LIFE SUCKS

Belonging?

I'm not sure that life sucks in general, but I feel like it sucks for a lot of people. Unfortunately it sucks for me, and I can both blame myself and everyone I know.

I'm lonely. I'm sitting here in the dark right now, in my apartment, listening to a live band that's playing outside my window. Every year pre-Labor day, there is a music festival in my small town of about ten thousand. It happens downtown, where I happen to live, and while this festival is happening, my apartment is flooded with the mediocre music of a dozen different bands and people shouting until late into the evening. I spent most of the day volunteering at the local free trade store, and we did some good business because of the festival. I talked to many people, had some good conversation, and felt very good the entire day. Until about 8 o'clock, life did not suck.

But, as happens, we closed up shop and I gradually made my way out the door. We'd been sitting, a few people who run the store and who volunteer, sitting and chatting, and it was one of the moments that makes me feel warm and wonderful and like everything could be okay. But then the monster came into me, infested my brain, and made me start thinking things that probably weren't true, but even now I don't know for sure. I started thinking that these people did not want me here. I kept thinking how they were waiting for me to leave so they could plan what to do, plan to go have fun with one another without me. Writing it out now, it seems a completely childish and petulant, but the thought is still there, snaking in and out of my brain and making me wish I weren't me.

I'm not sure when I became so self-hating and anti-social. I would argue that it isn't natural behavior. I like people, certain people, and I can get along with nearly anyone. I think there is a deep self-hate within me though, a hatred that makes me assume no one likes to be around me. I can make people laugh, I can say clever things, and I can be completely personable, but this self-hatred warps it all and makes me believe falsities. I recognize its existence, and still can not change what it is. I fear that one day it will cause a suicide, that this self-hate will boil over into something too dark and too horrifying to continue my existence on the planet. I almost feel that that day is an inevitability, and that every other day is just me attempting to stave off the end. Then, one day I won't be able to keep it at bay anymore and that will be that.

I don't want to be lonely. I don't want to be sad. I want friends and a happy life and maybe even a woman to love. I'm not incapable of these things. I'm attractive, probably too smart for my own good, and I CAN interact. But deep down I'm afraid of people, and it's ruining me. I don't know what to do.

So when I say that life sucks for me, I mean it in relation to my own experiences. I know that life sucks for many people, that many can't afford to eat, that many suffer through war. But I suffer through my own wars, and though my basic needs are met, people can't survive and be happy on basic needs alone. We need more, and I'm not getting it. That is why life sucks for me.