I went out driving today, just to get out of the house and see something besides walls and computer screens. I went down 27 South toward Northwestern and just kept going. I ended up in Lafayette before I turned around and headed back. The Stupid Ford Dinger Trick behaved itself and cut off at an appropriate time so I turned the radio off and just listened to the rattle of the little cover thingy on the gear shift and the wind whistling through the back window. I spend so much of my life listening to radios, my IPod, so much of my life reading from computer screens or with my nose buried in a book. I'm always doing things. I'm always keeping myself distracted.
Well anyway, all I had to look at was the fields and the road and all I had to distract me was the occassional stop light. So my mind, released from the constant attention-grabbing chatter, eventually turned on me.
Even now, several hours later, I can't shake the feeling that I have literally nothing to live for. I contribute nothing to the world that it can't get elsewhere in better form. I have no family. I have no significant other. I work in a dead-end job that will be obsolete in twenty years at the most and despite my own best efforts I have no education to climb out of it. I have a mediocre talent and a mediocre imagination. Everyone thinks I'm some kind of genius just because I can string a whole bunch of words together in a meaningful way but from my perspective I seem to be getting dumber all the time. There's just nothing of any substance inside me. There's no happiness. I've been in this empty holding-pattern place for the last almost twelve years. They have a term for it from eugenics: "useless eaters"
That's pretty much what I am. Redundant. A liability.
I keep telling myself everybody feels this way but it's like tossing an ice cube into a fusion reactor.
What am I doing here? I'm not contributing anything. I don't matter to anyone.
When I was younger I wanted to commit suicide about once a year, but now when I really need to do it I have no taste for it anymore. I know I'm far too much of a coward and this clanging sense of duty jangles through my head like some teenager's jalopy car. I have promises to keep. I have books to get out. Someday I might even be able to write again. I can't die now. I haven't earned it.
I wonder when and where I attached such importance to the afterlife. If anybody in this universe understands giving up it's my father. He wouldn't blame me. There have been two people in my life who I think really knew the real me. Dad's been dead since 1983 and I hardly ever see Harry anymore.
I can't live like this. I don't know how much longer I can go on. I stopped caring about going on a long time ago, and I've just been going on momentum ever since.
There is no future.
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