This reality thing is kind of a buzz-kill. I don't know what I expected from life, but life is not what I hyped it up to be. I kind of thought there was a pattern, like love and happiness and occasional valleys; but what I've found is bottomless pits of anxiety and overwhelming sadness, and tragic idealism gone awry.
I want to be happy. I will myself happy all the time, but when I look at the reality erupting around me every day, I feel nothing but chronic fatigue. I have become necessary to people only in what I can provide for them, and there is no one there in return. I am loved by my children, but only in the sense that a child feels obligatory love to his or her parents. They are usually kind, in between bouts of raging narcissism and blinding self-interest.
I am alone in my work, in my home, and in my bed. Yes, much of that is a product of both my introversion and my decisions, but I have always been willing and able to let in the right people: People who share some idealism about a better day and a soulful future.
Where are those people?
Where are the people who genuinely care? I can't find them. Maybe I don't care enough to find them anymore. Maybe I am like the walking wounded, who wander around in a self-inflicted stupor due to past and present neglect and abuse. Maybe I'm the one alienating myself, because I'm afraid to throw out filaments to other people, since humankind has been so cruel in the past.
Perhaps my existential dilemma is that of many philosophers who see the problem and the potential answer, and then watch people choose the opposite of kindness and empathy and knowledge every day. If so, then checkmate, life. You win.
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