I’d like to say that since my last entry, I’d found my miracle.  I’d like to say I found the answers to the questions that molest my soul (spirit–I’m not so religious anymore).  I haven’t.  The grayness of my life is as gray as ever.  It is like breathing through a wet towel.  If anything, the grayness has become darker–even more stifling.  I have reached a point where I create this scenario of a perfect life in my head–enough money to not worry, a good job, in a loving relationship, surrounded by friends and family–and ask myself, “Would you want to live another day if this were your life?”  No.  No.  I have reached a point that even if my life were my idea of ideal, the darkness has tainted my soul.  I am spoiled.  I am convinced in almost every way that there is no good reason for me.  I am more exhausted than ever.  I am so incredibly tired of this life.

In 2009, having thought I had found some happiness with someone, I found myself single, again.  But, the naive are easy pray.  I hope the money helped. After sending money several times, including money in December 2008 for a trip to Prague, I was cast aside.  No contact.  No response to calls.  Nothing for two months.  In the middle of February 2009 I called, and *accidentally* was connected.  We were both shocked.  It was a short conversation–being told goodbye only takes a few seconds.  Recovery took a few months–but the grayness was a bit darker and ever more present.  Ever more present, I had begun to think about ending my life regardless of the impact it would have on my family.  Everything was a challenge.  Everything took an incredible amount of effort.

Work and gym, work and gym…

Somewhere near the end of 2009 I decided to try and make some new friends.  I had pretty much lost all of my friends in my city.  I was struggling to maintain my friendships with those in other cities.  I was desperate to get out of my funk.  Socializing has never been easy for me, so as lame as it might sound, I went to the internet.  I had used a website before and decided to use it again.  I tried to fill my free time talking to unavailable (I gravitate to people in other countries–I think it is a way for me to subconsciously sabotage my happiness–self-fulfilling prophecy as it were) people about anything I could think of.  All I wanted was a few minutes relief from the grayness.    I made a few friends online–I even found a little hope in it all…a little.  That hope lasted up until I was asked for money.  Fool me once…

Still, my only relief from the grayness was to spend my time talking to strangers–trying to find some connection to the world.  Then, in early 2010, I found love.  The BIG kind.  The kind that hurts as much as it feels good.  The kind that you worry every minute of every day that it’s going to end.  The kind where you feel like you’ve taken your first breath of fresh air in your life.  The kind where you finally start to think you’ve been wrong all of your life about everything and perhaps the world has a bit of sunshine saved just for you that will make the grayness go away.  My 2010 was filled with long nights talking to my love; fantastic vacations to places I’ve always wanted to see; sweet love; beautiful memories.  But the grayness is nothing if not persistent–the fighting was brutal–which, came in the form of extreme jealousy manifested with viciousness.

Also in 2010 were 5 deaths, one fatal illness, one stroke, one heart attack in my family including my parents (the stroke and heart attack).  My parents both survived; but, I have to admit to something sad and sickening–given this is my outlet for all things poisonous:  The thought crossed my mind I am looking forward to my parents being gone.  Not because I do not love them–I love them very much.  I love them so much that the one thing that holds me to these mortal coils is the fact my parents need me.  It would crush them to find I took my life.  But the grayness is ever darker.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s 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.

The grayness is not so easily brushed aside.  I’m still an outsider, an alien walking amongst the human race.  I can’t find a way to fit in.  I can’t find a way to be content.  Perhaps if my life were ideal there would be some hope, and I would want…wait…no, I am truly tired of this life.

Bill Zeller

I have the urge to declare my sanity and justify my actions, but I assume I’ll never be able to convince anyone that this was the right decision. Maybe it’s true that anyone who does this is insane by definition, but I can at least explain my reasoning. I considered not writing any of this because of how personal it is, but I like tying up loose ends and don’t want people to wonder why I did this. Since I’ve never spoken to anyone about what happened to me, people would likely draw the wrong conclusions.

My first memories as a child are of being raped, repeatedly. This has affected every aspect of my life. This darkness, which is the only way I can describe it, has followed me like a fog, but at times intensified and overwhelmed me, usually triggered by a distinct situation. In kindergarten I couldn’t use the bathroom and would stand petrified whenever I needed to, which started a trend of awkward and unexplained social behavior. The damage that was done to my body still prevents me from using the bathroom normally, but now it’s less of a physical impediment than a daily reminder of what was done to me.

This darkness followed me as I grew up. I remember spending hours playing with legos, having my world consist of me and a box of cold, plastic blocks. Just waiting for everything to end. It’s the same thing I do now, but instead of legos it’s surfing the web or reading or listening to a baseball game. Most of my life has been spent feeling dead inside, waiting for my body to catch up.

At times growing up I would feel inconsolable rage, but I never connected this to what happened until puberty. I was able to keep the darkness at bay for a few hours at a time by doing things that required intense concentration, but it would always come back. Programming appealed to me for this reason. I was never particularly fond of computers or mathematically inclined, but the temporary peace it would provide was like a drug. But the darkness always returned and built up something like a tolerance, because programming has become less and less of a refuge.

The darkness is with me nearly every time I wake up. I feel like a grime is covering me. I feel like I’m trapped in a contimated body that no amount of washing will clean. Whenever I think about what happened I feel manic and itchy and can’t concentrate on anything else. It manifests itself in hours of eating or staying up for days at a time or sleeping for sixteen hours straight or week long programming binges or constantly going to the gym. I’m exhausted from feeling like this every hour of every day.

Three to four nights a week I have nightmares about what happened. It makes me avoid sleep and constantly tired, because sleeping with what feels like hours of nightmares is not restful. I wake up sweaty and furious. I’m reminded every morning of what was done to me and the control it has over my life.

I’ve never been able to stop thinking about what happened to me and this hampered my social interactions. I would be angry and lost in thought and then be interrupted by someone saying “Hi” or making small talk, unable to understand why I seemed cold and distant. I walked around, viewing the outside world from a distant portal behind my eyes, unable to perform normal human niceties. I wondered what it would be like to take to other people without what happened constantly on my mind, and I wondered if other people had similar experiences that they were better able to mask.

Alcohol was also something that let me escape the darkness. It would always find me later, though, and it was always angry that I managed to escape and it made me pay. Many of the irresponsible things I did were the result of the darkness. Obviously I’m responsible for every decision and action, including this one, but there are reasons why things happen the way they do.

Alcohol and other drugs provided a way to ignore the realities of my situation. It was easy to spend the night drinking and forget that I had no future to look forward to. I never liked what alcohol did to me, but it was better than facing my existence honestly. I haven’t touched alcohol or any other drug in over seven months (and no drugs or alcohol will be involved when I do this) and this has forced me to evaluate my life in an honest and clear way. There’s no future here. The darkness will always be with me.

I used to think if I solved some problem or achieved some goal, maybe he would leave. It was comforting to identify tangible issues as the source of my problems instead of something that I’ll never be able to change. I thought that if I got into to a good college, or a good grad school, or lost weight, or went to the gym nearly every day for a year, or created programs that millions of people used, or spent a summer or California or New York or published papers that I was proud of, then maybe I would feel some peace and not be constantly haunted and unhappy. But nothing I did made a dent in how depressed I was on a daily basis and nothing was in any way fulfilling. I’m not sure why I ever thought that would change anything.

I didn’t realize how deep a hold he had on me and my life until my first relationship. I stupidly assumed that no matter how the darkness affected me personally, my romantic relationships would somehow be separated and protected. Growing up I viewed my future relationships as a possible escape from this thing that haunts me every day, but I began to realize how entangled it was with every aspect of my life and how it is never going to release me. Instead of being an escape, relationships and romantic contact with other people only intensified everything about him that I couldn’t stand. I will never be able to have a relationship in which he is not the focus, affecting every aspect of my romantic interactions.

Relationships always started out fine and I’d be able to ignore him for a few weeks. But as we got closer emotionally the darkness would return and every night it’d be me, her and the darkness in a black and gruesome threesome. He would surround me and penetrate me and the more we did the more intense it became. It made me hate being touched, because as long as we were separated I could view her like an outsider viewing something good and kind and untainted. Once we touched, the darkness would envelope her too and take her over and the evil inside me would surround her. I always felt like I was infecting anyone I was with.

Relationships didn’t work. No one I dated was the right match, and I thought that maybe if I found the right person it would overwhelm him. Part of me knew that finding the right person wouldn’t help, so I became interested in girls who obviously had no interest in me. For a while I thought I was gay. I convinced myself that it wasn’t the darkness at all, but rather my orientation, because this would give me control over why things didn’t feel “right”. The fact that the darkness affected sexual matters most intensely made this idea make some sense and I convinced myself of this for a number of years, starting in college after my first relationship ended. I told people I was gay (at Trinity, not at Princeton), even though I wasn’t attracted to men and kept finding myself interested in girls. Because if being gay wasn’t the answer, then what was? People thought I was avoiding my orientation, but I was actually avoiding the truth, which is that while I’m straight, I will never be content with anyone. I know now that the darkness will never leave.

Last spring I met someone who was unlike anyone else I’d ever met. Someone who showed me just how well two people could get along and how much I could care about another human being. Someone I know I could be with and love for the rest of my life, if I weren’t so fucked up. Amazingly, she liked me. She liked the shell of the man the darkness had left behind. But it didn’t matter because I couldn’t be alone with her. It was never just the two of us, it was always the three of us: her, me and the darkness. The closer we got, the more intensely I’d feel the darkness, like some evil mirror of my emotions. All the closeness we had and I loved was complemented by agony that I couldn’t stand, from him. I realized that I would never be able to give her, or anyone, all of me or only me. She could never have me without the darkness and evil inside me. I could never have just her, without the darkness being a part of all of our interactions. I will never be able to be at peace or content or in a healthy relationship. I realized the futility of the romantic part of my life. If I had never met her, I would have realized this as soon as I met someone else who I meshed similarly well with. It’s likely that things wouldn’t have worked out with her and we would have broken up (with our relationship ending, like the majority of relationships do) even if I didn’t have this problem, since we only dated for a short time. But I will face exactly the same problems with the darkness with anyone else. Despite my hopes, love and compatability is not enough. Nothing is enough. There’s no way I can fix this or even push the darkness down far enough to make a relationship or any type of intimacy feasible.

So I watched as things fell apart between us. I had put an explicit time limit on our relationship, since I knew it couldn’t last because of the darkness and didn’t want to hold her back, and this caused a variety of problems. She was put in an unnatural situation that she never should have been a part of. It must have been very hard for her, not knowing what was actually going on with me, but this is not something I’ve ever been able to talk about with anyone. Losing her was very hard for me as well. Not because of her (I got over our relationship relatively quickly), but because of the realization that I would never have another relationship and because it signified the last true, exclusive personal connection I could ever have. This wasn’t apparent to other people, because I could never talk about the real reasons for my sadness. I was very sad in the summer and fall, but it was not because of her, it was because I will never escape the darkness with anyone. She was so loving and kind to me and gave me everything I could have asked for under the circumstances. I’ll never forget how much happiness she brought me in those briefs moments when I could ignore the darkness. I had originally planned to kill myself last winter but never got around to it. (Parts of this letter were written over a year ago, other parts days before doing this.) It was wrong of me to involve myself in her life if this were a possibility and I should have just left her alone, even though we only dated for a few months and things ended a long time ago. She’s just one more person in a long list of people I’ve hurt.

I could spend pages talking about the other relationships I’ve had that were ruined because of my problems and my confusion related to the darkness. I’ve hurt so many great people because of who I am and my inability to experience what needs to be experienced. All I can say is that I tried to be honest with people about what I thought was true.

I’ve spent my life hurting people. Today will be the last time.

I’ve told different people a lot of things, but I’ve never told anyone about what happened to me, ever, for obvious reasons. It took me a while to realize that no matter how close you are to someone or how much they claim to love you, people simply cannot keep secrets. I learned this a few years ago when I thought I was gay and told people. The more harmful the secret, the juicier the gossip and the more likely you are to be betrayed. People don’t care about their word or what they’ve promised, they just do whatever the fuck they want and justify it later. It feels incredibly lonely to realize you can never share something with someone and have it be between just the two of you. I don’t blame anyone in particular, I guess it’s just how people are. Even if I felt like this is something I could have shared, I have no interest in being part of a friendship or relationship where the other person views me as the damaged and contaminated person that I am. So even if I were able to trust someone, I probably would not have told them about what happened to me. At this point I simply don’t care who knows.

I feel an evil inside me. An evil that makes me want to end life. I need to stop this. I need to make sure I don’t kill someone, which is not something that can be easily undone. I don’t know if this is related to what happened to me or something different. I recognize the irony of killing myself to prevent myself from killing someone else, but this decision should indicate what I’m capable of.

So I’ve realized I will never escape the darkness or misery associated with it and I have a responsibility to stop myself from physically harming others.

I’m just a broken, miserable shell of a human being. Being molested has defined me as a person and shaped me as a human being and it has made me the monster I am and there’s nothing I can do to escape it. I don’t know any other existence. I don’t know what life feels like where I’m apart from any of this. I actively despise the person I am. I just feel fundamentally broken, almost non-human. I feel like an animal that woke up one day in a human body, trying to make sense of a foreign world, living among creatures it doesn’t understand and can’t connect with.

I have accepted that the darkness will never allow me to be in a relationship. I will never go to sleep with someone in my arms, feeling the comfort of their hands around me. I will never know what uncontimated intimacy is like. I will never have an exclusive bond with someone, someone who can be the recipient of all the love I have to give. I will never have children, and I wanted to be a father so badly. I think I would have made a good dad. And even if I had fought through the darkness and married and had children all while being unable to feel intimacy, I could have never done that if suicide were a possibility. I did try to minimize pain, although I know that this decision will hurt many of you. If this hurts you, I hope that you can at least forget about me quickly.

There’s no point in identifying who molested me, so I’m just going to leave it at that. I doubt the word of a dead guy with no evidence about something that happened over twenty years ago would have much sway.

You may wonder why I didn’t just talk to a professional about this. I’ve seen a number of doctors since I was a teenager to talk about other issues and I’m positive that another doctor would not have helped. I was never given one piece of actionable advice, ever. More than a few spent a large part of the session reading their notes to remember who I was. And I have no interest in talking about being raped as a child, both because I know it wouldn’t help and because I have no confidence it would remain secret. I know the legal and practical limits of doctor/patient confidentiality, growing up in a house where we’d hear stories about the various mental illnesses of famous people, stories that were passed down through generations. All it takes is one doctor who thinks my story is interesting enough to share or a doctor who thinks it’s her right or responsibility to contact the authorities and have me identify the molestor (justifying her decision by telling herself that someone else might be in danger). All it takes is a single doctor who violates my trust, just like the “friends” who I told I was gay did, and everything would be made public and I’d be forced to live in a world where people would know how fucked up I am. And yes, I realize this indicates that I have severe trust issues, but they’re based on a large number of experiences with people who have shown a profound disrepect for their word and the privacy of others.

People say suicide is selfish. I think it’s selfish to ask people to continue living painful and miserable lives, just so you possibly won’t feel sad for a week or two. Suicide may be a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but it’s also a permanent solution to a ~23 year-old problem that grows more intense and overwhelming every day.

Some people are just dealt bad hands in this life. I know many people have it worse than I do, and maybe I’m just not a strong person, but I really did try to deal with this. I’ve tried to deal with this every day for the last 23 years and I just can’t fucking take it anymore.

I often wonder what life must be like for other people. People who can feel the love from others and give it back unadulterated, people who can experience sex as an intimate and joyous experience, people who can experience the colors and happenings of this world without constant misery. I wonder who I’d be if things had been different or if I were a stronger person. It sounds pretty great.

I’m prepared for death. I’m prepared for the pain and I am ready to no longer exist. Thanks to the strictness of New Jersey gun laws this will probably be much more painful than it needs to be, but what can you do. My only fear at this point is messing something up and surviving.

—-

I’d also like to address my family, if you can call them that. I despise everything they stand for and I truly hate them, in a non-emotional, dispassionate and what I believe is a healthy way. The world will be a better place when they’re dead—one with less hatred and intolerance.

If you’re unfamiliar with the situation, my parents are fundamentalist Christians who kicked me out of their house and cut me off financially when I was 19 because I refused to attend seven hours of church a week.

They live in a black and white reality they’ve constructed for themselves. They partition the world into good and evil and survive by hating everything they fear or misunderstand and calling it love. They don’t understand that good and decent people exist all around us, “saved” or not, and that evil and cruel people occupy a large percentage of their church. They take advantage of people looking for hope by teaching them to practice the same hatred they practice.

A random example:

“I am personally convinced that if a Muslim truly believes and obeys the Koran, he will be a terrorist.” – George Zeller, August 24, 2010.

If you choose to follow a religion where, for example, devout Catholics who are trying to be good people are all going to Hell but child molestors go to Heaven (as long as they were “saved” at some point), that’s your choice, but it’s fucked up. Maybe a God who operates by those rules does exist. If so, fuck Him.

Their church was always more important than the members of their family and they happily sacrificed whatever necessary in order to satisfy their contrived beliefs about who they should be.

I grew up in a house where love was proxied through a God I could never believe in. A house where the love of music with any sort of a beat was literally beaten out of me. A house full of hatred and intolerance, run by two people who were experts at appearing kind and warm when others were around. Parents who tell an eight year old that his grandmother is going to Hell because she’s Catholic. Parents who claim not to be racist but then talk about the horrors of miscegenation. I could list hundreds of other examples, but it’s tiring.

Since being kicked out, I’ve interacted with them in relatively normal ways. I talk to them on the phone like nothing happened. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I like pretending I have a family. Maybe I like having people I can talk to about what’s been going on in my life. Whatever the reason, it’s not real and it feels like a sham. I should have never allowed this reconnection to happen.

I wrote the above a while ago, and I do feel like that much of the time. At other times, though, I feel less hateful. I know my parents honestly believe the crap they believe in. I know that my mom, at least, loved me very much and tried her best. One reason I put this off for so long is because I know how much pain it will cause her. She has been sad since she found out I wasn’t “saved”, since she believes I’m going to Hell, which is not a sadness for which I am responsible. That was never going to change, and presumably she believes the state of my physical body is much less important than the state of my soul. Still, I cannot intellectually justify this decision, knowing how much it will hurt her. Maybe my ability to take my own life, knowing how much pain it will cause, shows that I am a monster who doesn’t deserve to live. All I know is that I can’t deal with this pain any longer and I’m am truly sorry I couldn’t wait until my family and everyone I knew died so this could be done without hurting anyone. For years I’ve wished that I’d be hit by a bus or die while saving a baby from drowning so my death might be more acceptable, but I was never so lucky.

—-

To those of you who have shown me love, thank you for putting up with all my shittiness and moodiness and arbitrariness. I was never the person I wanted to be. Maybe without the darkness I would have been a better person, maybe not. I did try to be a good person, but I realize I never got very far.

I’m sorry for the pain this causes. I really do wish I had another option. I hope this letter explains why I needed to do this. If you can’t understand this decision, I hope you can at least forgive me.

Bill Zeller

—-

Please save this letter and repost it if gets deleted. I don’t want people to wonder why I did this. I disseminated it more widely than I might have otherwise because I’m worried that my family might try to restrict access to it. I don’t mind if this letter is made public. In fact, I’d prefer it be made public to people being unable to read it and drawing their own conclusions.

Feel free to republish this letter, but only if it is reproduced in its entirety.

So, being depressed always makes me want to just stay home and sleep.  I try to avoid everyone.  But, I also recognize avoiding everyone and staying shut in is part of the problem.  It’s a downward spiral.  I know nobody wants to hang around a morose person, but at the same time, avoiding everyone when I’m morose makes me feel even more sad and alone.  Usually, the fact I care for my friends more than I care for myself overrides my impulse to associate with people; but, the fact is that you can’t avoid your friends all the time unless you want to destroy friendships, which I don’t.  My solution is to walk a fine line of contact and avoidance and when in contact do my best to put on a happy face.  I tend to joke around a lot.  Perhaps too much.  It’s a defense mechanism and I know it.

I’ve spent a huge amount of energy trying to cover up the fact I feel like the life is being squeezed out of me from the inside out over the past few months.  I’ve said this before–I can’t find a better way to describe it–I’m exhausted.  Everything seems like it takes all my energy and effort.  I’ve always considered myself a great friend.  I do my best to take care of my friendships.  It’s the one thing in my life that has always came easily to me–it’s been effortless–until lately.  Now, even some of my friendships are faltering–and I’ll take the blame.  I’m losing control, there, too.

This bit of introspection and realization comes from an email sent to me this morning by a friend.  She said she was angry and hurt by some things I said and did in early Oct.  I’ve called her several times since Oct, but she didn’t return my calls.  On the one hand, over the past decade since I’ve known her, I do call her several times before finally hearing back from her.  She’s busy and travels a great deal so ordinarily I wouldn’t attribute the lack of response to anything other than her hectic schedule.  But, I had a weird feeling this time–I don’t even know why.

She was incredibly ill from a spider bite a few months ago.  She’s lucky to be alive.  She said that it will take a few months for the toxins to work their way out of her body–and she’s a tiny little thing so I know it’s even worse for her, which has to do with the subject of this blog entry.

One of the things she wasn’t happy about was me giving her grief about finding out she’d been sick for weeks and in the hospital several times in the form of a bulk email.  She claims I’m one of her closest friends.  She *is* one of my closest friends.  The contact I have with her is so infrequent, that I just can’t apologize for being upset hearing about something so significant via a bulk email.  I understand that it’s impossible to email everyone with all the gory details; but I would have done that for my *closest* friends.  And, to be truthful, it wasn’t even that I heard about it via email–it was that I heard about it a month after it happened.  I guess, the bottom line is if it walks, talks, and quacks like a duck…and I just don’t feel like a closest friend when I hear about a life threatening illness in a bulk email weeks after it happened.  I suppose I was insensitive about giving her grief when she was sick.  I should have worked out better timing–but, as I mentioned, it takes a lot of effort to work this stuff out and I’m exhausted.

I had a reason to be in the same city as my friend about a month after the spider bite.  I was ecstatic when she asked me to stay with her and take care of her.  I was really happy that she needed me.  I had invited her to attend the conference with me several months before.  I had also told her that I was much more interested in spending time with her than going to the conference and that I’d bail on the conference to spend time with her.  She said that she would try to come if she felt up to it.  When I arrived, I sent a text–a brief text–just to let her know I was in town.  I didn’t want to put any pressure on her to see me at her house or for her to come.  I just wanted her to know I was there and available if she felt up to it.  I checked in via text a few times.  She interpreted these texts to be terse and rude.

When we did talk on the phone, I spoke about the conference.  My intent was to let her know it was going to be fun since I had told her a few weeks prior that I wanted to bail on the conference to spend time with her.  I didn’t want her to feel pressure to spend time with me since she felt ill.  She interpreted this as me pressuring her into coming to the conference when she didn’t feel well.

At the same time, I told her I really didn’t want to stay at the hotel.  Again, my intent was to try to be compassionate about her needs.  She had told me she wanted me to stay with her and take care of her.  I wanted her to know that I *wanted* and preferred being with her; but, at the same time, I was trying to be careful not to put pressure on her to do anything.  I wanted her to be able to make whatever decision she wanted without pressure from me.

I utterly and completely failed.

As far as friends and illnesses or hard events go, I always feel like an imbecile in circumstances like these.  I don’t know what to do–my friend’s in pain and needing help, and I am utterly powerless to do anything.  For a control freak it’s frustrating.  For a friend it’s terrifying.  My response was to joke and try and be upbeat for two reasons:  1)  It’s how I try to hide my problems from my friends (and especially since I’m in a bad emotional state these days and it’s the last thing she needed to deal with); 2)  It’s the only thing I feel like I can do–try to cheer them up.  This wasn’t successful–my friend interpreted this as not caring and being unfeeling.

Again, utter failure.

She said she was angry and hurt.  She told me I was uncaring.  Unfeeling.  She said she was having a hard time seeing my “positive intent” but was getting there.  She said she wasn’t ready to talk to me.  She said she didn’t want to get rid of me.

Well, now I’m pissed.  I’m exhausted and I’m pissed.  I’ve waited for communication for weeks after initiating communication several times without question and always assumed positive intent.  I’ve heard her talk of texting her friends daily, while I have very infrequent communication–and I’ve assumed positive intent.  Now, it’s an effort for her to assume positive intent on my part when had she bothered calling me or emailing me over the past few weeks to ask me what the hell was up she would have known it was mostly all positive intent.  And, she’s not ready to talk to me.  I feel the same way.  I could have told her what was in this blog but I’m not sure it’s worth the effort I’m so tired.

I really am grateful for my friends.  They’re the last thing in my life that I hold on to–the last thing I’m proud of.  But, I really am exhausted…I’m going to hibernate for awhile.

I read an article last week that has given me things to think about.  A teenager in Florida commited suicide and streamed the event over his webcam.  A lot of discussion has taken place about how something like this could happen.  Some of the reasons have been that people didn’t think he was serious; others claimed they tried to talk him out of his decision; still others watched out of curiousity.  I won’t even get into the fact the legal side of the discussion.  I just wanted to talk about how I am guessing the kid felt.

Practically every day of my life for the past decade I’ve wished for death.  It really is a strange feeling.  At first, you’re struck by the pain it would cause those who care for you.  It gave me pause when this happened to me.  I asked myself questions like, “How could I be so selfish?”, “How would person Y deal with it?”.  After a while, the pain gets so bad questions about how others might feel become irrelavant.  All you want is an end to the pain–the darkness.  Eventually, you become so exhausted with the desire for the darkness to end and the robotic movements of walking through life your thoughts morph again.  I started thinking others were selfish for wanting to keep me here–encouraging me to tough it out, find help, “look on the bright side.”  Fuck, I hate that concept.  Look on the bright side.  As if I hadn’t thought of that–as if I’d not tried every day to do that very thing.  Find some reason, some bright light, that would make sense of my life and give me a reason to take another breath.  It’s a waste of time.

Here’s what I know, I walk an edge as sharp as the blade of a razor every day trying to find a good reason to keep going.  I’ll take anything:  waiting for a good movie, enjoying a new cd, taking care of my animals, going on a trip.  Lately, it’s been going to the gym (the past two years).  And even more recently it’s been reading the Twilight series.  I use anything just to keep my mind off the darkness.  Any diversion will do.  But, the darkness is always there.  I always feel it lurking.  And, it always returns.

So, when you wonder how a kid can stream a suicide over the web, think of this–he was probably screaming for one person to give him any reason not to take his own life.  He was looking for one good reason.  He was smothered in darkness, and nothing diverted his mind from those thoughts.  But, he couldn’t find a reason to go on.  I understand that.  I wish I could have helped in some way.  I am not sure what I could have done, but I wouldn’t have doubted his resolve–that should have never been called into question.

It’s an odd feeling to wish for death.  It’s an odd feeling to finally give up hope.  It’s an odd feeling to no longer care how others will be impacted.  It’s an odd feeling to welcome the end.

An aside:  I’m depressed pretty much all the time, so when I get more depressed it’s tangible but redundant.  I think my baseline is set lower than most.  Like I have an emotional scale of 0-10 where 0 is very depressed and 10 is very happy.  I think most people live in the mid range (a 5) with occasional blips up or down on the scale.  Their baseline is 5.  I think my baseline is 2.  I’m a 1 on my scale today.  Stupid books.  Or, rather, stupid me for getting so caught up into fantasy.

Anyway, the books provided a diversion–they kept my mind off how I feel at the moment and let me focus on something else.  Of course, I’m borderline OCD, so it wasn’t enough to buy the four books and enjoy reading them over the course of several weeks.  No, I had them read in a several days.  And, now that I’m done, I am pissed there’s not more to read and depressed that while my brain was occupied elsewhere my life didn’t miraculously turn into sunshine and daisies.  There I go again, hoping for miracles.

Yeah, I know I said the books (at least the first one) made me re-hash old issues, but that’s not a bad thing.  I don’t really tend to regret much in my life–at least I try not to regret much–so re-hashing reaffirms the decisions I’ve made.  For better or worse, I usually make good–or at least appropriate–decisions.  The re-hashing wasn’t much more than an “aha!” moment when I understood the similarities in challenges between myself and Edward.  For the most part, the Twilight series was just a mindless read–a means to escape for a while.  I miss it.  I miss the escape.  I feel like a good friend just moved to another country.  Ugh.

I need to find some new books, which is always a challenge for me.  it’s like everything else in my life–I over analyze it to the point I’m unable to make a decision.  Analysis paralysis.  There are millions of books on the market, and I won’t be able to make a decision on which one to read because there’s too much to consider when deciding which one to start.  Ugh.

Any suggestions?

Well, the first book was exactly what I expected.  My friend’s wife calls it teenage girl porn.  Ha!  Yeah, I think she got that right.  What held my interest in Twilight, even though I was having trouble wading through the puerile aspects of the book, was the dynamic twist Meyer created:  A vampire falls in love with a human who’s blood drives him mad with thirst–he can barely stop himself from killing the object of his romantic desire.  I wish Meyer would have tackled this plot in a book designed for adults.  Very interesting.  But again, it wasn’t so much the plot that drew me towards the book–it was how I related to the plot on a personal level.  I know, a little weird, a little freaky–let me try to explain.  (This has nothing to do with vampirism).

Edward, the vampire at the crux of this romantic love vs. prey/predator paradox has essentially given up ever finding love.  He has moved forward through his immortal life without having someone to share that part of his life.  When he finds this love, because of not only the strength of his hunger but also his characteristically vampiric physical strength, he still must maintain a distance from the object of his desire less he cause harm to the frail human.

I remember the day I decided my life would take a similar path–accepting something that was profound, but knowing I’d always have to maintain a distance.  It was the day I had decided I couldn’t pray myself into being a heterosexual.  I realized gay was permanent.  While I’m sure Stephanie Myer never intended for someone to relate to her books this way, I found the story nonetheless profound for me.  So much of my life was based upon my religious beliefs.  So much of what defined me as a person came from being Mormon.  At the conclusion of my undergraduate studies, I’d realized I’d failed in my quest to change; but, at the time, I couldn’t abandon my faith.  I have a gay friend who is also an ex Mormon who says the only option the LDS church gives to gays in the church is either celibacy or suicide.  He’s probably right.  He was certainly correct for me at that time–I chose celibacy.  I accepted I was gay but recognized I still had a profound faith in my religion.  I could accept the fact I was gay and deny myself the realization of those feelings because of my beliefs.  Celibacy.  I could live with that.

(Yeah, right.  That lasted about three years–but that’s another story.  Another blog entry.)

But, back to the books and Edward…

My point is I understand.  I can relate to Edward.  I know what it feels like to have life present you with an impossible situation and know the only way through it is pain because the alternative is unthinkable.  The book stirred up all sorts of issues and memories I’d dealt with and tucked away.  I am always amused at myself when something triggers a revisiting of past demons.  I was certainly surprised this book did that for me.  As for why I read the other three books plus an unpublished/unfinished manuscript for a fifth book–I have no idea.  Maybe I like teenage girl porn.  <shudder>

Here we go…

What’s the purpose?  That’s my question.  And, I mean the question in the most general sense of the question.  I’m not asking what the purpose is for any specific thing (certainly not this blog–I already said you’re not going to find any organized thoughts here).  I want to know what the purpose is of it all.  Everything.  I guess that’s a big question.  The reason I ask is because I feel like I’m the only one without an answer.  I need an answer.  I’ve been asking that question solidly for the past 3-4 years.  The question has nagged at me for the past 8-10 years.  Before that I didn’t care what the answer was.  Before that I was certain I had the answer (maybe I’ll talk about that in an entry some day).  Let me be more specific.

What’s the purpose of living?  I wake up every day and wonder why I bother.  I have every day for all but 30 days or so of the past 10 years thought about suicide–hoped to myself that each day would be my last.  No exaggeration.  But still, I go on.  I don’t know why.  I used to think I go on because I consider myself a hopeful pessimist and I’m expecting something great to happen *someday*.  Now, I think I go on out of morbid curiosity–wondering just how much worse I can feel; how much more detachment I can find from this life and this world; how much more alien I can feel while all the time being surrounded by people.  By strangers.

Everyone is a stranger to me.  Even those close to me are becoming strangers.  I don’t mean to discredit my friends and family.  I’m lucky to have great friends; I am very close to members of my family.  However, without purpose I find those relationships not being enough anymore to avoid the emptiness I find in trying to answer the question of what’s the purpose.

I just go on–all I do is breathe, eat, shit, work, and sleep.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  I have truly been living in a purely autonomic sense for the past few years:  I eat because I am hungry.  I sleep because I am tired.  Little else besides the animal mechanical motivates me.  I am a robot.  A favorite song of mine from The Bravery called Believe could have been written for me and how I feel.  It is about fear, which is at the core of who I am, perhaps.  But, the chorus is profound in this particular circumstance:

So give me something to believe
Cause I am living just to breathe
And I need something more
To keep on breathing for
So give me something to believe

I’m not looking for someone to save me, though.  I don’t want to be saved.  I’m not sure I could be saved even if I wanted to be.  I’m trying to understand why I can’t seem to find a purpose to anything.  I’ve looked.  I’ve called it “looking for my passion” for the past several years.  I can’t find it.  Either I don’t have a passion or it’s so obscure the likelihood of me ever finding it is ridiculously remote.  I keep on looking.  But, I’m getting tired.  Very tired.  I’m exhausted, in fact.

I do still look–but not as much as I used to–for my passion.  The lack of sense of purpose and passion has taken all the color out of my life.  I’m now putting what energy I have into coping with the grayness that defines my life and fills my lungs with a thickness so heavy that breathing is a burden.  But I cope.

Someone told me once that the reason people end their life is because they’ve run out of coping mechanisms.  I think that’s true.  I’ll go into detail about all the ways I’ve tried to cope in the past sometime later, perhaps.  For now, I recognize this blog is a coping mechanism.  I might never write another entry.  I might write in it every day.  I might find a passion out of this.  I might fill a thousand pages with nothing but inane rambling and wasted effort.  But, for now, it’s a diversion from the grayness.

I’ll be in touch.  Or not.