Chernobyl

I remember
A time when things were okay
Not great, not bad
Before the storm
I had a life.

Then it hit.

The Darkness sweeping in
Overtaking everything
Leaving the smallest traces
Of what was
Only recognizable to those
That knew it before.

Filled with Darkness
Bursting with nothingness
The power went out
The laughter disappeared

A wasteland left
In the wake of destruction
The air settled
Like Chernobyl before it
Uninhabitable
Nothing but a shell
Of what was.

It is no more
I am no more.

Existing

The days continue to rack up, the days devoted to getting better, the days where I'm supposed to building a life, the days where I try to salvage my soul from the caved in walls of this weak body. It's fun to use words like "soul", it's an empowering way to describe your essence, your character, who you really are inside. However, it has also come to mean some sort of supernatural thing that will supersede your literal life, and well I'm just not having any of that. Boy do I wish I had some faith. I could just hang so much on the conviction that faith provides. Alas, I suppose I digress.

Every day that passes is another one wasted it seems, and I know I have no one but myself to blame, but at this point what's the use in that. I get it. It's on my shoulders. I just don't know how to break through it. I subject myself to tons of therapy, but throughout all the years of it, I remain this slab of flesh and bone that just has no real concept of a future and no real vision of a dream (except for that of a loving embrace...but that's really not a big enough situation to be considered a "dream" per se).

I certainly can tell you glimpses of dreams so to speak, but nothing big enough where it's really something plausible to work towards. Just obscure ambiguous notions that rely on many things out of my control. Holding someone special and being held back..that moment of mutual intimacy just feeding off of itself..nothing else matters. No meditation, no relaxation technique, nothing comes close to being in the arms of someone you love and just living in that moment. Another glimpse would be looking around and feeling successful in terms of myself and, to a degree, the world around me, which I suppose ties in to the next thing on my mind.

Since I am perpetually looking to placate my deceased father, that certainly plays a role in it all. According to many around him he was probably depressed too, but he went to night school while working a job and supporting his family. He did that and then made a great life for himself, did he handle everything well? Hell no, but no one's perfect. Who carries on his name? Me? Carry is a strong word. I guess I'm dragging it along with me. Perhaps someday I will earn it, but there's no way anyone could objectively look at my life and be like, "oh yeah he's done great things", and then people will patronize you with things such as what or who classifies "great" etc. It doesn't matter which way you look at it, whether it is my standards or the collective society's standards, I come up short. People will say look at the strides you've made with therapy and all that. Oh I've made strides? Please tell me more about the green grass on the other side that you "just know" is coming for me.

There are no guarantees, and people/society/life itself are very very flawed. Everything is governed by chance but can be weighted/influenced by various factors, i.e. clothes you wear, how you look, how you carry yourself, this can go on forever. Within all the random chaos that surrounds us, many people seem to at least have a few people/places/things that they can take solace in, work towards, and thoroughly find joy and peace in. To be without any of those is one of the cruelest things I could have ever conceived.

If I don't make something of myself, then let's be real no one wants to be with that. My ex says that she thinks I'm her soulmate, but (amongst other things) that I am in no place for anything like a relationship. I absolutely agree. I need to craft a person that can be respected out of this mold, this blank slate that I have become. I don't love myself, I don't really do anything, I just kinda sit around and think too much. I should be going to school, going to work, something, anything to hang my hat on that I am indeed alive.

I don't want to die, I really don't, but I just don't want to exist in this life anymore. Calling it living a life seems like a stretch at this point. I don't feel alive, I just know I exist. I want to be alive. Somewhere. What it'll take to make that into a reality, anyone's guess is as good as mine.

Depression (Acrostic)

Deactivating my drive, 

Evaporating my spirit,
Poisoning my mind,
Revoking my smile,
Eradicating my aura,
Suffocating my voice,
Strangling my liveliness,
Imploding my thoughts,
Obliterating my hope,
Neutralizing my life.  

Self-Deprecation

I wish I had something to strive for. Before there's any sort of obligatory "to get better"...I think that's obvious, but there needs to be an intermediary...a way to get to that end. You want to get strong, go to the weight room, eat right, etc. You want to get better and stop being depressed? Little tougher. What I wouldn't give to go back to the issues of two years ago. Now I can't even be a functioning human being. I couldn't even go back to school, which I already had to leave early last semester for the very purpose of getting better. How's that going? Now I'm stuck here at home, living on the edge of a town in a development without a place to even walk to randomly. I do nothing except go to therapy. I care that I do nothing, but not  enough to do anything about it, between having the energy to do it and to actually see the point in doing it. People say to just be active for the sake of being active, and yes, that's smart for a short term time, but I can't do that forever. I can't just go through the motions for the sake of going through the motions. I see no point in anything. Like I've said, love is only the driving force I've ever experienced, and I feel further from that than ever. I've got nothing to hold onto. I am only still in this world because of other's people tethers to me. My mom cares so much about me, I have a few friends who say they would miss me, even though it really boils down to my mom. I could never leave her like that, after everything she's down for me. What kind of life is one that you're just basically on a life support machine fed from the support of others. Pathetic.

I feel like a vegetable. I might as well be. A tornado of emotional turmoil inside of a shell made of tissue paper. Everyone is moving on to bigger and better things. I don't feel like I belong anywhere, with anyone. College was just a gigantic failure. The academics did nothing,I know I'm smart, I got great grades without trying, but I felt like I got nothing out of them. The social scene? Ha. I had a group of friends, but they go on and being not at school, you just don't talk anymore..plus I never really felt connected. Romantic endeavors? Ha. At a college where athletics are the big thing, there are enough "in shape" guys to flood you out of the market. People go to college to have a good time, I am not a good time, I was in there looking for someone who wanted more, and again, I am not so naive to think I am the only one, I know for a fact there were many of them, but it just wasn't in the cards for me. Time and time again I was just a friend, and towards the end I was barely even good enough to hang out with.

Granted, I'm sure I projected the darkness that was on the inside, and that's not appealing to anyone. I am rotting from the inside out, and now it's visible on the outside. I don't know how to bounce back from this. I don't even know how to have a tolerable day. I can't believe after so many years of effort poured into trying to beat depression, it's come to this. I am paralyzed, and the loneliness feeds off of it. No one should want to be around me, and since no one is there, I get more sad. Vicious cycle that whirlpools down to the bottom of the ocean. I can't even write anymore. My mind is just clouded by darkness, and I can't even poetically explain it anymore. Reduced to this horrendously organized prose. All I want is someone to show me it's okay, but even if they did, I probably wouldn't be able to see it. It's sad that a 5 minute conversation with someone is a big deal as far as people go. I don't want this at all. I am a social creature, and I want to love and be loved. But I am infested, a toxic soul that repels others.

Maybe I'll get lucky and get really sick and be able to just succumb to it. My dreams have gotten worse too, so when I sleep it isn't even a fun escape anymore. I just want some little ray of light in my life. Anything. Anyone.

Daybreak.

Daybreak.
The sun rises, but I don't feel the shine,
I am the result of a faulty design,
When the dullest of stars align,
Nothing more than an empty outline.
What happened to my spark?
Places I knew light I now see dark.
It must be a problem within...that's all I can surmise,
All the cries behind these eyes of my disguise.
Oh! and what a lousy disguise that I chose,
Less than 6 feet but over 250 from head to toes,
Social anxiety that causes nothing but unrest,
Mind runs in circles 'til I am nothing but depressed.
Years of therapy later, 2 relationships past,
Only logical conclusion, this is here to last.
I am defined by my flaws, defined by rejection,
Denied because I can't provide protection.
Or is it my looks? Does it even matter?
When who I am is outweighed by being fatter.
Don't get me wrong, my inside is worse,
My abyss of a mind being nothing but a curse,
I wish I could "get better", this ruins my life,
Any happiness my mind skewers with a knife,
I don't know how to convey this in all my writing,
You'll probably read this, and see another man ranting,
It's hard trying to fit this into rhyme,
Squeezing feelings into one tiny line,
Over and over, time after time,
Always and forever on my upward climb.
Until I fall.
Daybreak.

Empty Words

Is faith in something so much to ask for? Faith in love, happiness, hope...anything really. The sun is rising again on a new day, a day where, in theory, I could exercise my right as a human being to unleash a wild potential that is a wonder to behold. Yet it'll probably more likely be a day that crawls by with nothing really changing. Recognizing that it is my attitude that is the crux of what holds me back, really only makes me feel worse about it all. It'd be a lot easier if the obstacle was something completely unattainable, like punching through a 100 foot thick concrete wall, but no, it's an abstract notion of motivation and the like. Might as well be 200 feet of concrete then. I really don't know how to attack this enemy, how to just be alive. From the days where I realized I couldn't "tough" it out and submitted myself to things like therapy and asking for help, to medication and all the wonderful side effects, to wilderness therapy and living out in the woods for 3 months having to bullshit my way through it because it was the only way out...biofeedback...meditation...yoga...various exercises, I just don't know what to do anymore. I feel so utterly helpless. The key lies within I have no doubt, but I just don't know how to get it and it's the lousiest feeling I have ever felt. To know that through whatever anomaly of the universe my atoms were assembled in this way to create who I am, and to know that people like my mother care so much about me and want me to be happy...and here I am just...as nothing.

I still cannot believe how absurdly out of touch I feel with the rest of humanity. I'm sure it doesn't help that I spend a lot of time thinking about that absurd feeling. Every feeling of loneliness serves as a reminder that I am not someone who I would want close to me either, so why should anyone else. It is no wonder that most people keep me at arm's length. Self-degradation is a welcome mat for people to coddle you, but this is not what it is there for. That's just how reality has shaped up. From my old relationship crumbling, to every new girl since seeing me as a great guy who just isn't special enough to be special to them...it just all adds up to create the mindset of, "yeah, no one wants you". I barely even write anymore because I just don't see the point. Would you if you felt that no matter what happens you are just going to continue rotting away?

Every moment I am not making any sort of progress, I am failing those around me. To those who say that even in writing this out that I am making progress, I say phooey...we both know that's a cop out at best, and that this really doesn't signal much of anything. Not for me, because I have been in touch and writing things for ages now, and there's no progress here. Anyway, my mom took me out to dinner and I could barely hold a conversation. She said this is the worst she's seen me in a while...I guess my armor is wearing thin, which sucks because I really hate making her feel so bad about me. She's a single parent who saw her husband and love of her life decay in front of her from cancer, only to now watch me become a ghost? I hate it.

I'm even failing people I don't talk to anymore, just knowing that a few years ago my best friend told me that she'd love me always and forever no matter what she would care...I feel that each and every day and to an extent I'm glad she doesn't know how I'm doing, in that regard I feel like I did something good for her by pushing her away from the fire. In another regard, I want to reach out like no other, but I know I shouldn't. The friends I talk to, I just feel guilty talking about these things to, when they tell me how hard it is to have someone sort of dangle depressive talks out there regularly, which only compounds the bad feelings, but I understand, really I mean you can't listen to this negative energy like that. There's a reason people go through loads of training and school and get paid to listen to this kind of stuff.

I am just so sad. So alone. So empty. Every step I've taken feels like it was wrong. I am wrong.

Hope?

Sitting on an Amtrak train right now seems like a good time to try to reflect on where things are. Perhaps later I will attempt to be poetic instead of this more lazy prose format, but alas, I am without my headphones and find it rather hard to focus.

This is an interesting place to be, sitting on a train in some sort of in between, not home but not at school, but not a vacation either. However, not having done this before, it still feels different, not merely some transit route back to school, even though in the back of my mind I know that's where I am heading. I wish I could make this merry but I did not create this blog to spout BS optimism from a place where I know there is little. Maybe someday I'll create another blog for  that under some happy go lucky alias. Having been on Spring Break was a welcome hiatus from the hubbub of what every day life had become at school. However, I fear it has reaffirmed my notions of cosmic loneliness and just not being at peace with myself and the world surrounding me. Without divulging anything too personal that I cannot rightly do on another person's behalf, I recently had to go to the hospital for someone very close to me, and as much as I told myself that I should be frightened and scared, I simply was at ease with it. It made me feel very reminiscent of when my father was ill, and I felt nothing with it (at the moment). However, I know that now I am more in touch with this absence of feeling, and aware of it, whereas the first time around I just thought that's how I was operating. Now to have to go back to school and continue with silly papers and tests that have no real bearing on what I feel is meaningful, I just don't know how that can occur. I hear people say they have faith in me and that my exemplary strength and resilience will carry me through, but what does it all mean if you are not at peace with yourself and don't have that belief. I want to feel what they say to be true, and I wish I could just based on their merit, but that doesn't translate to me. Going back to the land of "you just have to get it done"'s is not a place I can see myself getting anything positive done. People might say you will find the positives and you can create your own opportunities, and I do not deny that, I count on the fact that I may encounter opportunities to keep me going, to feed myself some sort of hope.

However, it is a hope that is continually dwindling, as if hope itself were personified by a wind-chime and it's bell that caught a strong breeze of strength when I was born, and is just swinging and resonating on itself, with nothing new pushing it to dance and sway with vivaciousness and livelihood.

I want to feel the wind on my soul again, but if I end up convincing myself that it's not coming, then I don't where I'll delve down to.

This Is Love

I meet you,

My friends warn me,

My family urges me to stay away,

I ignore.

I give you my whole heart,

I fall,

You let me in,

You shut me out,

You break me.

Repeat.

This is love?...

A Nightmare of a Dream

It happens every day without fail.  I spend all day in torturous rehab, trying to cut you out of my life.  I cling to the idea of our love like an addict looking for a a last fix, just to make the world feel inhabitable once again.  Your pictures on my phone, they must go.  Our mutual friends are lost in the whirlwind of our fallout.  What's left?  Just me and my loneliness, trying to self heal.  It happens every night without fail.  I long for the sanity I once knew. It's nighttime when you finally start to fall into the shadows of my past, I slip out of my thoughts and into slumber, into a nightmare of a dream.  There you are, beautiful, and happy, as if nothing went wrong.  Living as if our love never faded away into thin air.  My dreams are not lucid, I did not put you here.  At this moment, love has consumed me, everything is perfect. It happens every morning without fail.  I wake up and reality strikes as if I have fallen into the frigid waters of a cold river.  I check my phone, nothing.  Only the pictures I haven't deleted, the number still on speed dial, and that awful feeling that I am no closer than I was yesterday.  Am I supposed to let you go?

Through the Castle Walls

I am an open book, an easy read at that.  My feelings are as clear as the smile your faking.  Asking what's wrong is pointless, because your emotions are behind layers of concrete in a castle you've built far away from it all.  When I tried to talk about us, you hid, avoided, denied, and reinforced your walls even thicker. You never let me in, so I shouldn't have been surprised when you locked me out for good.

Stolen Hope

A mind war torn  from playing Russian Roulette with 6 bullets day in day out. Regret, Guilt, Apathy, Loneliness, Nostalgia and Fear all loaded in the chamber. The trajectory of each bullet an attempt at an artistic arrangement to show what lies beneath...looking for lost hope even though I'm the thief.

Illusions

Was it her, or the idea of her?  It was proposed to me that I fell in love with who I wanted her to be, but not who she was.  Was I blinded by the hope that this was my end all in love, just because she had a few qualities of what I was looking for?  Illusions of perfection, shattered when reality hit.  Now I don't know what's harder, the fact that its over, or the fact that it never was. - NR

Been a Minute

It's pretty disheartening to look back a lengthy amount of time and realize how much one has truly not changed. I'm sure the same can be said for just about anyone, but for me what it means is all the issues that everyone tells you are going to get better and you just have to have patience for, have not resolved themselves one bit. What all of this means is that in my mind the bulwarks and ramparts have just garnered that much more strength, that the logic that is entrenched within my brain is just that much deeper. Not to question whether it is objectively "right" or "wrong", because I have come to the conclusion long ago that it is undeniably "wrong". I just happen to have that logic, from whatever combination of genetics, life experiences, coincidences, brain chemicals, etc. have left me with. Having been through so many conventional and alternative types of therapy ranging from biofeedback and meditating to control breathing, to spending 3 intensive wilderness therapy months in the woods of Vermont and many places in between...I just have less and less reasoning to fall back to figure that I'm ever going to be able to really get some enjoyment out of life. Granted, the life circumstances part hasn't left me with a lot of area to work with.

This is not to rant about those though, albeit they certainly play a role. It's just the notion that I know I'm smart, I know I'm nice and a morally sound individual for the most part. On the outside I imagine I've looked like someone who has it all together and has a lot of confidence behind the words that pour forth. Tricky tricky. Alas, I do certainly have conviction in my ideas and such, but they just don't do anything for me. The theories surrounding life and the dynamics of relationships and human beings in general are really interesting, but just like everything else, they do not speak to some deeper part of me where my spark would be kept. I'm not sure if it's ever been lit to tell you the truth. I was always good at sports but never really excelled to where I probably could've been because that passion wasn't there. Academics can be cool sure...but I just sort of go through the motions and what happens happens. Maybe I just have some misconception of what a spark is supposed to feel like. Perhaps I have some over-amplified notion of some feeling of grandeur inside that I'm waiting to feel, when really I've already had it and that's all it is. If that's true though, then that's really pathetic, so I really don't feel like I could be feeling the same sort of spark that drives people to do great things and be so passionate about it. Yet there does remain a last frontier that, naturally, defies this.

Love has been a tricky thing. Cliche I know, but all the same, it's claim to being a notorious phrase comes from truth I believe. Throughout my years I've fallen in love with the girl who was my best friend at a young age, and we were together for quite some time with rough patches in between, and it ended when things fell apart for me. Then I go and meet another girl at the age of 17 on the cusp of 18 and fall so hard for her it was scary. Needless to say that fell apart as well, with the ending of that chapter coming with me realizing how I just didn't have the capacity for something like that, on top of other trifles, it just wasn't fair to anyone. Regardless, the point here is how love certainly broke through and created some sort of spark for sure. However it would always periodically get snuffed out by depression or anxiety or something, which is natural I suppose I'm not saying I have some standard for those feelings that they should truly conquer all every moment of every day. When it got to the point where I felt as though I couldn't be a good boyfriend though and be as passionate about a relationship as they deserved, then it would get tricky. In my first relationship I would just end it in those times and just think I had fallen out of love or something along those lines. When I got older and entered into a more mature relationship, it would usually end in me doing something stupid like telling lies to try to seem like a super-boyfriend or stealing poetry from the internet to try to seem magical with the pen. I would jump at the opportunity (true opportunity) for a relationship at this point, although I feel like it would be unfair to the girl who ended up with me and that it may become a crutch. Granted, it's unfair to start myself out from behind before I really see what it would be like, as every relationship is certainly different in a myriad of ways, but either way I think what I'm saying is grounded in some truth. The fact that I'm downstairs in my dormitory talking about how love is the only real thing in my life certainly implies that there might be some unfair balance going on if anything were to crop up. Conclusion I come to with all of this, is that I would certainly try again...but I'm certainly skeptical of my ability to be a consistent person capable of expressing love and being worth it.

Then to go with this wave of thinking, is life really worth it if all you're living for is the prospect of love? People experiencing love would say yes, those who are without would probably say no. The concept of prospective things in life being the driving force is what gets me. I feel like everything that people tell me to hold on to is some promise of a later event which has no guarantee what-so-ever. While what they are saying may be correct in that since I really have nothing now, technically everything would be something prospective...I see that more as reasoning to just let go and see the futility in it all, and they say no it'll come for you I know it (what do you expect them to say). I recognize the difficult position I put people in (friends, family, therapists etc.) when I talk like that, as they have to come up with something to say that keeps you in and doesn't further push you towards some sort of totally apathetic way of thinking. Here is my qualm with all of this, I feel like all of this stuff that may come at a later date isn't any real answer. The problem is some fundamental flaw inside of me, some firewall in my soul that keeps happiness and out. I feel like external things could fall into place and I'd still feel out of place and out of sync with the universe. I had it alright before, I had a relationship before, I've had a good assessment of my own character in a positive light before, I'm not rich but I'm certainly not poor. Point being, that it just seems to be whatever is inside me is the problem. Depression is the worst kind of cancer (don't quote me on that), because there's no chemo for it, there's no hope of them going in with a scalpel and being able to cut out the tumor that lives in every fiber of you. I feel just so apathetic towards everything, except maybe just helping other people lead a better and happier life themselves, but alas that cannot be all you have. I tangle with the thought that if I were not here then maybe someone would be in my place and use the resources in life that are wasted on me to some better cosmic use. However, I end up being pretty apathetic about that as well, and don't really care much to think about it.

Tomorrow (technically), I'll go and see a philosophy professor for philosophical counseling, and then I'll go see my counselor a few hours later. Honestly, I don't know what to expect, I'm hoping they start to feel the gravity of where I'm at, because it's starting to scare me.