Why is it that someone’s always chasing someone who’s chasing someone else and that everyone seems to be trying to talk someone out of killing themselves lately?

A Facebook friend of mine – I never met him but we “noticed” each other on Twitter since he’s from where I grew up and has also studied German – was talking about not wanting to be a burden to his fiancée and therefore thinking of offing himself. I’ll be the first to admit that while I offered all kinds of words of encouragement, I felt like the biggest hypocritical idiot on earth. laughs sarcastically I mean there I was telling him why he should hang on when I’m sitting here drowning in my own well of depression and thinking of all the reasons I should off my own self. Really, don’t kill yourselves, folks! Just leave the self-destructiveness to me. :) I’m the one with the fucked up life!

Seriously, I have been depressed, despondent and feeling totally powerless to do a damn thing about it. I’ve tried it all – happy thoughts, dirty thoughts, aromatherapy, keeping busy, soothing music – yet it’s hopeless. But if and when I do go bye-bye, I’m not going to be dumb enough to say when. I can only say that while time of year doesn’t matter, temperature does. So if I’m going to do anything it won’t be for a while yet.

I could go out and cry on Mr. Optimistic’s (or Mr. Denial’s, depending on how you look at it) shoulder, but he’ll just tell me the same thing. He’ll tell me that things will get better and I won’t believe him. I’m not even winning things anymore!

Meanwhile, I will continue to chase a woman who’s chased (and captured) someone else, while pesky Kate chases me. It’s better than chasing hopeless dreams, isn’t it?

The only reason I stayed alive this long was because of Tom, but things have been bad enough for long enough that I’m not sure I care anymore. I mean I know my killing myself would hurt Tom and some others. But they’ll get over it. No one’s survival is dependent upon my own survival and so life will go on for people. And since my life can never be my own I’m basically counting down the days till it ends. Sorry, but selfish or not, a life of poverty in little old shitboxes to the tune of barking simply won’t do. I don’t care if it’s “better” than prison or “better” than Africa where people are starving and the Middle East where people are crazy. We don’t hear as much barking as one hears in the city, but it can still get to be more than enough at times.

This place is smaller than your average 1-bedroom apartment. It’s so old and dumpy that we had to tape around the edges of the window in the hall door because it was falling apart to the point that bees were getting in. If this is the way we deserve to live this late in life, how can I ever believe things could possibly ever change for us? There are few to no jobs around us and the few people that do have jobs are almost all temps. There’s hardly any such thing as a permanent position anymore.

Despite knowing there’s a damn good chance I don’t have much time left to live, I’m going to try to treat each day as if life is going to go on as usual, cramped in here with a husband I love dearly but am sick of having to have around 24/7. I’m the type that only likes to see people for 2 or 3 hours a day. But who’d have ever thought years ago that he would be forced to retire without retiring in his 50s and in such a tiny place? This place makes the Phoenix house seem like a mansion, and at 1470 square feet that house was pretty average in size for the west and small for the east.

I’m also a little concerned about why I can’t lose weight (I went back up a pound). I should have lost about 15 pounds by now. While I have most of the symptoms my ex “friend” says I’m making up and giving into, it clearly says “weight gain,” not “inability to lose weight.” But I’m not one of the ones blessed with real insurance so I can’t go to a doctor to see if something’s up with my thyroid or anything else.

I was kind of surprised to find when I got up that Andy hadn’t been in my blog. He was in right after we had our fight, but not since then. I have a feeling he’ll be back sooner or later. But for two days there’s been no sign of him on Formspring or Twitter. I can still see his accounts there even though I deactivated my Formspring account and blocked him on Twitter.

No sign of Nane either. I haven’t seen her picture on the sidebar and she hasn’t posted anything all day.

Later…

Nane just posted something but her picture still doesn’t appear on the sidebar – WTF? I still don’t get that thing.

I’m drinking myself into a wonderfully drunken stupor for the first time since the sickos down south drove me crazy and then seized control of my life through the courts. It’s only a couple of wine coolers, but since I’m small and it’s been that long, half a bottle and I already got a buzz on. It’s something I only do once in a blue moon and only when I have something going on. Only this time I have nothing going on and perhaps that’s why I’m drinking. I just wanted some variety. So now I’m just opening my second of four wine coolers. Bartles & Jayme’s exotic berry is pretty good.

The last time I drank I was on probation. The tail end of it not knowing they were about to vindicate me even if it was in their own little half-assed way. Yes, I was stressed out at the time, but I did it more in defiance of anyone, legal or not, having the balls to tell me what I could/couldn’t put into my own body.

“They could control me in jail, but I’ll be damned if they’ll control me on the home front,” I said to Tom one day. “Why should I give the courts any more respect than I’d give a complete stranger who tried to order me not to drink, not to bear firearms, etc? Well, we never got any weapons; just the wine coolers. Fuzzy navel I think it was at the time and holy shit! You mean there are 220 calories in this tiny little bottle?! I just looked it up online. Well, I guess I’ll have only myself to blame when I find I’m up another pound tomorrow. Either way, I’m not drunk, but I think I’m getting tipsy.

Tom returned from the mail place with a surprise win – a bottle of Mr. Clean all-purpose cleaner. Is that really the best I can do?

Was I happier 15 years ago when we were living in Phoenix? Hang on. Let me go pee, then I’ll try to answer at least some of the silly and probably pointless questions I’ve been asking myself.

“You’re such a good writer!” someone just told me in an anonymous message. “Keep it up. I love your style and your heartfelt honesty. I do hope things get better for you but my God, you are so amazing with words!”

“Heartfelt honesty, huh? LOL, well here’s a little heartfelt honesty for you – if I were just as good with arranging my life as I am with words, I’d really have it made!”

Anyway, thanks, whoever you are. I know I’m a pretty good writer. I suck up foreign languages like a straw too, but for someone who’s fluent in 3, knowledgeable in 2 others, and able to get the gist of a few more, I sure as hell have no clue as to how to shake this “bad cloud” that’s been hanging over us. We didn’t have to be that 1 in 8 that’s jobless here. But we are. So why did God or this negative energy or whatever the hell it is choose us when we’ve already been down on our “luck” more than enough in our lifetime? At this point, I’d give up my sign language, my Spanish, my Italian and what German I’ve learned for a decent enough income and a decent enough place to live. I’d even stay fat and blind.

Oh, to live in a real house again with the usual slew of full-size appliances, adequate counter space in the kitchen, enough outlets, an extra bedroom and bathroom, no barking, no serious money worries even if there wasn’t much in savings… it ain’t gonna happen. It just ain’t gonna happen.

So back to the questions. I’ve always been the philosophical type who likes to analyze things and play what if? It’s hard to say whether or not I was happier years ago than I am now because I had different things to worry about back then. Back then I had the stress of our crazy neighbors on us that wouldn’t let me sleep or even eat, shit or think in peace. I was also depressed over wanting a kid I had no way of knowing at the time I would one day stop wanting. But one thing I didn’t have was the insecurity I have today and knowing how easy it is for anyone – anyone – to lose it all and end up on the streets, even if they work hard and aren’t druggies or drunks. Just one wrong move can really upset the balance of life and stop one’s flow of income without warning. And though ours was only stopped for two weeks when the assholes at the debit card company screwed up on us, that was all it took to nearly lose everything while our stuff was in storage when we first moved here and to get a taste of what it was like to be homeless on the streets for 36 hours. I never hated God above more than I did at that time. So now that I know that can happen to anyone, even us, I live with the fear of it happening again and probably always will. I didn’t have these fears back down in Arizona, but am still glad we got the hell out of that gorgeous but twisted state. Andy said it wasn’t fair to hate the state over that one case, and while he’s got a point, it’s hard not to when you were that one case. And I wasn’t literally just one case, of course. I’m not the only one who got or will get railroaded by the Arizona “justice” system. You just sneeze wrong as a white person down there and you’re screwed. I would never again stick just one tiny little toe over the Arizona border!