Pessimism is Necessary

This is the autumn of my pessimism. I am grateful to be alive but feel simultaneously brain-dead and heart-wounded. I feel as though I am mentally and spiritually terminal. Politics and betrayal have finally put me on the ledge. I'm ready to jump. For one thing, I've overdosed on watching FOX News. I am compelled to do it because I want to see what the whack-jobs are up to. It's not calm-inducing, and, at my age, I should stay calm most of the time. I need psychotropic medication but can't afford it because of the Republican Drug Plan. We'll never get meaningful health-insurance reform in this country no matter how long we live. The country is run by the inmates, and they are mean and heartless. I am a total pessimist. We are aging by the minute. Where have our lives gone? We are staring at the Grim Reaper now. Tolle says there is only the "Now." The "Now" feels uncomfortable, like a tight girdle. I thought I was done with girdles. But no-o-o-o! Girdles give you gas. Gas is painful.

I am observing that jealousy and envy are stupid and unjustifiable emotions but present nonetheless.

A "friend" just dumped me unceremoniously after a 40-year close friendship because she didn't like my political postings on Facebook.

Nobody is so righteous that they are in a moral position to judge another human being, and yet most of what we do when awake is judge others and judge events.

I feel betrayed by my body and my emotions and by others' thoughtlessness and inconsideration.

In May 2009, my first Social Security check arrived. It was a shining milestone on the long road toward poverty and second-class citizenship. I wonder how old people with less Social Security money than I get can possibly survive. This is no country for old men.

As I write this, it feels like I am talking about some other person, an old person, certainly not me. My 66-year-old body still has a mind that thinks I am 35.

My house is for sale, but it couldn't be a worse housing market.

We are living in the day room of an insane asylum. I am considering buying a handgun because everyone else has one. I thought we were in the "end times" during the Bush regime, but, on reflection, that was a period when the right-wing nutcases were somewhat placated. Now that we have a biracial Marxist Communist Socialist (wish they'd make up their stupid minds) President, the old white boys' club and their gun-toting, Bible-thumping, "Christian" militia are really on a rampage. Canada looks so inviting, if only it weren't so damn cold. I don't know how much longer I can bear living in this uncivilized and ignorant country. We are pitiful as a nation. You have to admit it.

I feel I should go about my life wearing a tin-foil hat with a propeller just to deflect the incoming psycho-rhetoric. Instead, I am on Facebook, polluting the pages with political backlash. It's all just more insanity and distraction. Facebook is great for narcissists who like to broadcast to their friends every time they pick their noses or scratch their butts. Pay attention to ME! I am somebody! I have things that you don't have! That's the major narcissistic function of Facebook.

I like Facebook for the political fights it can instigate, but nobody wants to play with me.

I think I have diabetes now. You can fool Mother Nature for a while, but then it all comes into you like a physiologic tsunami.

Now that I am near the end of this puny existence, I wonder what it was all about and what I learned.

One thing I did learn is that you can truly count on only a very few people in a lifetime. People you thought were friends will drop you like a hot stone or drift away and pretend you never existed and never spent all that time together. They will pretend you were never the other half of being "in love." I am certainly cynical about the human race, a flawed species if ever there was one, but I religiously believe in the power of negativity as much as in the power of positivity. I think both are necessary to see the truth. We are shadow and light. There is no escaping it.

I wonder why I wasted so much of my life on being "in love" with others who only disappointed me in the end. And I wonder how deeply I disappointed them as well.

I console myself with my own attempts to be true to my passions. I never abandoned anybody. I am truly sorry for my sins. I have always maintained that evil is the unwillingness to look at one's own sins.

Forgiveness is a wonderful invention if used correctly, but I also think there are some things that you cannot forgive. Betrayal is one of those unforgiveable things and is very high on my list.

Everybody else seems so much more productive, sane, and happy than I am.

I think I should not expect that happiness or contentment will be a permanent condition. I used to decry that state of affairs, but now I think I am part of a cosmic balancing act. For every skinny person, there ought to be a fat person just as a reminder. For every pollyanna, there ought to be a melancholic as a warning. And so forth. I am fulfilling my destiny even if I don't know what it is.

I am a pessimist but am grateful for the few friends who are unsinkable rafts in this chaotic ocean---solid places on which I can briefly rest my oars. I think about them every day and hope they have moments of sheer sanguinity and blessedness.