I’m so lucky. I mean, really, really lucky. Look at all the people in the world who are really suffering, all the people who have died or been injured or lost everything in the disasters of the last few weeks, who have lost their loved ones. I look around me on a beautiful morning with the sun shining in through the windows of my lovely house and I try and I try and I try to count my blessings, and I know how selfish and despicable I am to fail so miserably to be happy when I have so much to be grateful for.
Yes, I’m back here again, back in this place. Why why why does it always come back to this? What will it take to make me happy? What is the point of it all? Everything turns to dust. What have I done with my life? What is the point of living like this, the only chance we get, and yet what have I done? I’ve wasted everything, everything that comes my way because nothing has any value and it all leaves me feeling empty and wanting and I can’t see any alternative.
So, is that all I’m going to write about today? I can’t think of anything else to say. The same old same old, the acknowledgement of unhappiness, the impossibility of finding a way of making things different, the recognition that I should be happy, that if all the things I have don’t make me happy there is something fundamentally wrong inside, some deep and ineradicable flaw in my psyche, the sense of failure that I am so incapable of this simple thing, the guilt at my selfishness and stupidity. What if I’d lost a child, what if I’d got cancer, what if I’d lost my home or someone I loved in some awful disaster. Then I’d look at me as I am and feel nothing but rage for my stupidity. Why can’t I see it? Why can’t I do something about it? Why can’t I find a way out of this mess? Stuck here in this place where I’ve been so many times and the rage boils up inside me and I look at my life and my feelings and I know it’s all my own stupid fault, that I’m here because this is what I deserve for not being a stronger person or a better person or a kinder or more loving person, but just this self-obsessed, whining, hateful person who sits surrounded by the mess and chaos of her life and complaining about it and waiting for someone to come and rescue here when the only person who can do that is herself, only she doesn’t know how or doesn’t have the guts to do what needs to be done or can’t see a way through and out of the mess.
And here I sit and cry and cry and if anyone asked me why I was crying I wouldn’t be able to tell them because I don’t know myself, and I don’t even know what has brought this on, this awful feeling of clarity and seeing the emptiness and hollowness at the heart of everything, I just know that it is true and right and this is they way life is. And maybe after I’ve written this I’ll feel better and can go back to getting through the days again.