Well, at least I'm not alone with my type of situation, I see. Respect and understanding to everyone here telling their story.
As for me, I am 37 years old now. I've been married since 2002, but my wife is going to get her own place now (we currently own a home) in the next month or two. So she is leaving me, basically. She has a good job. I, however, have been working in construction with its wavy employment cycles, working my total behind off when work was plentiful, but often suffering when work was lean. I have no college degrees, and when college was available to me, I could not do it. Every time I seem to flunk out of everything.
At times it feels like a bomb goes off in my head, and for 2 months at a time I am nowhere... I can hardly think, function, etc. Then I get up again, work my butt off, and the same thing happens all over again. Then car notes, house notes, credit cards, in the end you feel so snowed in and you see no way out. You can project that for years to come you'll be in the same damn place and you can't get out. That really kills me most of all, when hope gets eroded from under you, as that will drain you energy and reserves, to where I crack again and become depressed and immobile.
So yes, I feel for my wife, having dealt with this for years. It's like I literally can't do it anymore, like this time around I'm just f*cked (excuse the language please). The only nice thing I had was my pickup which was quite new, and I partly been able to buy with money my Mom gave me after her mother died. Because of all the financial problems, my wife insisted I gave her the checkcard (even tho I had not been using it). Today I had to go to the chiropractor because one of the discs in my back is out so much that the left side of my body is all numb and tingly, for weeks now, and I don't have strength in my left hand anymore. Because I was short in cash for the chiropractor, I had to go to the ATM before my appointment to get $20 out. Pulling out of the ATM area, which they had made into a tight curve (damn them), I totally scratched up and dented the right side of my car on a brick pillar. I'm talking at least $2000 of damage which I cannot pay for, and thus now I will have to drive in this for years to come, because it is going to be an immense, steep battle just to survive and pay basic bills.
So basically I'm staring a divorce in the face, mounting debts on all sides, a broken down house I am going to have to spend thousands on and many months of work to fix to a point that it can even sell, I suffer major bouts of incapacitating depression, I have no immediate family anywhere (I would have to move to Europe to be with them) or any support, and I get to drive around in a beat up car that represent the money my deceased grandparents generated so gradually over the course of their long marriage.
I have many mental images of death. At times I am able to get myself up a little mentally, such as last night, but then today I completely destroy any value of my car and all goes to hell again. I honestly feel I have nothing to live for anymore. The reason keeping me from suicide so far has been the realization of the deep hurt I would cause my mother and family and a few close people. But at the same time I feel like I can't go on living just for that. Everything seems like an enormous burden that is swallowing me up, and more and more I feel a giant lump in my throat during the day.
So yes, many times I feel really down I see images of shooting my brains out, or driving into a pole or a tree at full speed. Or I go to town, drive along, and suddenly out of nowhere think, "maybe this time someone will kill me in traffic and then it would be more acceptable to people who know me". Because of being so un-whole and un-centered, I constantly feel out of my element, and things stress me out. Just to think of going to work again tomorrow, it is almost unbearable.
I used to be a spiritual person. Or maybe I never was, maybe all the revelations and experiences I thought I had were just my immaturity and my imaginations. But I am left with the strong and unbearable feeling that something has left me. That at one time I was looked over, guarded over, or that something was actively in contact with my soul or spirit. But now it seems for the first time that I am all alone, and that that presence has left me. Maybe that, in the end, is the most unbearable of all for me.
Just too green a flower, just a bud that opened too soon and then the frost covered it again. So who is who then in this life. Should one be happier if you just bought a 40 million dollar home in Italy, like some celebrities did? Is there any joy in that when people are suffering like this? And what is good or nice about being admired by throngs of people when you know it doesn't really have anything to do with you, but you ride that wave anyway? Is an opulent dream so much better than a poor one? Can you live with shame and loss of reputation, can you go through life like an anonymous ghoul? And is that enough for you? Will we remain on the outskirts of our own selves, and never realize who we truly are, hemmed in as we feel by our circumstances? Yes, that hungry, indiscriminate beast of life and capital is riding us and leaves behind empty eyes and blackened hearts. So is this what describes us then? Is this who we truly ARE? Were you not the same child that your mother loved and loves, before or after getting or losing a car? Are you not the same child that was loved before and after you held that job?
I don't pretend to have any answers, although I do ask myself these things. Happiness and love and glory in this life are presented to us as so highly conditional, as though we can manufacture these innate things that cannot be found outside one's self. Famous people, rich people, they all just run a Ponsi scheme and they know it (if they have any sense about them). They will ride the wave of others' misconception about them for their own gains. But it is even worse, as they don't even promise a rate of return, as Madoff did. So perhaps they did not blatantly lie to you, yet they accepted your offerings as they betray the hope you see in them. So they are no better, after all.
So then be brother and sisters in the trenches, and don't look up at the hypocrites and slave drivers of this world, who tweak and milk the worker masses for their own pleasures and freedoms. See hope then in the truth of the encroached eye of hope of your neighbor, and amid that unspoken comradery go within and get to the source of your life, your own soul and spirit, that is not tainted by the mud and tar that this world flings upon you. And let's forgive and pity the person who looks upon others outward status of life and categorizes them into usefulness or worthlessness. In the end, people who look upon others that way are the ones that need to be pitied. Sister Poverty may seem dark and brutal, but she is also benign because she will keep us close to the truth and makes us see the reality of things, without shots of superficial excitement and worldly power.
I didn't mean to write this much. Nor do I know how much it can really help me. I just hope it makes sense to anyone out there who may be worse off than I am. Peace and love to all...
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