Tired

I was surprised that I haven't used this title yet. All my posts have different titles; usually I think it's to give a fresh look every time. Perhaps because so much of my problems are the same as when I set out on this blog, I can't admit to myself that all I do is repeat myself. I might say some things that would seem out of character, but I'm too damn tired to care.

I'm pissed off. Call it fate. Call it fatigue. Call it the inevitable conclusion of twelve years of paranoia and misery. Or you could call it the unpleasant truth. I'm pissed off at myself. In a world that's brought me so much freedom and food, I can't feel grateful. All I feel is hatred for what brought me here. I look back at twelve years of this, and I wonder what the hell did I do wrongly? The pain of not knowing has me ground to powder beneath my fractured knuckles.

When I was in fourth grade, and time to time from there, the popular crowd chided me for reading my Bible during lunch. I turned the other cheek. Pastor Updike baptized me when I was twelve; that was a long time ago. We've barely exchanged words since then. I prayed through seventh grade, then had a major crisis of faith: I hated the laughter and derision that came with being the little budding Bible boy. That mindset lasted for a while. I decided to give true Christianity another try in tenth grade; I was reborn. Chapter and verse seemed familiar again. It was like returning to an old friend, and a friend it was. I read Matthew, and thought I understood. I loved the Lord, and I thought the Lord loved me. Through years of madness, forty two consecutive voluntary days at a mental institution, heartache, longing, and writing, I persevered. I determined that I would feel better about myself and my surroundings if I believed, so that's exactly what I did. I didn't do it thinking the world would change around me, but that I would change around the rest of you, and find comfort. I was wrong.

The one circumstance in recent memory that brought me happiness discarded me for all the right reasons. I'm unreliable. I repeat myself constantly. I have more passion in my writing than in the quiet moments alone with my favorite person. For a while, I believed she discarded me and avoids me because of my condition: the first two words out of her mouth were "Your disease." That seemed reasonable enough. Prester Bane ruined things for me in my past, and I wasn't surprised that he caused me to lose my happiness. I was upset, but not nearly as upset as I would become. Slowly, I learned that the illness was not an issue. I found out about my inconsistency and outright failure in life. I found out about the constant string of repeated language that comes out of my mouth, even when I intend to say something new. I found out about my perceived lack of interest in the physical side of love. That made me blue. I found out that Prester Bane wasn't my problem with love, quite the opposite; he is the loved one. I'm the Monster from deep water. My kind of clinching, annoying attention will never work, but that's all I seem capable of doing at any given time. Even when I set out to not think that way, it always comes back to the same.

Then came the death blow: I found out that the worst part about me was my faith. The faith I maintained, despite mental intimidation and emotional exclusion from the rest of you, closed love off to me. I even took savage beatings from my Dad and another close to me to maintain the facade of a good, Christian household. Many years before I took the Smith and Wesson to myself, I heard a voice the night I loaded the Smith and Wesson, lifted the barrel, and thought only of ending the injustice by killing both of them. What the voice said was actually right. I thought it might have been divine intervention for my benefit, to save myself from worldly punishment. However, the motives as I see them now are much clearer. Hindsight is always 20/20. If I had killed Gary, there would be no Gary to complete Quinne, his fiancee; there is no such bond anywhere near in sight for me. If I had killed Dad, I would have made my Mom's extended hospital stay after her heart arrest in 2000 impossible. So, the goal wasn't to save me, it was to save them, so they can complete the lives of the people around them. God has favorites: Jacob now Israel, David, Enoch, Elijah, and a few others. Circumstances evolve favoring his favorites, including the notorious actions of David: He killed a man just so he could marry the widow. Still, David wrote psalms, better than any of my poetry, and led the life of a King to remember.

Perhaps my crime was the crisis of faith. A few isolated years in a sea of faith are still absent of faith. David never doubted God's existence, his authority, or challenged God's supremacy to himself. If I'd done the same, would the outcome still be this endless, maddened misery?

So I've lost love and happiness to my religion. For religion, I lost understanding from those who might try by posting these thoughts so far away from acceptable Christian behavior. Peace hasn't been an option in over twelve years, Prester Bane argues loudest when I pray. The faith doesn't seem to help me. Sure, I'm alive and there are plenty of times I shouldn't be, but it feels right now as if He's carrying me. Just like Jim Jeffries versus Jack Johnson, He's hurting me badly at every opportunity, but not enough to knock me out. I feel like I'm being carried for the audience. Nobody wants to see a first round knockout by quitting; people want to see drama! They like to hear little, day-by-day Improvements, and eventually, a knockout in the twelfth round as time expires. I can't punch, so my fall is what entertains. If I'm destined to be forever cursed with this affliction, is it a little bit too much to ask for an ounce of happiness to go with it? The answer, it seems, is yes.