(no subject)
A few things arguably connected in several ways:
First off, I come from poor white trash. I'm the unwanted reminder of a relationship doomed to failure. My mother and father simply had too many differences.
I've never once made my father proud of me, and my mother and I are almost constantly at each other's throats. I don't know what my father thinks of me, but to my mother I'm probably just a constant reminder of a failed relationship.
Despite these issues, I don't think ill of them. Rather, they come from a time and a place when choices had to be made that couldn't be made today.
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I was born poor white trash with zero expectations placed on me.
Maybe I was expected to become another social parasite living out a shitty life in shitty 'hoods, hopelessly dependent on a system that enables the lazy.
I don't know. I was unwanted, unloved, and I never got any life advice worth listening to.
When you’re poor you don’t get to have any dreams.
It might have been a book I read, or a song I heard, or even a sermon I heard in church, but it basically boiled down to self-discipline.
You have to be ten times harder on yourself than anyone else.
You have to be harder, crueler, more unforgiving of mistakes, because if you don't, if you're not, then someone else will.
It's better if you punish yourself than had someone else shame you in front of others.
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I had a goal: I didn't want the shame of pity.
I hate taking handouts.
I hate the low contempt and disgust from those who have when they give to those who don't.
I may be shit but I have my pride and dignity as a human being and I want to be seen as an equal, not as some rank parasite bottom feeder desperate for scraps.
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I have a curse though.
I work hard. Job, school, making social connections, I build myself a life.
And then it's swept away. "God only puts a rug under your feet so that he can jerk it out from under you."
So I would stubbornly rebuild my life. New job, new place, new social circle, build it better, build it stronger, build it in a way that it can't be destroyed
Except when it's destroyed.
Over and over I've repeated this process.
I've progressed as a person. I've learned so much about the world. I've made smarter decisions, gotten better jobs, and met amazing people.
But that damnable rug keeps getting jerked out from under my feet again.
This last one was no different. I was just about to pay off one of my largest debts and I got fired from my job for no reason I can discern. just “Hey, you’re fired; get out.”
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When I first started thinking about suicide, I’d put the empty gun to my head. My body would quake and tremble and I’d sweat profusely. I understood then that I didn’t want to die, it’s just I wanted the hurting to stop. I don’t think you understand how much I hurt inside.
Actually, in retrospect that’s my fault: I don’t reveal what’s going on in my head, so when I say you don’t understand, it’s my fault you don’t understand, because I don’t really communicate what’s going through my head.
Imagine your heart just breaking. Your loved ones died, or divorced you, or whatever. Something painful and traumatic and devastating. I felt (still feel) like that all the time. Add in unreasoning, irrational terror, and overwhelming depression, and to top it all off you don’t even have the luxury of a family that loves you enough to even care about how you feel.
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I can put a loaded gun with a round in the chamber to my head with the safety off now, and I feel nothing by it. I’ve crossed over from the blue into the black. I’ve learned to let go. Now I’m ready to die.
For those of you who think suicide is the “coward’s way out”: Some people, most people can have the courage to live their entire lives. Some people only get enough courage to pull the trigger.
For those of you who think suicide is the “easy way out”: What you're really saying is "Life is impossibly hard and you have no choice but to live the hard way." When do we (in your opinion) get to take a break?
For those of you who think I should pray to God: Whatever God you believe in had the power and the choice to not make me this way in the first place. Fuck your god.
I wasn’t able to choose how I was born into this world, but I have the right to choose how to leave it.
I still have a few cards on the table.
Maybe they’ll turn into something that doesn’t feel like the desperate scrabblings of a man who knows he’s going to die.