happy 46th old man.

 So, improbably, i am still alive.

That's right. At some point, in the past, i was up late, as i often am, as 3 am closed in around me and i thought.

"hmm. This is around when i was born. Maybe i should think about my life a bit in this rare moment of lucidity."

And here i am. Still indulging in this farcical ritual.

A few things have changed.

I am 46 now. I started this over 20 years ago.

I used to have a glass of whiskey and johnny lee hooker playing as i thought, grew pensive and let myself wander into the blues where i was born.

Now, i have a mug of fancy rooibos, bought from an old italian man in uptown, at a strange and fantastical little tea shop that i never noticed before. It demanded I KNOCK ON THE DOOR, before a slowly approaching silver haired man gingerly approached, rhapsodized about teas and not teas, italian cinema and french politics and sent me on my way with a joking, "Van fo napoly" And old italian curse my grandmother used.

Most things are still the same.

I am Alive, PREPOSTOROUSLY. Even though i should have been dead a half a dozen times or more, i am still here.

Half of my charm is my utter refusal to die. I experience these dark moments, suicidal ideation, and i close my eyes in those moments, and always seem to stubbornly emerge from them.

I tried medication.

it failed.

I tried therapy.

It barely scratched the surface.

I generally horrified the professional i engaged with. The image of those gaping mouths as i discussed my childhood, the violence, the beating, the bullying, the near death experiences, the crushing poverty, the lack of friends, family, father, mother, leading to the same question every time,

"How the hell did you come out like this?"

That is one hell of a question right?

Truth is, i don't know why i fight to survive so hard.

I got sad, and sought help in as many ways as i could think of, and forever.

I tried to meet people, make friends, and failed, over and over and over, as only an autistic mensa member really could.

Just too alien, too strange, to0 intense, too verbose, too blunt, too rude, too much.

"Can you just be LESS, you?"

No. As it turns out, i can't. I sure tried though.

Medication didn't seem to make a dent at all. I felt ill, i felt slowed down, i felt a lack of appetite but i was still miserable.

Shrinks didn't help much. They told me what i had was known as depressive realism. I was depressed, because it made SENSE to be depressed given my circumstances. Trapped in a world that was not for me, with no resources, no allies, no future, no hope.

A death sentence really.

Don't we all have one?

So when that didn't work, i read.

and read. and read, and read more.

I read about zen. I read about religions. I read about stoics, nihilists, existentialists, absurdists, reductionists, everything i could think of.

There Had To Be A Solution

SOMEWHERE.

HAD TO BE.

And i was determined to find it.

i found something. Something in all those forbidden texts. In all that occult knowledge.

I found kinship.

I found my peers.

Afflicted men, like myself. plumbing the depths of the universe for answers, and in their absence, CREATING NEW ONES.

So singular in the pursuit of meaning that they sought it until the library of the body shut the lights off.

It was how i felt SEEN. There were others, throughout history, that struggled with this problem like i did.

So i DID the shadow work. I ripped out old wires and wrote diagrams about it, schematics about the best ways to put down new ones.

I fought death in my own hands.

I cried, wept and struggled. I walked the streets at 1 am. I bought a coffee pot at 2 am from walmart after i broke mine, struggling to fill in in a rented shitty apartment with my arm in a sling.

"It serves you right to suffer, serves you right to be alone."

Sure it did johnny. But i think i've earned my freedom.

I tried to fix every goddamn part of me.

My sadness. My anger. My resentment.

The Father shaped hole in my heart. The black swirling void where meaning and love should reside where instead, dread remained.

The father didn't want me. Even after the shadow work. Even after reaching out. Even after a visit after 30 year.

As quickly as he appeared he vanished,

A ghost, a wisp of grey smoke.

The friends were always ethereal. Artifacts of my loud, freakish presentation. When you are young, that attracts people.

I was bright, brilliant, fascinating, mesmerising.

Then they have kids. Careers, families, colonoscopies,

and suddenly i'm not a good fit. The guy who still wonders, the guy who still reads, the guy who still trying to know everything, is just a bit to strange to know as a bonafide grown up.

Still here though.

Strong too.

Survived surgeries. Survived myself. Survived a life designed to crush, and you know what?

I think i'm fucking killing it.

She loves me still.

And i keep getting up.

I keep lifting the weight. I keep digging in, shovel after shovel,

I push the stone, wake up, and don't ask WHY so much anymore,

I just get started.

I just start pushing.

To everyone that helped me grow, that gave me that love and that joy when we were young,

I love you.

To the me, that keeps fighting, keeps trying, keeps smiling,

I love you too.

This can all end in a blink.

What you do with your time is yours.

Keep giving a shit.

Keep trying.

Try.