A straight man's thoughts.....Is hope enough?
This is something I wrote about six months ago when I was going through a difficult time. I am not feeling this way now but sometimes that perception of my reality becoming unbearable is just around the next corner so, I must remain diligent. Maybe someone will read this and it might help them or give them another perspective on things. Just to be clear I am not advocating suicide but it is sometimes part of the self conversation. In the end it is never the solution. The reality is that people think about it every day. Most will never get past a thought and tragically some will. The point is this, sometimes we feel a sense of total despair but in the end there is always light all we have to do is recognize it. Sometimes it is right in front of us in the form of something we had given up on.
My personal view of how I value myself as a human being is based on experience and belief. I have had many experiences in my life both good and bad but, it's what I believe about those experiences that shape my view of who I am. What I believe about those experiences may not even be the reality of the experience itself but, only what I believed about the reality of that experience.
If I generally believe that I am bad, then that will color my experience even if it was good. So really, it's not about what I do, it's not about the actual experience; it's about what I believe about that experience. In order to change my view of myself, I need to change what I believe about myself. What I do and how I do it becomes irrelevant; it's what I believe that is important.
Unfortunately, I believe I have no value as a human being. Changing that belief (which was hoist upon me as a child) is an insurmountable challenge that I have been fighting against all of my life and it still reigns supreme. I feel the same weakness now as I did when I was a child. There is no knight in shining armor to fight for me; to fight for what is good and fair. There is only the evil tyrant whose unholy rule has become the only reality accepted.
Inevitably I ask myself this question; "Do I really believe all this sh*t or am I going to pick myself up and forge ahead?" God! I have been here so many times I have lost count and each time I have picked myself up. Somehow I was able to find the eye of hope to help pull myself through the muck and mud and agony of self discovery. All in the hope that this time it would end differently, that this time I would transcend my pain and find some small measure of happiness. But, in the end I find myself back here, at the bottom of this black well, sobbing in my boundless sorrow with only the void of despair to comfort me. Now, I am exhausted and I simply can't do it anymore. Hope seems to be such an inadequate weapon against those powerful forces that will inevitably devour my soul.
For fifty years I have lived in this cycle of hell, always in search of heaven. It's not even heaven that I aspire to now. A small island of peace would be nice. I would curl up into the arms of serenity and let her take me away to the palace of eternal sleep. Never again would I have to face the foul beast that lies within my defiled soul.
In the end I seem to find value in the idea of suicide but, I have been cursed with this inability to give up, a stubbornness that is only just that, stubbornness. A simple, focused and pure stubbornness that shouts in my ear every day, "David, you will not give up! Not today, not tomorrow, not ever." So, it seems I am bound to my misery and pain for now. My only solace is the knowledge that the one thing that drives my stubbornness is hope. Even though I have given up hope, even though I question its strength and value, it still pushes me onward in spite of what I believe.
