fredofalls

machinations of a broken man

You start to live when you finally realize that one day you will die...

I know what I have to do. I have to fight. Tooth and nail. All of it.

I have to show some damned courage, for once. A little determination and resilience.

If I am to have a chance to save myself from my own destruction I have to fucking try. I have to fucking care.

It starts now.

The clock is ticking.

It is only through the rarest of charity that I am not destitute now. Not even the predatory loan operators will offer me a chance. I have failed somewhere in the transition between adolescence and adulthood. There have been at times in my life when I showed distinct promise. I was fairly gifted academically and athletically but this was always surpassed by some intrinsic trait of determination. When I have succeeded above others, it has always been because I was willing to work harder and longer than them. A type of useful stubbornness I likely inherited from my mother?

There have been times in my life when I have offered those around me a glimmer of hope that I would turn out alright. That somehow things would be ok. I never failed to take these opportunities to crush this delicate belief.

At some point, I will be thrown to the sharks, I know. That time is fast approaching. Perhaps I will fight or perhaps I will just float. Or maybe I will just slip silently beneath the waves downwards towards my own destruction.

My world is collapsing all around me. All I can do is watch.

I face two immediate crises. A lack of money and impending exams. My scattered attempts to rectify these problems have only left me further in the hole. I have no money to my name except the $15 in cash stored away in an old cigarette box. I was somehow unable to squander this. My exams are in the best of circumstances delayed by six days. Inadequate in the best of times, let alone in this degraded state of self.

I will eventually reach a state of paralysis where I cannot think. Where I cannot even move much. Yet I know this paralysis is only going to deepen. That is all but certain. I have journeyed this way many times before. A few inches of brown liquid is all that separates me from the agony. It will never be enough.

I will then enter the twilight zone. Neither in pain but absent of that warm glow that surrounded me before. The faded chaos of the physical surroundings I have trapped myself within will begin to grow clearer – more anxious will be my concern. The secrets that I have hidden in this room, I hope to God will never be revealed. Unspeakable acts of deprivation have taken place here.

My reputation is only preserved by migrating periodically to a distant group of people every time this sort of thing happens. Perhaps in a vain attempt to leave those memories behind. I seemed trapped in this constant cycle of boom and bust. Periods of success are invariably followed by periods of absolute chaos and disorder. I still do not know why myself. All I can offer is vague assortments of hypothese. If you met me in person I wouldn't justify a second look. Yes, I am quite shy and introverted. But there is nothing obviously, clearly wrong with me. Nothing diagnosable anyway. Yet I seemed forever destined to throw myself in the path of my own destruction.

Eventually, I will arrive in the familiar darkness, the final destination. Down, down the abyss I will go.

Before this, I try to construct some belief that there is a way out. That somehow I can survive this unscathed. But I don't even know if this is true at all. I don't even know if I will try to fight to regain all these precious things I have lost. Maybe I will just surrender to this fate I have found myself in again.

The reason I am here, the reason I am speaking to you now is out of desperation. The idea is that by perhaps documenting my journey here honestly and openly, every thought exposed, every decision delineated, every pathway journeyed that I can somehow stop this from happening again. Maybe through some accountability, perhaps greater self-awareness or reflection or something else that I can alter my destiny. That can change or at least catch myself before I make these horrible, terrible decisions that bring me back to this place again. It has brought upon me and my family far too much grief.

I don't know if anybody out there has any experience to speak to this. But if you do, please don't pass by silently.