I want the people who love me to know that this is not a message to say, “hey you messed up.” I want the people who love me or loved me, or will love me to know that I also never wanted you to read this. So I guess if you know me, stop. I tried to tell you this forever. I was afraid to tell anybody how the inside of my brain was working, or misfiring. I put a sheet over my head to cover up the judgement but instead it caught up to me and made me focus on these things way too hard. 

Mom, I remember you asked me once what I wanted to be when I grew up and I told you that I wanted to help people be happy. I wanted to, and I think I have. Looking back on all of that, I think what I meant to say was that I just wanted people to feel less like me. 

Dad, you taught me every practical thing that a father could teach. You kept me safe, and I am sorry if you ever feel like you wasted your time on me. If I ever had a question you had an answer, but some things I was too afraid to ask, and some questions have never been answered on this planet. 

To the love of my life, I am sorry that every time I brought up these feelings, or brought up any worries, I always made you laugh afterwards. I know it made it so you never knew it was hurting all of me. Or maybe you did know and just like me, and everybody else, you were afraid to talk about it, to believe it.

To everybody else, I want to say, the smiles weren’t fake. The laughs, for the most part, were the relief from what I usually felt. I could never have made it however far as I did or will without you. Thank you for being a much needed distraction from myself.

Nobody really has any actual understanding of what it means to want to die. I know that when I was first faced with this reaction, I met it with silence. I met myself with disapproval. I was shoving the dog’s nose in pee. I know I messed up, I didn’t mean to. I don’t want to say the things that I say. I said it because I wanted you to know that I don’t know how to live, or I don’t want to live anymore.

I would look around at people and imagine peeling their faces off to see under. 
What the hell was going on inside that clogged up brain? 
Is your smile like mine?
Does it fall away when you round a corner? 
Is your smile filled with fake pressure on either side of your face? 
Does it hurt?

It makes sense that I stop here. On a smile. The world’s most faked emotion. The best way for me to relate the way I feel on a regular basis is to relate it to the idea of smiling for a picture that you don’t want to take anymore. You have to understand that feeling you get in the bottom of your gut, behind your eyes, in the pit of your chest. The feeling that says “ok, enough, are we done yet?” If you have ever been asked to smile for a picture, and you don’t know if the picture has been taken yet. The moment between flash and approval. The feeling you get when you have taken four pictures holding the same pose and aren’t sure if you can get out of the pose yet. Hold it. That feeling of limbo. That feeling pretty much describes how I have been feeling for the better part of my life.

Okay. 

That was dark right?

If you care, or even if you don’t, you are probably asking one of two things.

Why are you still alive?

Or better yet,

Why haven’t you killed yourself.

As I said before, nobody knows what it means to die.

The unknown is what causes the anxiety that causes the fear.

I babble, It’s one thing I am especially good at. 

Especially when I am anxious, and I am anxious about dying. 

You were dead before you were born. 

Before I tried apple pie I never knew I loved it. Before I tried whiskey I never knew it burnt my tongue. 

You were dead before you were born. 

And then I was born. There are things that give value to life. Things I don’t want to live without. I know what you’re thinking now.

So you like being alive?

Well, that is the absolute toughest part about any of all of what I am trying to explain. There are many parts about life that I absolutely adore and that is the part of this whole thing that helps me become even more confused. I enjoy many things. I like dogs, writing blogs, and walking in the fog. I like cigars, stars, and chocolate bars. I like music, and fuses, and.. No, that last one doesn’t even work.

I do like some stuff though and it is stuff I would rather not have to die having known. This is where my great controversy comes about:

The greatest controversy, the purpose of life after survival is no longer an issue. There is nothing to fear anymore, so the thing I fear becomes anxiety. All encompassing. It might help thinking about this with me, knowing I think this too. But it absolutely sucks that you are able to read this. Things used to be so simple. A normal day for a human being ten thousand years ago looked so simple. In a sentence it was: wake up, food, don’t die, food, sex, food, food, run, don’t die, don’t die, sleep. It was not that eventful. It was pretty simple, and it was busy. Not a lot of time to think about the possible ways you could die, when you are constantly worrying about actually dying. 

This is why now sucks. We have so much time, and we have so much knowledge of all the bad things that happen. Worry has taken over the world. You wake up and read something that tells you how many people died of what. There are screens everywhere that say you are not as good as this person. We have gotten to the point where we do not need to worry about all those big things, all the meteors, or dinosaurs, or open sores. We have evolved to replace the idea of fear with hypotheticals.  

The great controversy of wanting to die, is that there are obviously good things about being alive. That I will admit. 

So why are you still writing, and why am I still reading?

The problem is that when the good things happen, I’m always left wondering what will happen to even me out. 

I found a dollar once. A dollar. I got super excited and was like hell yeah. I ran over and scooped it up off the ground. I looked around and didn’t see anybody, so I kept it. I spent the rest of that day fixating on the dollar. Thinking about what horrible thing would happen next to me because I found it. What curse did I unleash. I thought about getting hit by a bus. I waited for my mom to call me and tell me my grandma died. I thought my dog was going to get sick, he did, much later, now thinking back maybe it was the dollars fault. I thought about how ironic it would be if I went in my pocket quick enough I could cut myself with the piece of paper and slowly bleed out. 

The saddest thing about this story isn’t that it is such a waste of time. It isn’t that I actually did it. The saddest part about this entire story is that it happened because I found a dollar on the ground. Now imagine when anything else good has ever happened to me. 

I spend a lot of my time like this, and it only makes things worse. Why would something positive mean we take things out on ourselves? Maybe when I was a child I got an ice cream cone and I took a lick and it fell to the ground. Maybe it started there. Maybe that is the same reason I became lactose intolerant at the age of twenty one. Maybe it’s the reason that whiskey hurts my stomach. Maybe it is all the same reason why good things end up poorly. I don’t know why for sure. I know I had enough growing up, not too much or too little. I was loved and treated properly. I found someone who loves everything about me. I can’t really blame nature, I guess, is what I am saying. It is nobody’s fault. Every single person has given me every opportunity to be happier and feel positively about existing in this world. But when I think about it, I find it very difficult to do so. The only thing I can blame is my innate ability to over think. We will all lose our parents, our loved ones, our dogs will die, our friends will hate us, our gravestones will get washed away. Everything will vanish. The sun will swallow us whole. 

So what is the point? 
Why write this? 
Why exist? 
Why endure all the self-pain, self-anger, self-sadness, and self-hate?

Well as simple as it may seem, annihilation is nothingness. Think back to before you were born. You can’t. Nobody can. 

That leaves us with the thought that at least existence is a net positive, it is being an active participant, in comparison to the absolutely boringness of nothing. If existence is positive, then existence is joy. To have anything bring joy for however long it does, outweighs the negativity of that thing eventually turning to dust.