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"Sweet and Sour"

I feel sometimes like I have lived enough for a thousand lifetimes. I feel old right to my bones, I feel like I've contributed everything of use that I ever can to this world but moreover, I feel tired. Tired of living. I feel more than a hundred years old, yet to date, I have lived only to the youthful age of 23 years. Yet my heart is a cold, hollow vacuum, my soul an unrepentant black maze and my mind a poisoned wasteland. I am a shell of a man, and such years before my time.

I was not always this way. Indeed, in years past, I was full of the fruit of life, full of potential, full of youth. Sometimes it can be hard to see where it all went wrong. Only sometimes. I am cursed by a memory that fakes forgetfulness to the point of lighting hope, only then to cave in with the black knowledge that renews my disparity. Some things my memory keeps from me though. I cannot recall when I first got the empty feeling in my chest, the feeling of utter futility that haunts my every waking moment.

I cannot even guess how long I have lived this way, but I look back to years gone by and see someone who is not me. Someone so far removed from what I am, they could surely never grow to be the hateful, bitter presence I represent. A person whose kind heart and gentle manner won him everything that his keen intellect and thirst for knowledge could not. A person of great potential who could truly claim the world to be at his feet. This person was not me. Could not have been me. That someone so potent could turn into the scorned, terrible presence I am, that someone could fall so far from their path, a fallen angel, would be a tragedy of the highest order.

And so I tell myself that these memories are not mine. They are another piece of trickery developed by a mind bent on destroying itself.

My life is perhaps not something anyone should be made to endure. But I know enough to have my reasons to persevere. I know that only one person stands to gain from my demise. And ending my life will not end the suffering I personify, it will merely move the suffering to others, and though the burden would be shared, it would still exist, and would plainly lessen the lives of those who must bear it in my place.

And so it is I stand upon a great precipice. My will to live dictated solely by my reluctance to burden others. With this in hand, I am left to live a life that hates me. So far from the boy of my memories. A boy who dreamed of the future, rather than living its nightmare. I feel almost like a leper in contrast to the boy. Falling apart despite anything that tries to cure me. So far removed from joy, from potential, from hope.

What once was sweet now is sour. A change of heart that frees so flowly one way, but is impossibly upstream the other. I flow down the river of futility toward the sea of despair, and once caught in the flow, travel backwards is task beyond even kings of men.

I am doomed to live years which do not come welcome to me. A life some would pity, others fear, and so far as my mind will let me see, there is no strength in the wind of change. No silver linings. No hope. I am no longer human. I am hoplessness. I am despair given form. If my memory is to be believed, I have fallen further than most ever climb, and there is no return. And though I know not how it happened, may never be deemed worthy of that knowledge, I am convinced that there could have been something that the bright young boy could have done to prevent it. So I hate the boy. I hate his energy, his potential, his strength. His very mind is an insult to me. But it's a vicious circle, for ultimately, I hate myself.

I hate everything about me.

The light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train.

unknown kernel wrote:
> I know that when you feel like this
> nothing anybody says helps or comforts in anyway, so all I'll do is
> repeat what people told me again and again when I was depressed, but
> that I didn't understand until I was better: it's an illness not a
> weakness.

It doesn't seem like either to me. Just the compounding of misfortune. It is fate which destroys me. I seem to have little choice but to go with the flow.

I thought that was brilliant.

Like Rosalind I suffered from depression and somehow came out the other side. But it was two years out of my life - two years when everything that was wonderful about my life seemed terrible, and everything I still loved I tried to destroy. I was lucky enough to have people to support me through it, and, despite everything I did to alienate them, they were still there at the end.

One of the few things that gave me any comfort when I was at my darkest was writing stuff like this, thoughts that I could never have shared with anybody but myself. I know that when you feel like this nothing anybody says helps or comforts in anyway, so all I'll do is repeat what people told me again and again when I was depressed, but that I didn't understand until I was better: it's an illness not a weakness.

I can't say I "hate" myself, but in many ways I feel similiar things.
In my youth I was infused with rainbows of glad ambition. But they all came to very little.
Now, as things stand, I don't know which way to turn. I've forgotten who I am.

Wonderfully written, under unfortunate circumstances however.

I can't really say much but hope you end up alright or such.

Wonderfully dark and honest post.

The only thing worth saying cannot be said.

Nice one IB.

I read this too. I didn'y reply because I didn't know what to say. But since someone has replied I thought I would too.

Both my Mum and I have both at different times been through depression and come out of the other end. My Mums was brought about by a breakdown of her faith. Mine post-viral triggered by Meningitus.

I Starved myself and lost 3 stone in weight. tried to kill myself with a kitch knife, but didn't succed because I was too scared to.

All I can say is during that time everything seemed black and I could see absolute no point in carrying on living. But I got through it and I love life now.

Probably doesn't help you at all. I'll shut up now......sorry.

A very moving post.

I cannot understand why it is you feel this way, i have never construed you as being a mean person, and deep down i dont think you are capable of it. I hope that these feelings pass, being unhappy is a lonely state in life.

Try Bran Flakes, they make you full of life and energy.

All of life's problems can be solved by Bran Flakes.