandfather and college girlfriend, died by their own hands, a noose, a bullet. All my former lovers are gone, driven away by my selfishness and self-centeredness. Most friendships have faded for the same reasons as have many family members. When a person is trapped within oneself, there is no room for others.
I am ashamed and disappointed in my behavior and can honestly admit, I have lived a life not worth living. As the years pass and the decades fade, are people, am I, more deserving of forgiveness or judgment? How do you ask forgiveness from long ago lovers who have faded from the mind? How do you ask forgiveness from the dead? From someone you shared a silent smile on a Sunday morning but who you failed to save? And you never saw her again. Pray tell?
What do you do when there's no next thing? When there is nothing to look forward to? Where does the heart go when there is no one to love? I mourn my youth and all that was lost - but I still dream of the human touch and its passionate desires for they have yet to fade. If you read Yeats' poem, The Spur, you read my mind.
By living such a meaningless life, every day is endless, a self-contained eternity, from which there is no escape. There is no refuge, for I have tried. Whether near or far, wherever I go my mind follows carrying on senseless conversations with itself, creating worries where none exist, imagining problems with no solutions - a carousel of consequential calamity.
Everything that is going on within me is a secret I do not share. I may suffer in silence but I have perfected an outer appearance and personalty formed by delicate deception. Whether neighbor, acquaintance or stranger, the person you see, the person you know and talk to, is not the person I am but a brilliant disguise. As Bruce Springsteen wrote and sang, "You better look hard and look twice..."
In this world I've created, it is no surprise that I live a life enclosed within my mental mayhem and misery. Nor is it a surprise that I've lost interest in life, although I'm positive that life lost interest in me decades ago. There is nothing I look forward to as life's light fades. Come tomorrow when the sun's rise and rays wake me at first light, I will begin another endless day in captivity held hostage by a mind I cannot control.
As John Milton wrote in Paradise Lost, "The mind is it's own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven." You decide?
Contact: fortheheartcries@gmail.com
In everyone's life there are people who stay and people who go. In my life people go, sometimes slowly, sometimes without warning. The two true loves of my life, my grandfather and college girlfriend, died by their own hands, a noose, a bullet. All my former lovers are gone, driven away by my selfishness and self-centeredness. Most friendships have faded for the same reasons as have many family members. When a person is trapped within oneself, there is no room for others.
I am ashamed and disappointed in my behavior and can honestly admit, I have lived a life not worth living. As the years pass and the decades fade, are people, am I, more deserving of forgiveness or judgment? How do you ask forgiveness from long ago lovers who have faded from the mind? How do you ask forgiveness from the dead? From someone you shared a silent smile on a Sunday morning but who you failed to save? And you never saw her again. Pray tell?
What do you do when there's no next thing? When there is nothing to look forward to? Where does the heart go when there is no one to love? I mourn my youth and all that was lost - but I still dream of the human touch and its passionate desires for they have yet to fade. If you read Yeats' poem, The Spur, you read my mind.
By living such a meaningless life, every day is endless, a self-contained eternity, from which there is no escape. There is no refuge, for I have tried. Whether near or far, wherever I go my mind follows carrying on senseless conversations with itself, creating worries where none exist, imagining problems with no solutions - a carousel of consequential calamity.
Everything that is going on within me is a secret I do not share. I may suffer in silence but I have perfected an outer appearance and personalty formed by delicate deception. Whether neighbor, acquaintance or stranger, the person you see, the person you know and talk to, is not the person I am but a brilliant disguise. As Bruce Springsteen wrote and sang, "You better look hard and look twice..."
In this world I've created, it is no surprise that I live a life enclosed within my mental mayhem and misery. Nor is it a surprise that I've lost interest in life, although I'm positive that life lost interest in me decades ago. There is nothing I look forward to as life's light fades. Come tomorrow when the sun's rise and rays wake me at first light, I will begin another endless day in captivity held hostage by a mind I cannot control.
As John Milton wrote in Paradise Lost, "The mind is it's own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven." You decide?
Contact: fortheheartcries@gmail.com
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