I think sometimes that life shouldn't be this difficult.
Some days even consciousness feels like a burden.
Have you felt the interminable tick of life passing, how consciousness is one long string disconnected from the moment you're born until the day you die? Even when you're asleep your brain is working furiously. It can seem exhausting to me when I feel weary, that I have to continue to live in this skin and keep thinking until death comes.
Well, maybe you have.
I know that I'm privileged - I was born intelligent, with plenty of food to eat, and also I'm about a 6 in the looks department. I've had many opportunities in my life - I was a game designer at the age of 20, I published my first book at 21, and I've lived in places like Austin, Seattle, and San Diego. I've been really poor before, and homeless, but I always bounced back.
Some children are born with AIDS and others spend years starving before succumbing to death. I was born in suburbia in Texas so sometimes it seems that I shouldn't be allowed to feel pain. Considered to many people who are born in abject poverty or forced to live in a war-torn country, my pains are small.
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But trauma doesn't take into account that others have had it worse than you, and just because other people have worse pain doesn't mean yours isn't significant.
I know that most of my posts are positive these days, but recovery isn't an upward trajectory and I have cried many days, and drank bottles of wine to try to numb the pain. I have done stupid and harmful things to people I loved out of fear and acted abusive because I was not raised in a healthy environment where people automatically responded to each other with love and understanding.
I know that I messed up today.
I feel the hurt in my gut and stomach.
Eat all the cheetos, drink all the vodka, give yourself time to feel sad. But life moves on and you must move with it. The worst thing you can do is wallow in your mistakes and not push forward.
I know that days like this are becoming less and less frequent. In the last few months I've been more productive and cheerful than I've ever been, but I don't want to portray the false idea that I'm completely cured of sadness, or that I don't have bad days, because I do.
I keep pushing forward, and I refuse to give up. I know what I want for my life, and I know the way to get it is to keep moving. Stasis is the enemy, and entropy is the killer.
It's never too late until it is. And even if you don't move forward, time will, pulling you in its inevitable wake. Consciousness may be a burden or a gift, but it isn't going to go away, and you will never get a break until the last one.
You can find me on Twitter, Facebook, and my website. You can also buy one of my books here.
Other Posts You May Be Interested In:
The Writer Writes the Same Damn Thing [Psycho-Surreal Memoirs]
I Like Watching You Learn How to Be Alive [PTSD Series: Part 5]
The Importance of Narrative Design in Video Games
Carry The Glowing Seed, Plant Reality from the Dream [PTSD Series: Part 4]
Art Therapy at the Space Station [Psycho-Surreal Memoirs]
The Symptoms of PTSD, and my symptoms [PTSD Series: Part 3]
The Waking Journal [Psycho-Surreal Memoirs]
Sylvia Plath and I [Fiction]