Life's A Gift

A welcome reader comment: "Life is a gift....!" (I hope this reader will realize that I mean no offense, and value their input)

I agree! Let's take this analogy further, shall we? Your best friend has a birthday coming up & you've spent a lot of time looking for the PERFECT gift for them. This will be the gift to end all gifts. You've spent a significant amount of money on this gift, but the money is not important. The important thing is how special your friend will feel when they see it, and know that you cared enough about them to get them a GREAT GIFT.

The day finally arrives, and you give your perfect gift. The gift to end all gifts. Your friend opens the box you see on their face the excited glow you knew would be there. After the gushing of gratitude, your friend takes the gift from the carefully layered tissue paper in the box - and you catch your breath. Your friend starts to strum the gift and it is clearly designed to be banged. You come over to their house & the gift is hung on the wall, and it is clearly supposed to be on the table. Your friend takes the gift down from the wall & asks if you want to play with it. You say sure, but then they start to throw it to you. You make excuses and begin to leave, wondering why your friend can't tell it is a water toy.

Your dear friend is somewhat confused, and sees you to the door, thinking you again for the treasured gift, which they are honestly overjoyed about.

Life is a great gift. Some of us just don't know what to do with it, and our friends are so disgusted by our ignorance that they leave us to it.

Life is a gift! A precious gift and I want somebody to play with it with me! My toy - can't I throw it instead of float it? Strum it instead of bang it? I promise it'll be fun - and I promise I'll let you play anyway you want, as long as you include me.

But no matter how great a gift it is, when its just left on our wall, it becomes a symbol of pain and isolation. Funny - it used to be a gift

Whrilpools

Everything else is lost. I’ve tried to deny it for so long, Reality has found a way to capture me, and hold me, and shake me.

There must be something more – but nothing can be better than what I’ve lost. Maybe there used to be a place and purpose for me, but no more!! What am I? Am I an actor, a writer, philosopher, maybe even a fighter? God, how I long for the simple life of a fighter; to just have one goal – the guy goes down.

Damn it! See, I can’t even keep one thought together. I am none of those things now. I am less than nothing, barely human. I am a formless, misty mass of angry impulse, flickering in shadow.

Don’t even know why I’m writing this anymore. I’m not a writer anymore. This is just a desperate attempt to pull myself free from the black whirlpool sucking me down. I’ve got to face it; I don’t know what I am anymore. I am empty. Nothing to offer Her accept for empty words from empty company, all inside a thin shell of reality I can’t accept because I don’t understand.

I start to think I’m hiding my daemons well, but my family looks at me with eyes that tell me different. They see my emptiness, and they expected so much more. My children deserved more. Their looks sham me. My shame encourages me to retreat into emptiness. I spiral downwards.

I her Her from the next room, “Ah, my one real joy in the world is my shoulder blanket.” Her tolerance of me is loud. Everyone accepts these conditions as a matter of course. It only becomes a problem when I mention it. There is an unspoken agreement:

My wife hates me, my children resent me, and I am allowed to stay, just as long as I don’t make mention of it. I have created an environment that fully supports my empty destruction.

Can I remain truthful about my absence of truth? Hard to say, but I can’t believe there isn’t any who’ve never lied about this absence. It is the world’s unspoken agreement with the world. The minute we all agree that Truth is subjective, we cease to exist. We agree to survive, and to support the agreement of the lie.

No new conclusions, no revelations. Fuck! What a waste of time this was; birth to now!