Decembers of Despair

It's no coincidence I started this blog in a December. It is by far my worst month of the year. I don't know why it is that way, I just know that it always happens. Who knows, in this perverted life of mine maybe what would have been my favorite time of year is now my worst. December of two years ago I was going out of my mind with rage and frustration and I've been venting ever since. This year is no better.

It could be that something happens in this month that allows me to move closer to reality. That, of course, means facing my life and all of its (and my) inadequacies. Meeting Debby forced this upon me also. It's in these moments I can truly see the Hell I've created for myself. At the end of "Platoon", the Sheen character kills the tormented (and tormenter) Berenger character. But when Sheen talked of that scene, he said his character didn't think of it as killing him, he thought of it as releasing him. That's how I view my death.

I feel left behind, a man who through pride or attitude or whatever stayed behind when others moved on. Now I'm terrified by what I've done. I touched on this before when I felt surrounded by ice. Now I see myself lost in a desert, knees huddled to my chin in a relentless blowing wind of sand and scorn. A solitary soul who now clearly sees the mistakes of his ways - yet does not move. I have no defense for this.

My dreams exhaust me, continual nightmares of the day, going something like this:

I'm in Pier 1, a store that was exotic to me in my youth when I visited it with my parents, only now I'm in there as a homeless loser and I'm looking for something to eat. The clerks have to explain to me there's nothing to eat there and I say I know that only I don't because I don't know what I know. Customers peer at me through the corner of their eyes and whisper: "He's stupid!", "A crazy man!", "Make him go away." I keep wandering around the store a bit - feeling all eyes on me - so I can pretend I came in for something other than food, as if I were really going to buy something. I ask myself, "Do they know? Do they know I'm a fraud, that I can't buy anything? Oh Jesus, get me out of here. I've fucked up again!"

I wake up gritting my teeth and my jaw's sore from tension. It's actually a relief to find out it's only a dream - and yet I still feel trapped in the feeling. Dear God, release me.

I don't have the powers to express the desperation I feel when my mind goes black and I look around the desert in endless solitude knowing that even if I scream until the end of time, no one will hear. This makes it hard to sleep in the desert night. My bones are tired, more tired than they've ever been. When I shut my eyes to rest, I find hell, and when I open them again, I find hell there too.