Drowning

Sometimes I have thought I will walk out of the door, go around the corner and never come back. I do not know what is around the corner but the day when I would have been afraid to find out is gone.

You would never hear from me again. I think I would fade. Faster for some than for others, but it would not take long before no one remembered me except as a name, something like a smell that they sometimes thought they knew when they smelled it, but when it was gone, they realised they did not know at all.

I've thought about doing that for this person or that. Simply never bothering them again, so that it is as though I had walked away. One of the great pities of my life is that I am vain, so the truth that they would not care that I had disappeared prevents me from doing it. I want to be cared about. That is the heart of the vanity that partly powers my life.

I say powers my life, but my life barely has any motion. Other people decide what I may or may not have in it, and mostly they do not care what I want. Or if they care, they utterly disregard it. I don't know why that is. I don't even want much. I never have, really.

***

I have been in my basement for nine hours today. If I hope to finish this book on schedule, I will need to stay in here for another five hours. Earlier, Naughtyman came down with a packet of pasta. He wanted me to make him macaroni. It would only take 15 minutes but I won't do it. It's not the time. I don't want to be around Mrs Zen. I am not feeling able to put a nice spin on life for her, and she is in the mood to needle me. At least I am safe in my basement. Very little can affect me here.

I am a terrible father. You could imagine that I am planning to suffer for my children--because for sure I am going to suffer and it is because I want to be part of their lives. It would be easy to walk away, and I would at least have some hope of finding someone to be with. But I can't. I have to be with them. And I realise I am not noble; I am not suffering for them. I am suffering because I do not want to lose them and because I have hopes for them that I fear will be destroyed by Mrs Zen. I do not know what those hopes are, but I know that I want them to know I love them, and I don't know how they would know that if I disappeared.

***

I don't know why I am writing this. I am just so flat. Someone reached out to me a couple of days ago, and I was able to be there for them, and it felt really good--I was at the peak of a manic spell and I felt capable and strong. Then they confronted me hard with reality and the wind went out of my sails.

Whenever I feel any hint of joy, any hint of the possibility of happiness, I get smacked down. Even my job, a hint of life in that I got to get out of the house and go to an office, even that someone decided I wasn't going to be allowed to have.

I don't think Mrs Zen appreciates, even realises, how much I feel I gave up by accepting being a freelance so that I could make a living, and so that I could support her when she needed it. It's a large part of why my life went so sour here. I don't care what she appreciates any more, to be honest with you, and I am able to surrender bitterness because I simply don't care about her any more than I need to just to get by. I feel deeply ashamed that that is true, as though I have committed a crime in it, but I don't see the point in being dishonest to myself about it.

They also took my pleasure in blogging. It had dwindled for one reason or another, but I still liked to express myself. Now I can't. Now I have to watch as people who don't like me poke and pry, try to find things to hate me for. And I write some great things, but they don't make any impression on the people I write them for, and I realise that I made a big mistake on the day I stopped writing only for myself and started believing that I had any power at all just because I can turn a pretty phrase.

I do not. I feel completely disempowered. I have totally lost the ability to tell what is right. Because if this is right, I just never knew. I look at how some people have treated me, and I think if this is right, I just don't have a clue. Because I cannot stop believing that the world will be just to me--not merely that it should be just, but that at least as far as I'm concerned, it is just--and I do not understand how I deserved it. I must have done, but I do not know how.

I cannot stop feeling like this. I try, but I see the years ahead of me and they're so ugly and barren. And I know I could have been happy but no one wants it for me who can make it be. I don't blame them for it. We are all doing the best we can by our lights.

I made myself very sad transferring my posts to Monkey Banana. I read some and I enjoyed how funny I used to be, how warm and friendly I was, how good I felt I was to know. That person disappeared. I don't know where he went. I want this one to disappear too. I don't like him and no one else does either.

***

This is my way of saying goodbye. I will not disappear, but this person will. I cannot sustain him any more, that bewildered boy. I let him down and gave him this future and I know that that cannot be just. It just cannot. He didn't hurt anybody. He never had it in him. I will mostly be blogging on Monkey Banana because I intend to bury him in an avalanche of lies and that isn't what I do here.

I mean that I will stop loving him. It is the only way I know that I can stay alive.

posted by Dr Zen @ 5:14 pm