Tuesday, July 17, 2007

I'm in despair.


I promised one of my nurses at the cardiac hospital I go to twice a week that I would lose about six kg. Instead, I've gained three. I don't want to face her with this news.


This is not a casual thing. If I don't lose weight, I will die. Soon. et I don't really care. "So fucking what?" sums up my feelings. This is finally good news for me. At last, suicide that doesn't require me to do anything ut continue in what Im doing already. The ultimate lazy man's path to self destruction.


Why do I want to die? I suss out the logic of this agenda as follows:


A) I am imperfect. Grossly so. Since I am imperfect, I am unacceptable.

B) Only perfect (acceptable) people get love from my mom and dad.

C) Since I am imperfect (unacceptable), I will never receive love from my mom and dad and I don't deserve to live.


[I didn't say any of this made sense.]


D) Since I am imperfect, I am unacceptable and don't deserve to live. QED.


Appendix:


E) I only deserve death because I will never be able to please my parents, now that they're dead.

F) I will always have a wound inside me of not-belonging, not being loved and accepted, always striving to be what I am not since what I am is unacceptable by my family.


How the hell did I get this screwed up? How the hell do I preach the power of God's grace and forgiveness yet still labor under the burden of this bullshit?


How do I disconnect the idea of imperfection --> suicide?


What does this say about how I view other people? Do they deserve death as well for their imperfections? No, actually they don't. Other people are another arena entirely. They're allowed grace, they're allowed not to be as good as I'm supposed to be.


But let's go to the idea of suicide. Who would be affected by my suicide?


  • My wife. This would devastate her.
  • My step-kids. I dislike them, so I don't believe they would much care about my death.
  • My in-laws. They would be shocked and enraged I had visited such grief on my wife, their daughter and sibling and friend. I don't think they would grieve the loss of me.
  • My Thursday night small group. Perhaps K. and T. not so much (unless I was a King Charles Cavalier spaniel) as L. and C and their kids, A. and J. Sad to say, L. has already had to face the suicide of a sibling.
  • My aunts and uncle, and cousins. I'm sorry what suicide would do to my extended family; I like all of them much better than my sibs and I wish I had been born in one of their families.
  • My sibs. They can screw themselves. I don't give a damn about them; I'll never be acceptable or even understandable to them. As I said previously, I'm their project, their dog to kick, their object of charity; their shambling, mouth-breathing lunk of a brother who must be tolerated since he cannot be loved. Dear blood sibs: Fuck you all very much. Go to Hell. Thanks everso. --Ken.
  • Family friends. I like them, I don't want to hurt them, but I don't know what else to do.
  • My friends S. and M., the LA/Riverside bunch, my godparents and godfamily, my acquaintances in Texas, the people on the Ship who like me.
  • My nurses at the cardiac facility. I dunno about my doctors. I can't believe they'd much care.

Yet the thought of the grief and pain of all these people (in whatever degree) seems remote and meaningless to me. Deep down, I don't believe other people are real. They're automatons.

Yet while I believe they would feel grief for a season, soon enough their memory of me would fade and they would be either in the status quo or better off for my absence.


Okay, so now let's concentrate on pulling my head out of my ass. How do I reconcile God's grace with my beliefs as above?


I can't. I believe God has abandoned me for some reason. He's put me on the shelf, relegated me to the cheap seats, kicked me to the curb, voted me off the island, whatever. He shows up for other people, fine. He shows up for me in dribs and drabs, usually when I really need Him, but right now I feel like He's nowhere near me in this struggle. "Where's God?" I ask. "Not here" is the answer I seem to get.


"Curse God and die" seems to be my big career move.


And yet, and yet....


I can't. I can curse at God, but I can't curse Him. I have cursed myself with the knowing the possibility my head's up my ass and I'm completely wrong. I can't curse God, at least tonight I can't. Maybe tomorrow.


Tonight I believe God is who He says He is, that my perceptions aren't accurate and I'm spiraling down in despair and don't need to be, all I need is a smile and a laugh and some cool blue sky and sunshine, and all of this funk blows away like smoke on the wind.


"God, you have to show up for me. And I don't mean in your typical small-ass, minimalist way. I need you big, as big as You come, I need you to fight for me, fight *me* for my own soul, fight the kingdom of darkness that would shove me face down in the shit to suffocate there. I need you not to be random on this one."


I'm tired. It's 3:21 a.m. and I'm falling asleep at the computer. I'm hollow inside and lonely. I continue to gain weight and lose just enough to stay in homeostasis. When I go to that university cardiac clinic tomorrow, and the doc asks me why I'm not losing weight, what will I tell him? I barely know myself, and even though I know what I know, acting on what I know is a different matter. I'm gunwale under in apathy. This is too good a method of suicide (slow, painless) to give up easily. It's too easy to believe God's abandoned me, just like my folks did.

Added August 5, 2007:

So when do I move past this hurt, file it under "Shit I Can't Do Anything About"? When do let the past be the past and let the dead bury the dead?

Why can't I start today? Shit, I don't know. There doesn't seem to be anything stopping me but me. Just for today, will I choose to carry in front of me that, yes, my parents fucked me over and I can't change it, so why not move on? To Hell with them and their goddamn judgments and bullshit ideas of what I should be and be like.

Screw them. Screw everyone and everything that says I can't. I'm fucking opening the door and going outside. Get some fresh air. I've been stuck in this black-assed, shitbox tomb for too damn long. I choose life.